Sunflowers is a logic garden. Some squares contain a number. That number is how many sunflowers sit in the squares around it. Your job is to plant every flower and mark every empty square, using only that information. The puzzle is pure logic. A day that seems to require a guess is a day you have not found the deduction yet.
If you have played Minesweeper, the counting will feel familiar, with the mines taken out. If you have played a picture puzzle that fills itself in from local clues, the slow reveal will feel familiar too. You never detonate anything. A wrong plant is a wrong plant, and the grid stops agreeing with itself until you undo it. One handcrafted garden arrives each day. Older gardens stay in the archive. The first visit can start with a tutorial.
How a round works
- Numbers show how many sunflowers are around them.
- Double-tap to plant. On a desktop, right-click plants.
- A single tap marks a square empty.
- Tap a faded number, including 0, to fill the remaining empties around it.
- A hint button will show the next logical step. A clean solve is the one you finish without needing it.
Zero is the polite way the puzzle says “start here”. A zero has no flowers around it, so every neighbouring square is empty, and those marks usually wake the next number up. A faded number is one that has nothing left to decide: tap it and the remaining empties fill in. That tap is not a guess. It is the puzzle telling you the count is already satisfied.
How to keep the garden honest
Open with the forced moves and ignore the rest. If a 1 has a single undecided neighbour and the others are empty, that neighbour is a flower. If a 2 already has two flowers, every remaining neighbour is empty. If a number’s remaining count equals its remaining neighbours, they are all flowers. Write those down with marks before you look for anything clever. Sunflowers is a game of forced moves. The satisfying part is noticing which move is forced.
When the grid disagrees with itself, undo. Do not paint over a contradiction with another plant. A number that now has too many flowers around it, or that can no longer reach its count, is pointing at the last assumption, not at a new one you should add. The hint exists for the moment you are sure a step is logical and cannot see it. Using it is allowed. It is also information you will see on the result, next to any mistakes. Players who want the clean garden treat the hint as a last resort, not as a way to skip the count.
Work from the edges and from any number that is almost done. The middle of the garden looks ambiguous until the borders have given it fewer legal shapes. Guessing “to see what happens” teaches you less than spending another half minute on a number you have not fully counted.
Where it sits
Sunflowers is the logic puzzle on a site that is otherwise full of words. It suits a quiet ten minutes and a grid you can tap without a timer shouting at you. When the daily garden starts to fall quickly, Sunflowers Master keeps the same counting and adds a tighter board, plus a pencil for the ideas you are not ready to commit to.
If you want a path instead of a count, Word Snake is spatial in a different way. If you want a short verbal deduction, Middle Word is the other small daily that rewards patience over speed.