Printable Hitori

Pick a size, a level and how many, and print. The boards go on one set of pages and the answers on another, so a sheet cannot spoil itself.

What the printer actually gives you

Six boards to a batch by default, two across a page, at a scale that leaves room to shade a cell in without obliterating the number underneath it. That last part matters more here than on any other printable on this site: hitori is checked by reading the numbers you crossed out, so a sheet where a shaded cell becomes an unreadable black square costs you the ability to find your own mistake.

Nothing on the page is an image. Each board is drawn as ordinary markup by the same renderer that draws the one you play on, so it prints at whatever resolution the printer runs at rather than turning into a grey approximation. On paper the answers are printed as an outline around each painted cell rather than as a fill, for the same reason — an answer key you cannot read the numbers on is not much of a key.

The interface, the navigation and the controls are removed from the printed output entirely rather than hidden. A hidden element still occupies space and still paginates, which is how a one-page sheet becomes one page of boards followed by three blank ones — the commonest defect in printable puzzles online and worth naming because it is so easy to ship without noticing.

What to print, and who for

For a classroom, 5×5 on easy is almost always right. It fits twelve to a double-sided sheet, takes two or three minutes, and needs only two ideas — twins side by side, and chasing what each decision forces — which can be explained in about a minute or handed over as the technique pages instead.

For a long journey, 8×8 at medium or hard is the sweet spot. Big enough to take real time, small enough that keeping track of what you have decided is not itself the challenge, and at those levels the board keeps producing without demanding that you trace the surviving region every few moves.

Print 9×9 and 10×10 at easy or medium rather than expert unless you enjoy tracing. A 10×10 expert is generated honestly and is a fine puzzle, but following a hundred-cell region by eye to find a neck is a test of patience as much as of reasoning, and the same argument on a 6×6 is just as sharp and a quarter of the work.

Printed boards are proved like every other

Printed boards come from the same generator as the ones on screen and are held to the same standard: exactly one pattern of painted cells satisfies the rules, and it is reachable by argument at the level printed on the sheet. There is no second, sloppier path for paper.

That matters more on paper than anywhere else, because paper has no undo. A printed board with two answers wastes an afternoon and gives you no way to discover that the board was at fault rather than you — and on this puzzle, where a wrong decision is a cell you have already inked over, it is worse than usual. It is also why the answer pages are printed by default rather than offered as an extra.

Common questions

More Hitori pages

• Hitori puzzleUnlimited boards
• Daily hitoriA new board every day
• Hitori rulesThree rules, in full
• Solving a boardA 6×6, worked
• Hitori techniquesThe whole ladder
• Printed patternsTechnique — the opening
• Following throughTechnique — easy
• Corners and edgesTechnique — medium
• Sealed pocketsTechnique — hard
• Cutting the boardTechnique — expert
• Guessing at hitoriTechnique — refused
• Hitori archiveEvery past board