What is the Lights Out game?
The lights out game is a grid of squares that are either light or dark. Tapping a square flips it and its neighbors, and the goal is to make every square light at the same time. Because each tap changes several squares, fixing one corner can spoil another, and that is the puzzle.
Play Lights Out online free here on 3×3, 4×4 and the classic 5×5 board, or switch to random shapes where every square flips its own pattern.
Where the Lights Out puzzle comes from
The best-known version is the handheld Tiger Electronics released in 1995: 25 buttons in a 5×5 grid, some lit, and the job of turning them all off. You may also see it called a flip puzzle. The game turns out to be a neat problem in linear algebra, which is why mathematicians like it too.
How to play here
Pick a size and flip shape on the start card, then press Play. Click or tap any square to flip it and the squares marked in its little diagram. Undo, Redo and New puzzle are in the dock. In the pause menu, Restart returns to the starting pattern and Solve marks the squares to tap in red. If you tap a square without a red mark, a mark appears there to show that tap needs undoing.
Chasing the lights: a method that always works
On the Crosses setting you can solve any board without guessing:
- Chase down the rows. For every dark square in the top row, tap the square directly below it. Then do the same for the second row, and so on.
- Read the bottom row. Only the bottom row can still be dark. On 3×3 there is always a top-row fix. On 4×4, chasing alone already solves the board.
- Fix the top row (5×5). Find your dark bottom-row pattern below, counting from the left, tap those top-row squares, then chase down again.
- Dark at 1, 2, 3: tap top square 2.
- Dark at 3, 4, 5: tap top square 4.
- Dark at 1, 2, 4, 5: tap top square 3.
- Dark at 1, 5: tap top squares 1 and 2.
- Dark at 2, 4: tap top squares 1 and 4.
- Dark at 2, 3, 5: tap top square 1.
- Dark at 1, 3, 4: tap top square 5.
After the second chase every square is light. It’s rarely the shortest solution, but it never fails.
Why it works
Each tap flips the same squares every time, and flipping twice changes nothing. So only the set of squares you tapped an odd number of times matters, not the order. Treat each square as 0 or 1, count 1 + 1 as 0, and the puzzle becomes a system of equations. Chasing is a hand-made way to solve it.
Why play Lights Out?
The flip puzzle is quick to pick up and has a real “aha” once you see the chasing method. For more grid logic, try Mosaic or Akari.
How to play Lights Out
- Each square is light or dark. Your goal is to make every square light at the same time.
- Tapping a square flips it, along with the other squares shown in its small diagram.
- On the Crosses setting, a tap flips the square and its four neighbors, or fewer at an edge or corner. On Random, every square has its own pattern.
- The order of your taps doesn't matter, and tapping the same square twice cancels out.
Lights Out tips
Never tap a square twice
A second tap undoes the first, so a solution only uses each square once or not at all.
Chase the dark squares down
Work row by row from the top: for every dark square, tap the square directly below it. The problem shrinks to the bottom row.
Let Solve show the way
Solve in the pause menu marks squares in red. Tap each red square once and the board is finished.
Frequently asked questions
What is the trick to Lights Out?
It's called chasing the lights. Fix the board row by row, tapping under every dark square, until only the bottom row is wrong. On a 5×5 board, look up that pattern in the table on this page, tap the matching top-row squares, then chase down again.
Is every Lights Out puzzle solvable?
Not every pattern. On a 5×5 board only one in four of all possible patterns can be solved. Every board here is generated so it has a solution.
Who made the original Lights Out game?
Lights Out was an electronic handheld released by Tiger Electronics in 1995, with a 5×5 grid of light-up buttons. Its goal was to switch every light off. Here you make every square light instead, but the logic is the same.
