BeamwicketPlay Light Up

How to play Light Up

Light Up, also called Akari, asks you to place bulbs in open cells. The dark blocks are walls; they stay fixed.

  1. A bulb lights its own cell and the open cells in its row and column. Its light stops at a wall or the edge of the board.
  2. Light every open cell. Two bulbs must never shine on each other along an unobstructed row or column.
  3. A number on a wall is the exact number of bulbs immediately above, below, left and right of that wall. Diagonals do not count. A wall without a number has no bulb-count requirement.
Completed four-by-four puzzle. A wall marked two is in the top left, with bulbs directly to its right and below. A wall marked one is in row three column two; a bulb directly below it lights the bottom row. All open cells are lit and no bulbs see each other.21
The corner 2 forces the two neighboring bulbs. The third bulb, below the 1, finishes lighting the bottom row. The walls block the beams.

Start beside a 0 or a corner 2

A 0 wall has no adjacent bulbs, so mark its neighboring open cells with crosses. A corner wall marked 2 needs bulbs in both available neighboring cells.

A cross is a note saying “no bulb here.” It does not stop light, and crossed cells still need to be lit. You do not have to cross every non-bulb cell to finish.

Place and remove bulbs

Tap an open cell to cycle bulb → cross → clear. Bulb, No bulb and Clear set the selected cell directly. Lit open cells display “lit” as well as a warm background.

Use the arrow buttons to select a cell. Keyboard arrows move, Enter or Space cycles, B places a bulb, X marks no bulb, C or Delete clears, and U undoes. Tab leaves the board.

Undo reverses the last change in this tab. Restart asks before clearing your bulbs and crosses.

Get a hint

Hint checks all your current bulbs and crosses. It offers one bulb that continues the solution. If a mark blocks every solution, it offers to clear that mark first. You can apply or dismiss the hint; applied hints can be undone.

Two beams may cross in an empty cell. The forbidden case is a bulb shining directly on another bulb.

Practice and Daily

Beamwicket has 24 original puzzles: twelve 4 × 4 and twelve 5 × 5. Daily selects from the same twelve-board set for each size using UTC dates; boards repeat.

A new date does not replace an open Daily puzzle. Your selected date is remembered for each grid size across reloads. Use Play today’s puzzle to switch after confirmation; the older saved record stays in this browser.

If storage is blocked or a saved record is damaged, the game keeps the original and offers recovery options.

Continue in practice returns to your saved practice puzzle at this size. Next puzzle asks before leaving an unfinished practice puzzle with moves. Its saved progress stays in the collection; cycle through the puzzles to return.

Play Light Up →