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Four houses, each with one colour, one animal and one drink. Read the clues, fill the grid — one solution, no guessing needed.
Four houses stand side by side. Each house has exactly one colour, one animal and one drink, and no two houses share any of the twelve items. The grid has a row for each of the three categories and a column for each house; tap a cell to cycle through the four options for that row, and tap past the last one to clear it again.
Left always means towards house 1. A clue saying one thing is immediately left of another means they are in neighbouring houses, in that order. Somewhere left means only that it comes before, with any number of houses in between. Next to means neighbouring in either direction.
If a row ends up with the same item in two houses the cells are outlined in red, because that arrangement can never be correct. The puzzle finishes the moment all twelve cells match the one true arrangement.
Every puzzle is generated with two checks before you ever see it: the clues admit exactly one arrangement out of the 13,824 possible ones, and that arrangement is reachable by pure elimination, so there is never a point where you have to guess and back up. Your time is your score, so lower is better.
Start with the clues that pin something to a house number, and then with the ones that mention the same item twice. An item named in three different clues is worth more than three items named once each, because every fact you learn about it immediately feeds the other two clues. Scan the list for the most-mentioned name before you touch the grid at all.
The positional clues are far stronger than they look, and beginners read them as vague. Immediately left of leaves only three possible pairs of houses; somewhere left of still rules out the first house for one item and the last house for the other; next to rules out nothing on its own but becomes decisive the moment either item is confined to house 1 or house 4, since those have only one neighbour.
Work in eliminations, not in guesses. The grid only lets you write down a positive claim, so keep the negative ones in your head or on the edge of your attention: this animal is not in house 2, that drink is not with the cat. Nearly every puzzle here is solved by a chain of four or five such exclusions ending in a cell that has only one option left.
When two clues mention the same pair of items they almost always combine into something much sharper. Somewhere left plus next to means immediately left. Same house plus a positional fact about one of them transfers that fact to the other for free. Look for those pairs deliberately — they are where the puzzle wants you to go.
If you feel stuck, count. For each of the four items in one category, ask which houses are still possible; if some house is possible for only one of them, that placement is forced, even if no single clue says so. That counting step is the one most people skip, and it resolves more positions than any amount of re-reading.