Hedgehush

What is Hedgehush?

It's the old hidden-mines puzzle with a gentler story. Instead of mines, there are hedgehogs curled up asleep under some of the leaves. Your job is to lift every other leaf without waking one. Numbers on the open soil tell you how many hedgehogs are sleeping next to each spot, and from those numbers you work out where they all are.

We built it because we wanted a version that plays as well on a phone as on a computer. That means big leaves you can actually hit with a thumb, pinch zoom on the big boards, a proper lantern button for touch, and boards that never force you to guess. It's free, it runs in your browser on a phone, tablet or computer, and there's nothing to download.

How to play

• Lift any leaf to start. Your first leaf is always safe, and so are the eight around it, so the meadow always opens up a clearing.
• A number shows how many hedgehogs sleep in the eight leaves touching it. Blank soil means zero, and the game opens all of its neighbors for you.
• When you're sure a hedgehog is under a leaf, hang a lantern on it. The counter at the top shows how many hedgehogs are still without a lantern.
• Lift every leaf that has no hedgehog under it and the meadow is cleared. You don't have to hang every lantern to win; we hang the last ones for you.

If you lift a leaf with a hedgehog under it, it wakes up, yawns and curls right back up again. That ends the meadow. We show you where every hedgehog was sleeping and offer to let you try the same meadow again just for fun.

Controls on a phone or tablet

• Tap a leaf to lift it.
• Long-press a leaf to hang or take down a lantern. You can make the press quicker or slower in Settings.
• The Dig / Lantern switch at the bottom flips what a tap does. In Lantern mode a tap hangs a lantern and a long-press digs. Handy when you have a lot of lanterns to hang in a row.
• Tap a number that already has all its lanterns to lift the rest of its neighbors at once.
• Pinch to zoom and drag with one finger to look around. The corner button jumps between the whole meadow and a comfortable zoom.

When you zoom far out, the leaves can get too small to hit with care. Rather than risk the wrong leaf, a tap at that size zooms in on the spot first. You choose how small is too small in Settings (Small, Medium or Large).

Controls on a computer

• Left click lifts a leaf. Right click, or Ctrl (Cmd or Option on a Mac) plus a click, hangs or takes down a lantern.
• Click a satisfied number, press both buttons on it, or use the middle button to open around it.
• The mouse wheel zooms, and on a zoomed board you can drag to look around.
• Keyboard: Arrows move a cursor (Shift moves five), Space lifts a leaf or opens around a number, F hangs a lantern, D opens around a number, + zooms in, the minus key zooms out, 0 shows the whole meadow, N starts a new one and P pauses.

Sizes

Expert is a wide board, which never fits a phone held upright. So on a tall screen we turn it on its side and give you a 16 by 30 meadow instead. It's the same difficulty with the same count, just shaped for your hand. You can force wide or tall in Settings.

No guessing, or classic

Most meadows in Hedgehush are no guessing. Before you see a board, our own solver plays it from your first leaf using only what a player could see. If it ever gets stuck and would need a guess, we move a few hedgehogs and check again until the whole board can be finished with logic. It only takes a moment, and the boards still look and feel like ordinary random ones.

If you miss the old luck of the draw, switch to Classic in the New meadow sheet. Hedgehogs land anywhere (except around your first leaf), so now and then you'll face a true fifty-fifty.

Practice, replays and settings

Normal meadows are honest: there's no undo. If you'd like to learn, turn on Practice. It adds Undo, so you can take back the tap that woke a hedgehog, and a Hint that points to a leaf that is surely safe or surely hiding a hedgehog. Practice meadows stay off the leaderboards and out of your stats.

Other options include question pebbles (a second press turns a lantern into a pebble you can use as a maybe), safe start (we open the first clearing for you), high contrast numbers, hiding the clock, sound and vibration. The numbers use a colorblind-safe set of colors, and each digit is drawn big and bold.

Daily Meadow and leaderboards

Every day at midnight UTC a new Daily Meadow grows. It's a 16 by 16 board with 40 hedgehogs, it's no guessing, and it's the same for everyone, starting from the same opening. The clock waits under a cover until you tap Start, so nobody gets a free look.

If you wake a hedgehog in the daily, you can hush it back to sleep and keep going. It costs 30 seconds on your time and we hang a lantern where it sleeps. Your first clear of the day posts to the daily board once. Replays, a second tab or a reload never post again, and a run that crosses midnight counts for the day you started it.

There are also all-time boards for Beginner, Intermediate and Expert, each keeping your fastest no-guess win at that size. Every board shows times, fastest on top. Sign in on the site to put your name on them.

Stats for keen players

We keep wins, games played, win rate, best and average time, and your win streak for each size, with no-guess and classic counted apart. After every win you also get three numbers that serious players use:

• 3BV: the fewest clicks that could clear this exact board. Each opening counts as one, plus every number that doesn't touch an opening.
• 3BV/s: 3BV divided by your time. It's the fairest way to compare a fast time on an easy board with a slower one on a tough board.
• Efficiency: 3BV divided by the clicks you made. Over 100% is possible when you open around numbers a lot.

Tips and strategy

• Start with the easy reads. A 1 with only one leaf left beside it has a hedgehog right there. A number that already has all its lanterns means every other neighbor is safe.
• Learn the 1-2-1 along a wall: the hedgehogs sit under the two 1s, and the leaf beside the 2 is safe. The 1-2-2-1 version puts them under the two 2s.
• Compare neighbors. If a 1 and a 2 share all but one leaf, the extra leaf next to the 2 must hold a hedgehog.
• Use opening around numbers. Hang a lantern, then tap the satisfied number instead of lifting leaves one by one. Your efficiency will climb.
• You don't need every lantern. Speed players only mark the hedgehogs they need for opening around numbers.
• Near the end, count. If two hedgehogs are left and only two unknown leaves, you're done thinking.
• In no-guess meadows, if you feel stuck, there is always a sure step. Look further away, often on the far side of a long border.

Questions