How to Play Tapa
Tapa is a Turkish shading puzzle: a single wall winds through the grid, and the numbered cells describe the pieces of wall that surround them.
The rules
- Shade some cells. All shaded cells together must form one connected wall (joined along sides).
- No 2×2 block may be fully shaded.
- Clue cells are never shaded. The numbers in a clue give the lengths of the shaded runs among the clue's eight neighbours, read around the cell in a circle. A 0 means no shaded neighbour at all.
- Every puzzle has exactly one wall.
Playing on kawu
Tap a cell to shade it, again to place a dot marking it unshaded, and a third time to clear. A clue turns green once its neighbours are all decided and match, and red when they cannot match; shaded cells turn red when they form a forbidden block. Sizes 6×6, 7×7 and 8×8; the daily puzzle is 7×7 and timed. Hint fixes a wrong mark first, then shades a cell next to a clue.
Next: Tapa solving tips.
Frequently asked questions
What does a clue like 1 3 mean?
Among the eight cells around the clue, going round in a circle, the shaded cells form exactly two separate runs: one of length 1 and one of length 3, in either order. Unshaded cells (or the edge of the grid) separate the runs.
Does a run count if it wraps around the corner of the ring?
Yes. The eight neighbours form a loop, so a run can continue from the left-hand cells into the top row without a break.
Last updated 2026-10-21