What is Nyangjari?
Nyangjari is a logic puzzle played on an N×N grid divided into N color regions. Each region, each row, and each column must contain exactly one cat. Two cats may never occupy adjacent cells — not even diagonally. The number of regions always equals the grid size, so every dimension of the puzzle grows together.
Puzzles range from 5×5 introductory grids up to 10×10 expert boards. This puts Nyangjari in the same family as Star Battle and LinkedIn Queens, while adding a design commitment that sets it apart: the entire experience is colorblind-friendly by default, with no separate accessibility mode required.
Why colorblind-friendly comes first
Most Star Battle style puzzles rely on color alone to distinguish regions. Players with red-green color vision deficiency often cannot tell two adjacent regions apart, forcing them to enable a separate colorblind mode — if one is offered at all. Nyangjari removes that split entirely. Every player sees the same screen.
Three layered cues replace color as the sole signal. First, each region carries one of 10 dot-dithering patterns, so regions stay visually distinct even in grayscale. Second, the Okabe-Ito palette keeps brightness contrast high between neighboring regions. Third, cells within the same region share a thin border, while cells in different regions are separated by a thicker border — making boundaries readable by shape rather than hue. Each release is verified against a grayscale render and a colorblind simulator as part of acceptance testing.
How puzzles are made
All puzzles are generated and validated offline before shipping. A dedicated Dart CLI builds a valid solution placement, carves the grid into regions using flood-fill, and confirms that exactly one solution exists. The same tool then rates difficulty by the six human-solvable techniques the puzzle requires: Basic Elimination, Row/Column Lock, Naked Pair, Naked Triple, X-Wing, and Swordfish. Puzzles that need only the first two techniques become beginner levels; those that require X-Wing or Swordfish become expert levels.
The finished puzzles are bundled as a JSON file included with the app. The runtime never generates puzzles on the fly — every level that appears has already passed quality and uniqueness checks.
How to play
Open the puzzle in your browser and start immediately — no account or login is required. Tap or click a cell to cycle through its states: empty, cat, and marked (a small dot to note a cell that cannot hold a cat). There is no mode selection; the game follows a single endless progression, presenting one level after another.
When a technique appears for the first time, a short overlay explains it with an example from the current board, then gets out of the way. You can review any technique later on the Techniques page.
Play now →