Hard Ten Link: Count Odd Colors, Clear from the Inside (Daily Challenge 10.22)

Ten Link The JoyPlus Soft Planning Team October 23, 2026

From the 22nd of each month, Daily Challenge boards start full: 54 numbers in six rows. Our program found about 26 clearable pairs on the first screen of these boards, and about 16 of them were traps. Clearing at random finished only 11% of these boards without adding numbers, while taking only reading-order pairs, as in the earlier guides, still finished every one. This guide uses the Daily Challenge for October 22, 2026.

Daily Challenge 10.22. 54 numbers. The first screen has 28 pairs you could clear, and 17 of them are traps.

Hint 1: Count the colors in between

On a big board, a vertical pair can have eight or ten numbers between its two squares in reading order, and clearing all of them in your head takes a while. There is a faster test. Count the numbers in between by color, leaving out the color of the pair itself. If any color shows up an odd number of times, the pair is a trap, because an odd group can never pair up among itself.

On the first screen, the light bulb points to the 5 in the top row and the 5 right below it. Between them (blue): 6 2 9 6 4 5 1 9. Orange appears three times (6, 6, 4), blue once (2) and red three times (9, 1, 9). Odd counts, so it is a trap.

The light bulb only shows a pair you can clear right now. It does not check whether that pair is safe, so test its suggestion like any other vertical or diagonal pair. On boards from the 22nd onward, the first pair the bulb showed was a trap about 7 times out of 10.

If you take it anyway: clear every reading-order pair after it and 12 numbers are left. Clear the one vertical pair left, the 2 and 8, and you are stuck with 10.

On a board this big, one trap is not always the end. Our program found that a carefully chosen series of other vertical and diagonal pairs could still rescue this board, but those moves are very hard to see. Across all the boards we tested, odd colors gave away 95% of traps and never flagged a safe pair. When every color is even, use the full check from the intermediate guide and clear the gap in your head: about one in five of those pairs is still a trap.

Back to the real game. Start with the pairs that sit side by side.

Warm-up: seven pairs side by side, numbered in order. Nothing is trapped between any of them.

Hint 2: Clear from the inside out

Move 8: the 7 and 3 in the fourth row, across the 8 and 2 cleared in the warm-up.

Every pair you clear lets the numbers on either side of it meet. So a pair that looks far apart is often just waiting for the pairs inside it. Think of brackets: you close the innermost one first, then the one around it, and so on outward.

Moves 8 to 14, numbered in order. The right side of the third row, 5 1 5 8 5, mirrors the right side of the fourth row, 5 8 5 1 5, and each clear lets the next pair outward meet (move 10 is a pair higher up). After move 14 the fourth row disappears.

Hint 3: Rows disappear, and far rows meet

15. The 8 and the 2 at the start of the next row.

16. The two 9s. The third row is now empty and disappears.

17-21. The 5 at the end of the third row and the 5 in the bottom row, then 2 5 7 5 in the second row against 5 7 5 8 in the third. Both rows disappear.

Moves 22 to 27. Only the top row and the bottom row are left, and they mirror each other from the inside out: 9 with 9, 2 with 8, 6 with 6, 5 with 5, 3 with 7 and 6 with 6.

This is the bracket idea on the scale of the whole board. The first row and the last row are the outermost brackets, so they close last. Look at the 5 in the third square of the top row: its real partner was not the 5 the light bulb pointed to, but the 5 in the bottom row, 25 moves later. 27 pairs in total, and no ADD.

Habits for full boards

Warm up with the pairs that sit side by side. They are always safe.
Before any vertical or diagonal pair, count the colors in between. An odd count means a trap.
All counts even? Clear the gap in your head to be sure, or simply wait.
Test the light bulb suggestion the same way.
Expect the outer rows to close last. A far-away partner usually just needs the pairs inside it cleared first.

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