How to play
You complete Lights Out when all twenty-five lights are off at the same time. The engine evaluates the full position rather than relying on a visual shortcut or an unsupported solvability claim.
- Lights Out opens from a versioned seeded position built for a deterministic solvable 5-by-5 light grid in which one press toggles its cell and every orthogonally adjacent cell. Its game ID, rules profile, and deal identity are stored together so restart recreates the same opening without a server request.
- Every Lights Out action is checked against the current board, available material, and this defining restriction: corner presses affect three cells, edge presses affect four, interior presses affect five, repeated presses cancel in pairs, and diagonal cells never toggle. Invalid, stale, or post-terminal actions leave the position unchanged.
- You complete Lights Out when all twenty-five lights are off at the same time. The engine evaluates the full position rather than relying on a visual shortcut or an unsupported solvability claim.
Strategy tips
- A practical Lights Out plan is to preserve several legal continuations around a deterministic solvable 5-by-5 light grid in which one press toggles its cell and every orthogonally adjacent cell. Use the deterministic hint to inspect one legal action, then compare how it affects the documented objective before committing.
- A common Lights Out error is to ignore the boundary rule that corner presses affect three cells, edge presses affect four, interior presses affect five, repeated presses cancel in pairs, and diagonal cells never toggle. Undo is useful for studying that decision, while restart deliberately preserves the original seeded position.
- Near the end of Lights Out, recount the remaining obligations needed until all twenty-five lights are off at the same time. Check the boundary rule after every final placement or transfer because terminal status is enforced immediately.