Little Hives: Mines

Mines in a garden: prune every bush that hides no beehive. No board ever needs a guess. No ads, no rush. Just you, a hedge and a hedgehog with shears.

Little Hives is the classic mines puzzle moved into a garden. Every square is a bush, and some bushes hide a beehive. Prune every bush that has none, and leave the bees in peace.

No board ever needs a guess. Every hive can be worked out from the numbers.

HOW IT PLAYS • Tap a bush to prune it. Hold to plant a flag where you think a hive is. • Where a bush was, the lawn shows how many hives are in the eight squares around it. • The first cut is always safe and always opens a clearing. • Tap a number that has all its flags to prune everything else around it.

A GARDENER WHO KNOWS THE HEDGE The gardener is a hedgehog with hedge shears. Stuck? Ask, for one jar of honey: it points at a square that is certain, shows the numbers that prove it and says why. It never looks inside a bush for you, and if one of your flags is wrong it says that first.

AS BIG AS YOUR SCREEN Three levels: Beginner, Intermediate and Expert. Beginner is the classic 9×9. The other two are cut to fit your screen, so nothing ever scrolls or gets cropped: bigger gardens on an iPad, comfortable ones on an iPhone. Best times are kept for each.

THINGS TO SPEND HONEY ON Finish a garden and it comes up in flowers, with butterflies over it, and the bees leave you honey. Spend it in the gardener's shed on the four seasons and on things for the finished garden: a rabbit, a pond, a gnome, a fountain. Nothing in the shed helps to prune a board.

CALM BY DESIGN • No ads. • iPhone and iPad. • Works offline. • Your game is saved when you close the app.

Little Hives is free. If you enjoy it, you can leave honey for the developers' tea from the shed. It's optional, and the gardener says thanks with honey.