Egghead Games

How to Solve Logic Grid Puzzles

A logic grid puzzle gives you a short story, a few clues and a grid. Everything you need is in the clues: there is no guessing and no outside knowledge. This guide solves one small puzzle from start to finish and explains each kind of clue along the way.

The puzzle

Balloon Animals

Rachel has a small booth on the Verde Hills boardwalk where she creates and sells whimsical balloon animals. Using only the clues below, match each of her sales today to its associated animal, balloon color and price.

  1. The bear cost 1 dollar less than the monkey.
  2. The bear was either the white animal or the gold animal.
  3. The turtle was white.
  4. The bear cost 2 dollars less than the turtle.
  5. Of the $6.00 animal and the orange balloon, one was the monkey and the other was the dog.

How the grid works

The puzzle has three categories (prices, animals and colors) with four items in each. Solving it means working out the price and the color of each animal.

$3.00$4.00$5.00$6.00goldorangeredwhitebeardogmonkeyturtlegoldorangeredwhite ANIMALSCOLORSPRICESCOLORS
The empty grid, as it looks in the app.

The grid is really three small grids joined together. Each one compares two of the categories.

1 2 3 $3.00$4.00$5.00$6.00goldorangeredwhitebeardogmonkeyturtlegoldorangeredwhite ANIMALSCOLORSPRICESCOLORS
Grid 1 compares prices with animals, 2 compares prices with colors, and 3 compares colors with animals.

Colors appear twice, once across the top and once down the side, so that every pair of categories gets a grid of its own.

Each square is a yes-or-no question about two items.

$3.00$4.00$5.00$6.00goldorangeredwhitebeardogmonkeyturtlegoldorangeredwhite ANIMALSCOLORSPRICESCOLORS
This square asks: did the dog cost $4?

You answer each question with one of two marks: a green circle for yes, or a red X for no.

The two rules

Every logic grid puzzle follows the same two rules.

  1. Everything has exactly one match in each category. Each animal had one price and one color.
  2. Nothing is shared. No two animals cost the same, and no two were the same color.

On the grid, this means each of the three small grids ends up with exactly one circle in every row and every column, and an X everywhere else. When all three are full, the puzzle is solved.

Solving it, clue by clue

Each part below takes one kind of clue and shows what to mark on the grid. They follow on from each other, so by the end of the last part the puzzle is solved.

  1. True and false clues
    Clues that state a fact outright, and the X's that follow from them.
  2. Either/or clues
    Clues that offer two options, exactly one of which is true.
  3. Greater than clues
    Clues that compare two items, such as "2 dollars less than".
  4. Multi-elimination clues
    Clues that read "of A and B, one is X and the other is Y".
  5. Finishing the grid
    What to do when you have read every clue and the grid still isn't full.

Try one yourself

You can play puzzles like this one in Logic Grid Puzzles, our app for phones and tablets. It fills in the X's around each match for you, lets you undo as far back as you like, and offers a hint when you get stuck.