A beginner's guide, from your first clue to a finished grid.
Logic grid puzzles look intimidating the first time you see one: a grid full of empty squares and a list of clues that seem to say very little. The good news is that every puzzle on Logic Dogs can be solved with pure reasoning. You never need to guess, and you never need math beyond counting to six. This guide covers how the grid works, the two moves that solve most puzzles, and a worked example from start to finish.
A Logic Dogs puzzle has a row of locations: the Park, Beach, Trail, and Lake in a 4x4 puzzle, plus the Snow and the Farm in a 6x6. It also has several categories, such as Dogs, Instruments, Junk Food, and Sports. Each category has exactly one item per location. In a 4x4 puzzle there are four dogs and four locations, so every location gets one dog, and no dog appears twice.
That one rule, one item from each category at each location, is what makes these puzzles solvable. It means every fact you learn has a knock-on effect. If the Akita is at the Park, then the other three dogs are not at the Park, and the Akita is not at any other location. One placement gives you up to six facts for free.
In the game, the grid has one column per location and one row per category. Left-click an item in a square to place it there, and right-click to cross it out. The clues are listed beside the grid; click a clue to strike it through once you've used it.
Most clues don't tell you where something is. They tell you where it isn't. “The tuba music is not at an edge” rules out the Park and the far end. “The akita is left of the hockey game” means the Akita can't be at the rightmost location (nothing is to its right) and the hockey game can't be at the Park (nothing is to its left). Each of these is a small fact, but small facts add up quickly.
The habit to build: for each clue, ask “what does this make impossible?” and cross those squares out right away.
There are two ways this happens, and it pays to check for both:
The second version is easy to miss. Beginners tend to scan items (“where can the hockey game go?”) and forget to scan locations (“what can go at the Beach?”). Check both directions every time you get stuck.
Every time you place an item, cross that location off for the rest of its category, then look at the clues again. A placement often makes a clue that was useless a minute ago suddenly decisive.
Here is a small 4x4 puzzle with four categories: Dogs (Akita, Border Collie, Cattle Dog, Golden Retriever), Instruments (Clarinet, Guitar, Trumpet, Tuba), Junk Food (Donut, Hamburger, Hot Dog, Ice Cream), and Sports (Baseball, Ping Pong, Hockey, Tennis). Suppose the clues include:
Clue 1 places the Akita at the Park. Cross the Park off for the other three dogs.
Clue 3: the Border Collie is next to the Akita. The only location next to the Park is the Beach, so the Border Collie is at the Beach.
Clue 4: the Golden Retriever is left of the tuba, which is at the Lake (clue 2). So the Golden Retriever is at the Park, Beach, or Trail. The Park and Beach are taken, so it's at the Trail.
Now only one dog and one location are left: the Cattle Dog goes at the Lake. Notice that no clue said this directly. It fell out of the one-per-location rule.
Clue 5 now becomes useful: the ice cream stand is with the Cattle Dog, so the ice cream is at the Lake too.
That's the rhythm of every logic puzzle: use the easy clues first, let placements cascade, and come back to clues that didn't help the first time around. A real puzzle has a few more clues, and you'll keep cycling through them until the grid is full.
See the complete guide to clue types for every clue in the game and what each one lets you deduce.
Start with the 4x4 Easy daily puzzle on the home page. When those feel comfortable, try 4x4 Hard, then the 6x6 puzzles. If you get stuck on a past daily puzzle, the puzzle archive has a full step-by-step walkthrough for each one, written in the same style as the example above. Once 6x6 Hard puzzles start to feel routine, read advanced solving techniques for the tools that crack the toughest grids.