Meowdoku Tips — Four Deduction Patterns That Prevent Guessing

FAST ANSWER

Look for candidates sharing a row or column, narrow regions, blocked diagonals, and choices that would leave another unit with no legal square.

When Meowdoku feels stuck, the missing move is usually created by two constraints working together. Re-scan the board by legal candidates, not by empty-space appearance.

1. Region squeeze

If all but one square in a colored region are removed by occupied rows, columns, or neighboring cats, the final square is forced. Small regions reveal this early, but a long irregular region can be squeezed from several directions.

2. Row or column locking

Suppose a region has two possible squares and both lie in the same row. Its cat must occupy that row somewhere, so no other region can place a cat in the rest of that row. The same reasoning works for a shared column. You do not need to know which of the two region cells is correct to make progress elsewhere.

3. Diagonal exclusion

A placed cat removes eight neighbors, not only four edge-sharing squares. Diagonal cells are easy to miss on irregular colored borders. Recheck corners whenever a region appears to have two options; one may already touch a cat diagonally.

4. Zero-option contradiction

For two remaining candidates, examine one hypothetically. Apply its row, column, and neighborhood exclusions. If another region, row, or column would then have no legal square, the hypothetical candidate is impossible. Place the other one.

After every forced cat, restart the scan. Do not carry several tentative choices at once; that makes it harder to know which assumption caused a contradiction. Hearts reveal an error after input, while these patterns avoid the error before it happens.

Sources

• Meowdoku on the App Store
• Meowdoku on Google Play