Starstruck May 30, 2026 | Netflix Puzzled

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]Hello, let's do the Netflix Puzzled Starstruck for May 30th. We'll do the easy then the hard. Easy's called Oddly Sized. Let's play.

[00:00:09]The way we play this game is in each row, each column, and each colored region, we need to place exactly one star. Stars also can't touch each other, even diagonally. So, that wouldn't be allowed.

[00:00:20]Now, this red region has only one cell.

[00:00:22]We got to put a star in it, so that's where it goes. Now, you'll notice that this is x'd out all of these because they all touch that red star. So, we can't put another star touching it. So, green can only put a star here now.

[00:00:37]You'll notice blue has been reduced to these two. That's this these two-cell patterns are formations, I like to call them, are very common and also can be automatic once you learn how to do them.

[00:00:49]So, they're going to remove the rest of the column because there's going to be a star in one of these two. Can't repeat one in the column, so now the rest of the column's out. It's also going to remove the two to the left and the two to the right because wherever the star ends up, it would touch it. This touches both of these. This touches both of these. So does this and so does that.

[00:01:06]So, you can just automatically do that.

[00:01:08]Now, I'm we'll notice that that affects yellow here.

[00:01:12]So, yellow's in one of these two. So, anything that I say I use the word see as a very generic term to be like is in the same row, is in the same column, or touches. Basically, two stars can't see each other.

[00:01:25]And so, you'll notice that both of these cells can't be in because they would see both of the yellow cells that are left, so they're going to see the star that ends up in yellow. Because they're they both share a column with this one and they both touch this one.

[00:01:40]Or in this one even shares a row, but that doesn't really matter. You just have to pick one.

[00:01:45]So, now indigo's down to these three, which may or may not be helpful.

[00:01:50]Brown is down to these two, and in fact, this one sees both browns.

[00:01:55]Um Okay.

[00:02:01]This isn't easy, so I would not expect to have to use this deduction. There's two deductions we can use though.

[00:02:07]Both of them are interesting enough that I want to talk about them. So, the first deduction we can use is that in this row we are down to these two cells.

[00:02:19]And so, we're going to have a star either here or here for sure.

[00:02:24]Now, you'll notice that in yellow we're going to have a star either here or here.

[00:02:29]And so, in these two columns here the two columns to the left of this red line, in those two columns we're going to have two stars.

[00:02:39]And one of them will be in this row and one of them will be in yellow.

[00:02:45]So, we can't put a star in one of these two.

[00:02:49]It's just not going to work because that would be another star in that column.

[00:02:53]Right? As soon as I put a star up here this row is going to need a star, it better be right here.

[00:02:59]And then now yellow has nowhere for a star is another way to put that, but I think the lineup is a bit more um straightforward logic as as as opposed to a look ahead.

[00:03:07]So, we can actually remove these two and then now we can to go has only one place to put a star. And now yellow has one place. This is where the two stars ended up here and here.

[00:03:15]Now, I want to talk about the other thing I saw before we continue.

[00:03:19]Um by the way, there is one thing we can do immediately here, which is because we know a star is one of these two, even ignoring yellow um this one here sees them both because you can see through your region.

[00:03:33]Can't put two stars in the same region.

[00:03:36]And this shares a column. So, no matter where the star ends up, this one's out.

[00:03:40]And then that actually does point down, getting rid of that and giving us that.

[00:03:43]So, that's probably the the correct way forward.

[00:03:45]Um but let me talk about before we move on, let me talk about the other thing I wanted to say because this that does happen in hard.

[00:03:51]So, it's good analysis. So, we need a star here.

[00:03:57]We need a star here and we need a star in yellow in one of these two and we need a star in blue in one of these two.

[00:04:03]You'll notice that these touch.

[00:04:05]So, we can't put two stars there and these share a row, so we can't put two stars there.

[00:04:10]But, I need two stars. So, I can't put them both up here. I can't put them both down here. So, one of them will be in this top group and one of them will be in this bottom group. Well, if one's in the bottom group, that's it for the row.

[00:04:22]We can remove these two from the rest of that row. So, that's another thing I saw, which is um potentially useful.

