Porchlight: A New Daily Lights Puzzle
It’s late, and every porch light on the street is on. Your job is to turn them all off. The catch is that tapping a light flips it and the lights above, below, left and right of it, so every move helps one light and messes with its neighbors.
It’s free, there’s nothing to install, and it works on your phone.
How it works
- One board a day. Everyone gets the same street, and it rolls over at midnight Central time.
- The week gets harder. Monday is a small 4×4 warm-up. By Saturday you’re on a 6×6 board that takes 13 taps.
- Sunday is a twist. Some Sundays the lights wrap around the edges of the board. Other Sundays the bulbs have two colors, so a light cycles through blue before it goes dark.
- Par and stars. Par is the fewest taps that clears the board. Three stars at par, two within a couple of taps, one for any finish.
- Classic and Practice. When the daily is done, Classic keeps serving boards that get harder as you go (5×5 at first, then bigger boards and wrap-around edges), and Practice lets you pick any size from 3×3 to 7×7.
If you’re stuck, there’s a Hint button (it caps you at two stars), and a link that opens your exact board in my Lights Out solver. If you want to learn the trick that works on any classic board, I wrote that up too: How to Solve Lights Out.
Where it comes from
The puzzle is old. Tiger Electronics sold a handheld called Lights Out in 1995 with a 5×5 grid, and there were similar games before that, like Parker Brothers’ Merlin in the 1970s. Porchlight is my own take on that puzzle, with warm amber bulbs and a street that goes dark (and fills with stars) when you win.
Your streak and stats stay on your own device. There are no accounts, no ads, and nothing to sign up for. When you finish, the Share button gives you a little result line like “Porchlight #14 💡 7 taps (par 7) ⭐⭐⭐” that doesn’t give the board away.
If you like daily puzzles, PRISM and QUINT are over in the arcade too.
