Battleship puzzles
37 battleship solitaire sheets. A fleet is hidden in the grid, the numbers on the edge count the ship squares in each row and column, and you find every ship by deduction alone.
37 printable sheets ·
Checked and published by 
Nora Quill
6x6 battleship puzzles for beginners
Six starter boards with six ships each and 22 mm squares. All of them come out by counting alone, from 2 to 4 given squares. This is where to learn the two habits that carry every larger board: zeros first, then the corners of each ship.
8x8 battleship puzzles
Six boards with nine ships and 19 ship squares. Three solve by counting; the other three start from 2 or 3 given squares and need fleet logic. The level is printed under each title.
10x10 battleship puzzles, the classic fleet
Six boards with the fleet most people know: one battleship, two cruisers, three destroyers and four submarines. Two are counting only, four need fleet logic, and none starts with more than 7 given squares.
12x12 battleship puzzles
Five large boards: fifteen ships and 35 ship squares in 144, starting from 8 to 12 given squares. All five need fleet logic. Squares print at 13.5 mm, still wide enough to mark water with a pencil.
Fleet variants on a 10x10 grid
Six boards where the fleet itself changes: two led by a five square carrier, two with no submarines (a carrier, two battleships, two cruisers and two destroyers), and two with six submarines and nothing longer than a cruiser. The fleet strip under the grid shows exactly what you are hunting.
Two battleship puzzles per page
Four sheets with two boards each, to save paper or to race someone: two sheets of 6x6 boards and two of 8x8. Both boards on a sheet use the same fleet and hide it differently. The answers to both are on the second page.
Battleship puzzles with the solution on the same sheet
Four sheets, two 6x6 and two 8x8, that carry their own answer: a small solved grid at the foot of the page, under a dotted line you fold back before you start. One page to print and nothing else to keep track of.
The solo logic puzzle, not the two player game
These are battleship puzzles for one person, also called battleship solitaire. Nobody calls out coordinates and nothing is hidden behind a screen. The fleet is already in the grid; the number at the end of each row and the foot of each column tells you how many squares of that line hold part of a ship, and a few squares are given to start you off. If you were looking for a game for two at a table, this site has tic tac toe boards and dots and boxes grids for that.
How do you solve a battleship puzzle?
Start with the zeros: a row or column marked 0 is all water. Then find lines that need every open square. Ships are straight and never touch, even at a corner, so the four corners of any ship square are water. Tick each finished ship off the fleet strip, and use what is still missing to rule squares out.
Two levels, printed on every sheet
Each board is solved step by step by the site before it is published, and the level it needed is printed under the title. "Counting only" boards come out with the line counts and the ship shapes alone: a full line is water everywhere else, and a line that needs all its open squares gets a ship in each. "Fleet logic" boards stall at that point and make you think about the fleet: a run cannot grow longer than the longest ship still missing, and if a ship has exactly as many places left as there are ships of that size to find, those places are taken. No board needs a guess.
The givens are kept to what is needed. Every given square was tried for removal and stays only if the board cannot be finished without it, which is why the boards start with so little: 2 to 4 squares on the 6x6 starter boards, 8 to 12 on the 12x12.
Grid sizes and fleets
The 6x6 starter boards hide six ships: one cruiser of three squares, two destroyers of two and three submarines of one. The 8x8 boards hide nine, led by a four square battleship. The 10x10 boards carry the classic fleet of ten, and the 12x12 boards a fleet of fifteen led by a five square carrier: 35 ship squares in a grid of 144. The fleet variant group keeps the 10x10 grid and changes the mix. One fleet is led by a carrier, one drops the submarines and brings two battleships, and one has six submarines and nothing longer than a cruiser.
What prints on the page
Every sheet carries the rules in two lines, the grid with its counts, and the fleet drawn as empty outlines to shade in as you find each ship. Squares are 22 mm on the starter boards and 13.5 mm on the 12x12, always on one A4 page. The answer is the last page of the PDF, with the ships you had to find in pink. The four fold-under sheets are the exception: their answer is printed small at the foot of the same page, below a dotted line you fold back before starting, so their PDF has one page.
Printing
Print at 100 percent or actual size, in black and white. A pencil works better than a pen: marking water with a dot or a wave as you go is half the method, and you will want to change your mind.
For more number logic, kakuro turns the totals into arithmetic, and the sudoku pages run from 4x4 grids for children to extreme boards graded by technique.
How to use these sheets
- Pick a sheet and press Print. The file is a PDF sized for A4 and Letter paper.
- Print it in black and white at normal quality. None of these sheets need colour ink except the colour by number pages.
- Keep the answer page for yourself, or print it too if you want to check the work later.