⛺ Tents
How to Play Tents and Trees
Tents and Trees (often just Tents, or Camping) is a logic puzzle played on a grid scattered with trees. Your job is to pitch one tent for every tree — directly above, below, left or right of it — while no two tents touch, not even diagonally. The numbers along the edges tell you how many tents each row and column holds.
Our daily version is an 8×8 grid with twelve tents. Every puzzle has exactly one solution, reachable by logic alone. This guide covers the rules and the techniques that carry you through the week.
The rules
- Every tree gets exactly one tent, in an orthogonally adjacent cell (not diagonal). Tents pair one-to-one with trees — a tent can't serve two trees.
- No two tents may touch — horizontally, vertically or diagonally.
- The edge numbers count the tents in each row and column.
- Mark cells you've ruled out with a ✕ (grass). Eliminations are most of the solve.
Solving techniques
1. Grass first
Before placing anything, cross out every cell that isn't orthogonally next to a tree — a tent there could never be paired. Do the same with every row and column whose clue is 0. On an 8×8 board this often clears a third of the grid before you've made a single decision.
2. Tents never touch
Every placed tent immediately eliminates all eight cells around it. Each tent you commit should trigger a ring of ✕s, and those ✕s squeeze the remaining placements in every row and column they touch.
3. Close out finished lines
The moment a row or column reaches its count, every other cell in it is grass. And the mirror image: if the open cells in a line exactly match the tents it still needs, they're all tents. Sweep for both constantly — each placement tends to finish a line somewhere.
4. The lonely tree
A tree with only one open neighbour must pitch its tent there — the other sides are grass, board edge, or claimed. This is the puzzle's signature move: every elimination you make can strand a tree, and a stranded tree is a free tent. After every sweep of ✕s, check the trees they touch.
5. Count the possibilities, then what-if
Take one line and enumerate the legal ways its remaining tents could sit (remember they can't be adjacent). Any cell used in every arrangement is a tent; any used in none is grass. On weekend boards, when that stalls, test a cell mentally: place a tent and follow the forced consequences — a contradiction makes it grass, and that's a deduction, not a guess. Weekday boards never need this.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Tents puzzle?
A grid-deduction puzzle also known as Tents and Trees or Camping: pair every tree with its own adjacent tent, keep all tents apart, and match the row and column counts. It first appeared in puzzle magazines in the 1990s and is now a daily staple.
Can a tent be diagonal to its tree?
No. A tent pairs with a tree only horizontally or vertically. Diagonal adjacency matters for the other rule — tents may never touch each other, not even diagonally.
Do Tents puzzles require guessing?
No. Every daily board has a unique solution reachable by logic. Weekday puzzles never need guessing; weekend puzzles may need a short what-if — testing a placement mentally and rejecting it on a contradiction.
Is it free to play?
Yes. The current week's puzzles are free, no account needed. An account only adds cross-device progress sync — it never gates play.