Hunt the enemy fleet on an 8×8 grid while the AI hunts yours — sink all four ships before they sink you.
Top grid is the enemy ocean — tap any cell to fire a shot. A red X means hit, a gray dot means miss. The bottom grid is your fleet; the AI's shots appear there each turn. Sink all four enemy ships (lengths 4, 3, 3, 2) before the AI sinks yours.
Search in a checkerboard. The smallest ship has length 2, so it must touch at least one cell in any diagonal pattern. Firing only on cells where (row + column) is even halves your shots in the search phase and never misses a possible ship — switch to dense sweeping only after you score a hit.
Follow the axis after the second hit. Two adjacent hits define the ship's orientation, so all further shots should extend along that line. Probing perpendicular cells once you know the axis is wasted ammo and gives the AI free turns.
Reserve the corners for late. Corners can only host short ships and only in one orientation each — they're statistically the worst opening guess. Sweep the open middle rows first, then close in on edges, and the corners almost always fall on their own when surrounding cells are eliminated.
Track what's left mentally. After a sink, count the remaining enemy ship lengths (4, 3, 3, 2 minus whatever you've killed). If only the 4 is alive, any clump of fewer than 4 contiguous unshot cells is impossible — skip it and aim at long stretches instead.