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Guide

How to Play Binairo

Three rules, one solution, no guessing — learn Binairo in under a minute.

How to Play

  1. 1.

    Fill every cell with a 0 or a 1 (or white and black circles, if you prefer the classic look). Tap a cell to cycle: empty → 0 → 1 → empty.

  2. 2.

    No three in a row: three identical digits may never sit consecutively, horizontally or vertically. Two is fine — a pair always gets capped by the opposite digit.

  3. 3.

    Balance every line: each row and each column contains exactly as many 0s as 1s — half and half.

  4. 4.

    Unique lines: no two rows may be identical, and no two columns may be identical. On hard boards this rule is the key that unlocks the finish.

  5. 5.

    The board is solved when every cell is filled and all three rules hold. There is always exactly one solution, and it never requires guessing.

Solving techniques

Every Binairo grid can be finished by pure deduction. These four patterns, applied in order, are enough to clear almost any board — the last one is usually what breaks a hard 14x14 open.

Cap the pairs

Whenever two identical digits sit next to each other, the cells at both ends of that pair must be the opposite digit — anything else would make three in a row. Scan for adjacent twins first, in rows and columns alike; on an easy board this single pattern cascades through most of the grid.

Fill the sandwich

A lone gap between two matching digits — 1 _ 1, or 0 _ 0 — can only hold the opposite digit, because filling it to match would create a run of three. This sandwich pattern is easy to miss because the two clues are not touching, so sweep each line looking specifically for one-cell holes.

Count the line's quota

Every row and column holds exactly as many 0s as 1s, so an 8-wide line takes four of each. The moment a line reaches its quota of one digit, every remaining blank in that line is the other digit — no further reasoning needed. Counting is the reliable fallback when the visual patterns dry up.

Compare against finished lines

No two rows may be identical, and no two columns may be identical. So when a row has just two blanks left and a completed row elsewhere matches it everywhere else, the filling that would duplicate that finished row is illegal — which forces the other filling. This is the rule hard puzzles are built around, and it only pays off late, once several lines are complete.

FAQ

Binairo is a binary logic puzzle: fill an even-sided grid with 0s and 1s so that no three identical digits are adjacent in a row or column, every row and column holds equal numbers of 0s and 1s, and no two rows or columns are identical. It's also known as Takuzu, Binero, Binoxxo, and Tic-Tac-Logic. Every board has exactly one solution reachable by pure deduction.

Yes — everything on this site is free. The daily puzzle, the full archive, and all 600 unlimited boards work in any modern browser with no account, no download, and no payment. Your progress, streak, and best times are saved locally on your device.

Start with pairs and sandwiches: two identical digits together get capped by the opposite digit at both ends, and a gap between two identical digits takes the opposite digit. Then count — once a line has its full quota of one digit, the rest are the other. Harder boards add completion analysis (list a line's legal endings) and duplicate-line elimination using the unique rows and columns rule.

Binairo and Takuzu are two names for the same classic binary puzzle, including the rule that no two rows or columns may be identical. LinkedIn's Tango uses the same fill-and-balance mechanics with suns and moons, but adds = and × signs between cells and drops the unique-lines rule. If you like Tango, classic Binairo is the deeper, sign-free original.

Start on 6×6 easy: it teaches the three rules in a couple of minutes. Move to 8×8 — the classic size and the format of most of our daily boards — once pairs and counting feel natural. 10×10 and up reward planning across several lines at once, and 14×14 is a genuine long-form challenge.

A new daily board is published every midnight, US Eastern time, and it's the same puzzle for every player worldwide. Every past daily stays playable forever at its own URL in the archive, so a missed day is never lost.

Not here. Our generator grades every board with a technique ladder and discards any puzzle that would force trial and error. Easy boards need only pairs, sandwiches, and counting; medium boards need advanced counting; hard boards need the unique-lines rule — but each next move is always provable.