How to Solve: 4-1

This guide completely breaks down HOW to solve and WHY each piece is broken in 4-1. This guide is intended to help train you and guide you through the entire level, not just give you the answer. Become a better Hexcells player!

Introduction

Welcome to How to Solve! A breakdown where I walk through every single part of each level to help you gain a better understanding of each level.

This level introduces us to the infamous “blue hexagon with a number inside” which indicates how many cells are blue inside its radius, EXClUDING itself.


Clicking on the cell gives us a border to work with, to avoid guessing.

Left Hexagon

Because 18 cells are inside the border, all of these are blue.

Once we’re done, we can simply right click the cell to turn off the glow and dim the text to indicate we’re done.

Middle Hexagon

The 2nd set of hexagons combines what we’re used to, black cell with a number to tell us how many surrounding hexagons are blue.


Because of the overlap, we can guarantee the one and only cell inside the blue cell’s radius is one of the 3 touching the black cell, we can eliminate all the other cells.


This enables us to get a little further. We can use the bracket rule to know that the 2nd blue cell touching it is connected to the first, which is the one right above the blue 1. As a result, we can eliminate the cells on either side.

Right Hexagon

The final section has 2 overlapping cells, and they occur at one point.


Why is the overlap important? We only have 1 remaining cell at this point. Logically, this can only be the one in the very middle, as we would otherwise need 1 blue cell for each of the 2 numbered blue cells.


At this point, we have 0 remaining blue cells, so eliminate the rest to complete the level.