Lights Out Solver 4x4
Stuck on a 4×4 Lights Out puzzle? Tap in the lit tiles and see exactly which ones to press. Free, right in your browser.
Tap a tile to switch it on or off (with a mouse you can drag across tiles). Mostly lit? Press Flip all first. Match your puzzle, then press Solve.
Three states: tap a tile once for amber, twice for blue. Off is the color your game wants every tile to end on; amber is one press past it, blue is two.
What happens when you press one? (press pattern and options)
Press one tile in your game and check which tiles change. Pick the picture that matches; the outlined square is the tile you pressed.
Tap squares to set which tiles a press changes. The outlined square is the tile you press.
4×4 Lights Out, by the numbers
These come straight from the solver’s engine, which checked them, not from memory.
| Boards you can solve | Only 1 in 16 boards. The rest can’t be solved no matter what you press. |
|---|---|
| Solutions per solvable board | Exactly 16. The solver shows the shortest and lets you flip through the rest. |
| Most presses a board can need | 7 |
| All lights on | 4 presses |
The 4×4 shortcut
On a 4×4 board, light chasing alone finishes the job. Chase the lights down to the bottom row, and if the board could be solved at all, the bottom row comes out dark too. If lights are left over, the board as entered has no solution.
New to light chasing? How to Solve Lights Out walks through it with pictures.
Other sizes: 3×3 · 5×5 · 6×6 · 7×7 · any size
💡 Want to play one instead? Porchlight is a free daily lights puzzle: one new board every day. ↗Questions
How do I use the solver?
Pick your grid size, tap each tile that’s lit in your puzzle, then press Solve. The tiles to press get a red dot. Press them in any order and the board goes dark. If you’d rather go one at a time, use Walk me through it.
Does the order of presses matter?
No. In Lights Out every press just flips the same tiles no matter when you do it, so any order works. Pressing the same tile twice cancels itself out, which is why a solution is just a set of tiles.
It says my board can’t be solved. Now what?
Some boards really have no solution (on a 5×5 grid, 3 out of 4 random boards don’t). More often a tile was entered wrong, so the solver suggests boards one tile away that do work. Also check that your game’s press pattern matches: press one tile in your game and compare it with the pictures under “What happens when you press one?”
My puzzle is called a tile flip puzzle, or a light switch puzzle.
Same puzzle, different name. Tile flip, light switch, flip switch and light flip puzzles all work the same way: pressing a tile flips it and some of its neighbors. Set the press pattern to match and the solver handles it.
My game wants every light on, not off.
Enter your board as it is, press Flip all, then Solve. The same presses that turn the flipped board dark turn your real board fully lit. (That works for on/off puzzles; for three colors, see the next question.)
My game’s tiles cycle through three colors.
Turn on “Three states”. Off stands for the color you’re trying to reach. For every other tile, tap it once for each press your game would need to go from the goal color to that tile’s color: amber is one step past the goal, blue is two. The solver may tell you to press a tile twice (marked ×2).
Can it do sizes that aren’t square?
Yes. Use the custom size boxes for anything from 1 to 12 rows and columns, like 4×8 or 3×4.
Does anything get sent to a server?
Your board never leaves your browser; the solving happens right on the page. The site uses Google Analytics (in Europe it asks first) to count visits and which features get used, like the grid size, but never the board itself. A shared link carries the board in the part after the #.