Advanced clue guide

In How to play you saw what each clue means. Here we go into detail: what you can extract from each one, even when you still know almost nothing about the board. Two examples per clue type, with the game board in view.

Every example uses a 4×4 grid from The Farm. The rows, from top to bottom: Animals, Places, Crops and Produce.

How to read the boards in this guide

1. Position

The clue: the element is in exactly that column.

Example 1 — confirm without thinking

It is the most direct clue there is: it hands you the exact column. Press and hold the cow in cell 2 of Animals and it will be confirmed. Once confirmed, the game removes the cow from the rest of the row on its own: an element cannot be in two columns.

Example 2 — what it drags along

The same clue pays out far more if the row already had eliminations. Suppose in cell 1 of Animals you had already ruled out the hen and the horse:

Confirming the cow in column 2 also removes it from cell 1. Only the pig was left there, so the game confirms it by itself — and the pig disappears from the rest of the row. One clue, two cells solved.

2. Negated position

The clue: the element is NOT in that column.

Example 1 — one elimination, nothing more

On its own, this clue crosses out a single candidate. It does not say where the windmill is, and it does not affect the other places: cell 4 still has three possible candidates.

Example 2 — the one that closes the circle

Its real value shows up at the end. If the windmill had already been ruled out of columns 1 and 2 by other clues, this one leaves it nowhere to hide:

Only column 3 is left, so the game confirms it without any clue saying so directly. That is why it pays to apply these clues as soon as you can, however meagre they look: they are the ones that prepare the ground.

3. Same column

The clue: two or three elements from different rows share a column.

Example 1 — one confirmed drags the rest

Suppose the windmill is already confirmed in column 3:

Since the three travel together, the cow and the lettuce must be in that column. Three cells solved at once, and it does not matter which of the three was confirmed first: any of them drags the others.

Example 2 — eliminations that spread

The most useful thing about this clue is that it also works in reverse, without confirming anything. We start from a board where the barn is confirmed in column 3 and another clue had already pulled the lettuce out of column 1:

Two chains of reasoning, no confirmations:

Column 3. The barn is already there, so the windmill cannot go in. And if one of the clue's three elements is out of a column, so are the other two — the cow and the lettuce are out of column 3.

Column 1. The lettuce does not go there, and by the same token neither can the cow nor the windmill.

4. Different column

The clue: those two elements do NOT share a column.

Example 1 — one elimination per confirmation

With the cow confirmed in column 2, the corn is out of that column. And nothing else: there is no spreading here as there is in "Same column". The corn is still a candidate in the other three.

Example 2 — the elimination that confirms

Now the corn had already been ruled out of columns 1 and 3, and the cow is confirmed in column 4:

The clue pulls it out of column 4 as well, the cow's column. Only column 2 is left for the corn, and it confirms itself.

5. Adjacent

The clue: the two elements are in neighbouring columns — order does not matter, either of them can be on the left.

Example 1 — the edge leaves no alternative

The cow is confirmed in column 1, which has a single neighbour: column 2 (there is no "column 0"). The carrot is confirmed with no ambiguity at all.

Example 2 — two possible neighbours, two eliminations

Away from the edge the clue is not enough to confirm, but it is still worth half the board. With the cow confirmed in column 2:

The carrot has to be right next to the cow, so it can only be column 1 or 3: columns 2 and 4 are eliminated. It cannot be confirmed yet — we do not know which side it goes on — but the carrot went from four candidate columns to two, and any clue that rules out one of the two remaining will confirm it in the other.

Compare with "Not adjacent": with the cow in that same column 2, that clue eliminates precisely the other two columns, 1 and 3.

Example 3 — testing column by column

This clue can also be read in reverse, with no confirmations at all. Here the carrot has already been ruled out of columns 1 and 2:

Try putting the cow in column 1: the carrot would have to sit beside it from column 2 (eliminated) or from a column 0 that does not exist. There is no way, so the cow cannot go in column 1. The elimination came from looking at where the carrot could not accompany it — without knowing where either of them is.

