Friday Fields: Mystery Field Logic, Max Capacity Analysis & Why It's Okay to Walk Away

Hi all, it's Anastasia, founder of Inkwell Games. Fridays are when I start to get stumped, and this one did not let me off the hook. I'll show you exactly how far I got and the logic behind every step, including the moment I decided to put it down and come back later. This solve demonstrates some great intermediate Fields techniques: ✓ Start with the ones: The one-cell fields are always your most constrained, block them in first and let the rest of the board react ✓ Green separation: When two greens would merge if they expanded toward each other, you can immediately mark the cells in between as "definitely not this color" ✓ Mystery field deduction: Sometimes greens need to grow so far to reach a numbered field that they force a mystery field to reveal itself — in this case, a hidden one hiding in plain sight ✓ Max capacity analysis: Drawing every possible path a numbered field could take and finding the cells it must include no matter what — used here to pin down guaranteed cells in both the six and the seven ✓ Merge prevention: When two same-colored fields both touch a boundary, a separator must exist between them — and tracing where that separator can come from narrows the options dramatically Fair warning: I don't finish this one! I got far, hit a wall, and decided to step away. That's not failure, it's good puzzle strategy. Our puzzles are best revisited multiple times throughout the day. The answer has a funny way of just popping into your head when you're standing in the grocery store line. 🧩 Play today's puzzle at inkwellgames.com 💬 Stuck on a Fields puzzle? Join Inkwell Insiders on Facebook.