🚢Battleship

About this tool

Your fleet and the computer's are placed at random, with no ships touching. Tap a square on the enemy grid to fire; a dot marks a miss, orange a hit and dark red a sunk ship. The computer fires back after each shot. The panel lists the enemy ships still afloat. Sink all five to win, and press New game to play again.

Battleship rules and strategy

Battleship is a guessing game of naval combat, played on paper for over a century before becoming a famous board game. Each player has a 10 × 10 grid with five ships: a Carrier of 5 squares, a Battleship of 4, a Cruiser and a Submarine of 3, and a Destroyer of 2, making 17 squares in total. Players take turns calling a square; the opponent says hit or miss, and announces when a ship is sunk. The first to sink every enemy ship wins. Good strategy has two phases. While hunting, fire on a checkerboard pattern: because the smallest ship covers two squares, every ship must cover at least one square of a checkerboard, so you can find them all with half the shots. After a hit, switch to targeting: try the four neighbouring squares, and once you have two hits in a row, keep firing along that line until the ship sinks. The computer opponent here uses exactly that method, which makes it a fair test; in testing it takes about 54 shots on average. A perfect game needs 17 shots, and most human games take 40 to 60. Honest limits: you can't position your own ships yet, and there's no two-player mode. The computer only sees its own shots and never cheats. Connect Four, Minesweeper and Checkers are other classic games.

Frequently asked questions