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LITS

LITS puzzle

LITS puzzle

LITS is a relatively new logic game, first presented in 2004. Unlike most Japanese puzzles, it lacks symbols entirely; the player operates only with tetrominoes (geometric figures consisting of four squares connected by sides), shading the empty cells of the playing field.

From a mathematical point of view, LITS is a binary puzzle that requires abstract thinking, logic, and care from the player to solve correctly.

Game history

The Japanese magazine Nikoli was and remains a real treasure trove of logical puzzles, on whose pages hundreds of unique games were published at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries, including LITS, known in Japan as Nuruomino (ヌルオミノ).

The secret of such amazing fruitfulness and ingenuity lies in the fact that the Nikoli publishing house, starting in the late 80s, began to attract enthusiastic readers to the creation of puzzles. The editor received hundreds of letters with new puzzles of various types, many of which later became hits.

The currently popular Sudoku and Kakuro also saw the light of day thanks to Nikoli, not to mention the huge number of little-known games included in the collection of this Japanese publishing house. The company has become a real laboratory for creating puzzles. This process involved both its staff members and readers, whose names were often hidden behind pseudonyms. Games were created, edited, modified and perfected. Many of them today can be found on the Internet in more than 3-4 variations.

The LITS game itself first appeared in 2004, in the 104th issue of Puzzle Communication Nikoli magazine, under the name Nuruomino. And in 2005, in the 112th issue of the magazine, an edited version was published, renamed LITS. It had a slight change to the rules related to shading of the 2x2 square tetromino (which may never appear).

The LITS puzzle was liked by readers, and as the Internet developed, it quickly spread throughout the globe. In 2011, based on it, the board game Battle of LITS was created, the official developer of which is Grant Fikes.

Try to play LITS right now, for free and without registration, and you will never leave this game!

How to solve LITS puzzle

How to solve LITS puzzle

The LITS logic puzzle, also known by the name Nuruomino, does not contain numbers, letters, hieroglyphs, or any other symbols. Its playing field is divided into several polyominoes - flat geometric shapes formed by connecting one or more equal squares from edge to edge.

The player’s task is to shade smaller figures inside these polyominoes - tetrominoes (well known to everyone from the game Tetris), observing a number of additional conditions.

Basic rules

The LITS playing field does not have strict size restrictions. Most often this is a 10x10 square, but other variations are possible. The entire grid is divided into polyominoes consisting of four or more cells.

To solve the puzzle, you need to shade the tetrominoes inside each polyomino in such a way that the same/matching tetrominoes are not orthogonal to each other. Moreover, this applies to both identically located tetrominoes and those rotated by 90, 180 and 270 degrees (by analogy with Tetris).

The shaded cells must be located at right angles and not contain 2x2 square figures as subsets.

Summarizing the above, it is important for the player to remember the three basic rules of the game, which are as follows:

  • Two identical tetrominoes cannot touch each other horizontally and vertically (in any form, including upside down).
  • The shaded cells must form a common array (so that from one shaded cell you can reach any other shaded cell).
  • You cannot paint tetrominoes in the shape of a square (2×2).

Thus, only 4 of the 5 existing tetrominoes can be formed on the playing field: designated as L, I, T and S.

How to solve the puzzle

Knowing the general rules, you can easily solve simple variations of LITS with playing field sizes from 5x5 to 8x8. But more complex/larger puzzles will require significantly more concentration and thoughtfulness from you. To successfully solve LITS with field sizes 10x10 (and higher), use the following tips:

  • Visually break large polyominoes into familiar Tetris shapes (tetrominoes), rotate them left and right, and find a position that does not violate the three basic rules of the game. And only after that, paint over the corresponding cells.
  • Start with narrow sections of polyominoes, for which it is possible to place only one or two tetrominoes in a certain position.
  • If a polyomino section is divided into two identical tetrominoes, both of these options are impossible (since it is forbidden to place identical figures next to each other).

The LITS puzzle always has a single correct solution, which is found by searching through and eliminating possible options.

Perhaps at first this game will seem too complicated to you, but just practice a little, remember the main game points, and it will reveal itself to you in all its splendor!