Fieldpost strategy guide
Fieldpost is a calm logic puzzle with a stopwatch on it. Every grid has exactly one answer, and you never need to guess to find it. This guide covers the handful of reasoning tricks that solve almost every grid, so you spend your time placing stars instead of staring.
The rules
The daily Fieldpost grid is 8 × 8 and split into 8 coloured regions. Place 8 stars so that every row, every column and every region holds exactly one star, and no two stars touch, not even corner to corner.
Tap a cell once to mark it with a ✕ (a note to yourself that no star goes there), tap again for a star, and a third time to clear it. On a keyboard, the arrow keys or WASD move a cursor, Space or Enter taps, and Z, U or Backspace undoes. Undo is free: it never costs time or points. The counter shows how many stars you have placed, and if two stars clash, the game highlights them and tells you why.
How it is scored
Fieldpost is a race against the clock. The grid is solved the moment all 8 stars sit in the right cells, and a faster solve is a higher score. The clock runs for up to 9 minutes; a grid that is not solved by then scores zero. When Fieldpost is the Daily Challenge, everyone gets the same grid and your best of three ranked tries counts on the daily board.
Since time is the score, the winning approach is not to rush taps but to avoid wrong turns. Every trick below lets you place a star or rule out cells with certainty.
Trick 1: the halo
The moment you place a star, a lot of the grid is settled. Its whole row, its whole column and the rest of its region can hold no other star, and neither can the eight cells around it. Mark them all with ✕ straight away. It feels slow, but it is the single biggest time saver in Fieldpost, because most later deductions come from seeing what is left.
Trick 2: tiny and squashed regions
Start every grid by looking at region shapes. A region of one cell is a free star. A region that sits entirely in one row (or one column) must hold that row's (or column's) star, so every other cell in that row is a ✕, even though you do not know yet exactly where in the region the star goes.
The same idea scales up. If two regions together fit inside just two rows, those two rows' stars must belong to those two regions, so every cell of any other region in those two rows is a ✕. Counting regions against rows and columns like this is how hard grids crack.
Trick 3: the 2 × 2 rule
Any 2 × 2 block of cells can hold at most one star, because every cell in it touches every other. That makes it a handy counting tool. Two neighbouring rows split into four 2 × 2 blocks, and those rows need exactly two stars between them, so exactly two of the four blocks hold a star and the other two stay empty. When your ✕ marks have already emptied a couple of blocks, that count tells you the stars must be in the other two.
The same touching rule gives a second trick. Look for a cell that touches every open cell left in some region (often a cell just above or below a region squeezed into a short line). A star there would leave that region with nowhere to go, so that cell must be a ✕.
Trick 4: last one standing
As the ✕ marks build up, check each row, column and region for a single unmarked cell. If it is the only place left, it is a star. Then do the halo for that star, and look again. Solving Fieldpost is mostly a loop of these two moves: halo, then last one standing.
If you get stuck
Every Fieldpost grid has exactly one solution, so there is always a next step you can prove. If you are stuck, scan in a fixed order: regions with the fewest open cells first, then rows, then columns. Count how many open cells each has. The smallest numbers are where the next deduction usually hides.
If you do place a star on a hunch and it turns out wrong, the game will flag a clash once it breaks a rule. Undo is free, so step back to the last move you were sure of rather than poking at the grid.
Endless mode
Fieldpost also has an Endless mode, switched on from the start screen. It serves grids one after another, from 6 × 6 up to 9 × 9, and counts how many you solve before you end the run or the 9 minutes are up. The small grids are a lovely way to learn the halo and the region tricks, and Endless runs never touch your daily score.
- One star per row, column and region; stars never touch, even diagonally.
- After every star, ✕ its row, column, region and the eight cells around it.
- Squashed regions claim whole rows or columns.
- Any 2 × 2 block holds at most one star.
- Stuck? Find the region, row or column with the fewest open cells.