Lesson 1 — Reading a Green Dot board
Before you play a single move on your Green Dot cabinet, you should understand what the empty cells are telling you. This lesson walks through the visual grammar of a fresh board.
The three cell states
Every cell of a Green Dot board is in one of three states: empty (white), green (a green dot), yellow (a yellow dot). On a fresh board, most cells are empty — the puzzle is a fill-in exercise, not an erase-in exercise.
What the pre-filled cells tell you
Some boards start with a few cells pre-filled. Every pre-filled cell is a constraint, not a hint. It fixes one green or yellow in place; the rest of the row and column has to work around it.
How to scan a fresh board in ten seconds
Left column top to bottom, right column top to bottom, top row left to right, bottom row left to right. Then diagonals. This scan builds a mental map of where the pre-filled constraints cluster.