6. Not adjacent

The clue: the two elements are NOT in neighbouring columns.

Example 1 — both neighbours fall

With the cow confirmed in column 2, the carrot is out of columns 1 and 3. Watch out for column 2: it is still alive. This clue does not forbid sharing a column, only being neighbours.

Example 2 — two eliminations that confirm

Same clue, but the carrot had already been ruled out of column 4:

The clue crosses out columns 1 and 3 as neighbours, and with 4 already eliminated the carrot has only column 2 left: precisely the cow's column. Counter-intuitive, but correct.

7. To the left of

The clue: the first element is in some column to the left of the second — not necessarily right beside it.

Example 1 — two free eliminations

This clue pays out from the very first second, knowing absolutely nothing about the board: the cow can never be in the last column (there would be no room to its right) and the pig never in the first.

It is the first thing worth marking on a new board. The same goes for "Between", and on a 5×5 or 6×6 those free eliminations pile up fast.

Example 2 — when the column squeezes

With the cow confirmed in column 3, the pig has only one column left to its right:

The further right the first element sits, the tighter the clue squeezes. If the cow were in column 2, the pig would only lose columns 1 and 2, and would still have two options.

Example 3 — the elimination travels from one element to the other

Nothing needs confirming: it is enough for the cow to have few columns left. We start from the two free eliminations of Example 1, and add that another clue has already pulled the cow out of column 1:

The cow has only columns 2 and 3 left. Since the pig has to be to its right, in the best case — cow in column 2 — the pig starts at column 3: so column 2 is eliminated for it too. The rule is simple: the pig cannot be in the cow's earliest possible column, nor before it.

8. Between

The clue: the middle element of the card sits exactly between the other two, in consecutive columns.

Example 1 — the middle one never touches the edges

The middle element needs a neighbour on each side, so the first and last columns are eliminated from the outset, with no other information. The cow and the hen remain open.

Example 2 — the whole row in a chain

It is the most explosive clue in the game when it catches an edge. With the cow confirmed in column 1:

The pig has to be next to the cow and there is no column 0, so it goes in column 2. The hen, being the other end, lands on the far side of the pig: column 3. And with three animals confirmed, the horse has nowhere left but column 4 — the whole row resolves from a single clue.

Example 3 — the outer two are always two columns apart

Since the pig sits right in the middle, the cow and the hen are exactly two columns apart: if one is in column 1, the other is in 3; if one is in 2, the other is in 4. It does not matter which one is on the left. That fixed distance turns any elimination on one end into an elimination on the other.

Suppose another clue has already pulled the hen out of column 3:

Then the cow cannot go in column 1: if it were there, the hen would have to be in column 3 to satisfy the clue, and you already know it is not. And there is no other option, because there is no board left to the left of column 1.

Example 4 — a column with no ends blocks the middle one

The pig needs one end right beside it on each side. So if neither of the two ends can go in a given column, the pig cannot go in the columns next to that one either. Here the cow and the hen are already ruled out of column 4:

The pig cannot go in column 3: it would need one end in column 2 and the other in column 4, and column 4 no longer admits either of them. This is the kind of elimination that unblocks 6×6 boards, where there are almost never direct confirmations at the start.

Three habits that get you out of almost any dead end

1. Collect what is free first. "To the left of" and "Between" hand you eliminations before you know anything about the board. Mark them as soon as you start.

2. After every confirmation, re-read the clues. Each element you confirm activates every clue it appears in: the same-column one drags its companions along, the adjacency ones trim the neighbours, the different-column one crosses out a cell.

3. If nothing confirms, look for the elimination. Almost every clue can be read in reverse: instead of asking where an element goes, ask in which columns its partner in the clue could not accompany it. Hard puzzles are solved this way, stacking up eliminations until a row closes by itself.

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