Play Hitori Online — Free
Shade cells to eliminate number duplicates in rows and columns. Shaded cells cannot touch each other, and all unshaded cells must remain connected.
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About Hitori
Hitori is a Nikoli puzzle that begins with a grid of numbers, many of which appear more than once in their row or column. Your task: shade some cells so that no number appears more than once in any row or column. Shaded cells cannot be orthogonally adjacent, and all unshaded cells must remain connected.
The name means “Leave me alone” in Japanese — a nod to the process of isolating duplicate numbers by shading them. The solving process mixes elimination (duplicates must be resolved) and connectivity checking (you can never fully surround an unshaded cell with shaded neighbors).
Hitori is quick to learn but deep to master. The interaction between the no-adjacency rule and the connectivity rule creates constraints that propagate far across the grid from a single initial deduction. A number that appears three times in a row immediately forces the middle occurrence to be unshaded.
Identify numbers that appear only once in their row and column first — they must always be unshaded. Circle them, then use the no-adjacency rule: their four neighbors can never both be shaded, which often forces one of them to be unshaded as well.
Frequently asked questions
What is Hitori?
Hitori is a logic puzzle where you shade cells so that no number appears twice in any row or column. Shaded cells cannot be adjacent horizontally or vertically, and all unshaded cells must remain connected.