A lights out game on a 5×5 grid: press a light and it flips, along with its four neighbours. Switch every light off to win. Every start here is built so that it can be solved, and a hint or the full solution is there when you want it. Free, with no app, no sign-up and no interstitial before play; it works offline and plays from the keyboard.
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on off
Pressing cells near lit ones and hoping works on easy starts and then stalls with two or three stubborn lights. There is a method that always works, called light chasing, and it needs no guessing until the very end.
Look at the top row. For every light that is on, press the cell directly below it in the second row. That switches the top light off and never touches the top row again. Then do the same for the second row, pressing in the third, and so on down. When you finish, every light is off except, perhaps, some in the bottom row.
The pattern left in the bottom row tells you which top-row cells to press. On 5×5, with columns numbered 1 to 5 from the left:
Pressing those top cells turns lights back on higher up. Chase them down a second time, row by row, exactly as in step 1, and the board goes dark.
Light chasing always finishes, but not always in the fewest presses. Because a solution is just a set of cells, you can improve it: any cell you would press twice can be dropped. The Show solution button always marks a shortest set, so it is worth comparing your count with it after a win.
Two facts make the puzzle much smaller than it looks. Pressing a cell twice puts everything back, and the order of presses makes no difference to the result. So a solution is not a sequence at all: it is a set of cells, each pressed once. On 5×5 there are 25 cells, so every possible answer is one of 2 to the power 25 sets.
On the 5×5 board, only one pattern of lights in four can be switched off at all, and every pattern that can be solved has exactly four solutions. They differ by sets of presses that change nothing, such as a particular set of 12 cells whose effects cancel out completely. The longest shortest solution on 5×5 is 15 presses. On 6×6 and 7×7 things are simpler: every pattern of lights can be solved, and in exactly one way.
That is also how the hint works. It tries every combination of top-row presses (32 of them on 5×5), chases the lights down from each, and keeps the shortest set that leaves the board dark.
Because three in four random 5×5 patterns cannot be solved, we never light cells at random. Each start is made by pressing a random set of distinct cells on a dark board, between a quarter and half of them, so pressing the same cells again always switches it off. Starts that are too easy are thrown away: at least 30 percent of the lights must be on, and the shortest solution must need at least four presses on 5×5.
Lights Out was an electronic handheld game released in 1995, with a five-by-five grid of buttons that lit up. Pressing a button toggled it and its neighbours, and the aim was to switch the whole grid off. Similar toggle puzzles had appeared on earlier electronic toys, but this is the version that gave the game its name.
Mathematicians took to the puzzle because it is a neat example of linear algebra with only two values, on and off. Which board sizes always have a solution, and how many, has been worked out in detail, and light chasing is the method most players learn.
The move counter counts every press and the timer starts with the first one; it pauses when you switch tabs. Stats are kept in your browser: played, won, win rate, best and average time. The 5×5, 6×6 and 7×7 boards share one set of stats.
Undo and redo are unlimited, and showing or hiding the solution does not change your move count. The first two hints in each puzzle are free; if ads are switched on later, further hints offer a short ad or a 30-second wait. Each start has a puzzle code such as A7K3Q, so ?p= replays the same board, and Share result copies your time and moves. There is no printable Lights Out.
The lights out game grid fits any phone screen, lit cells show a sun and unlit ones a ring so colour is never the only clue, and every cell can be pressed from the keyboard. Tidy Puzzles runs entirely in your browser: there is no app to install, no account to create and no interstitial before you can play. After the first visit the game also works offline, because each puzzle is generated on your device from a seed. Every board can be played with the keyboard alone, on a phone or a desktop, and your stats and unfinished puzzles stay in this browser rather than on a server.
Press a cell to flip it and its four neighbours. The goal is to switch every light off. Every start on this site can be solved.
Use light chasing: for each lit cell, press the one below it, row by row. Then read the bottom row, press the matching top-row cells from the table above, and chase down again.
Not in general: on 5×5 only one random pattern in four can be solved. Ours are made by pressing cells on a dark board, so every start can be solved.
No. Only which cells you press matters, and pressing a cell twice cancels out. A solution is a set of cells, each pressed once.
Fifteen. No solvable 5×5 pattern needs more than 15 presses in its shortest solution.
Yes. Show solution marks every cell of a shortest solution with a dot, and the marks update as you play. Hint marks just one cell and says how many presses remain.
Yes. Open Settings and choose 6×6 or 7×7. On those sizes every pattern has exactly one solution.
Yes. Lit and unlit cells always show different symbols, and a colour-blind setting adds a hatch pattern to lit cells.
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Last updated 2026-09-27. Written and maintained by the Tidy Puzzles team; puzzles are generated on your device. How it works.