[00:04:30]All right. So, another way to see that, by the way, another thing you could think about is these two rows here need two stars. We can only put one here. So, the other one's going to end up somewhere in orange, meaning the other oranges aren't in.

[00:04:44]All very, very cool deductions, but really the big deduction here is uh there may even be something easier.

[00:04:50]Yeah, so there's two the this is the easiest deduction that we could do right now, which uh immediately gets uh yeah, immediately gets us stars.

[00:04:59]Um I this is probably the easy deduction, which is that in this column, we need to place a star and it's going to end up in one of these three. That's going to be in orange. So, we can't put another star in orange. These are out and that places a star in brown, which places this one and that one, which we had seen earlier.

[00:05:15]Um so, lots of ways forward here. I think it's really cool to think about different ways you can move forward.

[00:05:21]Um so, we could let's just use that one cuz that feels like the most straightforward one. That gives us brown. That gives us indigo. Gives us yellow and blue and orange and we're done. So, I hope those were helpful. Like more techniques in your tool belt means more things to spot and especially in the hard, sometimes they're actually necessary.

[00:05:42]Ah, shoot. I clicked the wrong thing again.

[00:05:46]They have this trap where if you click the wrong thing, it's a bunch of clicks and a re-scroll to get back in. Anyway, heart's called rough sea.

[00:05:55]All right. Um lots of staircase patterns here.

[00:06:00]Do I see anything obvious?

[00:06:03]1 2 3 4 We have four staircases. They use 1 2 3 4 Five Okay, so I think we start here.

[00:06:12]The bottom five rows here.

[00:06:15]Um all of the staircases plus orange, which I guess could also be considered a staircase, depending on what you think about it.

[00:06:21]Um are below this red line, and there's uh let me just count them out here.

[00:06:26]There's one two three four five regions fully below this line, and there's only five stars cuz it's five rows.

[00:06:38]You know, one two three. Why am I doing this? Four, you can count. Five. So, the five stars that are in these five rows are going to end up in these five regions. So, if you aren't those regions, you aren't a star.

[00:06:50]So, we can just immediately get rid of all those.

[00:06:53]All right. Now, that means orange is down to those. So, we can just automatically eliminate all those.

[00:07:00]It's down to these two.

[00:07:02]Um what else does this do for me? I got rid of this, I got rid of these. That's not super helpful.

[00:07:08]Maybe green?

[00:07:11]Not quite.

[00:07:14]All right, this is down to three, so we can get rid of this guy.

[00:07:18]Huge deductions here.

[00:07:21]What else is going on?

[00:07:23]Could it be columns?

[00:07:26]1 2 3 4 Five, no.

[00:07:32]Problem with columns would be keep introducing another one.

[00:07:35]Are there any almost we could do?

[00:07:40]Um let's think about this for a second.

[00:07:45]So, we're expecting four.

[00:07:49]This is four um columns.

[00:07:53]Definitely one in indigo.

[00:07:56]Two is in yellow. Now, we're we're kind of two out of these three will have stars.

[00:08:03]Um, is that interesting in some way?

[00:08:08]No.

[00:08:10]Not like that, it's not.

[00:08:15]So, maybe maybe we move one more over.

[00:08:20]Let's just erase this and we do five columns like this.

[00:08:26]So, we've got one, two.

[00:08:30]It doesn't really help, does it?

[00:08:34]Well, I get I guess this is the point is that I do need to place five stars.

[00:08:41]So, it's either going to end up in these three or we're going to end up exactly here. So, that's that's a little interesting because if it ends up somewhere in this W shape, which is one of the two options, right?

[00:08:58]It's got to It's got to end up either in gray or in this W shape, but it can't end up in both because the W shape sees this entire star.

[00:09:07]So, they're incompatible with each other.

[00:09:10]And my point here is that between the this gray region and this W for the for the blue, I only get one star.

[00:09:20]Which means So, if I if star three could be either here or here, but we couldn't put a star four here also, meaning this is star four and this is star five.

[00:09:31]And so, that's my five stars. I I don't have a I I have any other choice. One goes in and they go yellow, brown, red, and then somewhere in this extended staircase that includes this gray.

[00:09:44]Because we can't put two in there.

[00:09:48]And so we can eliminate these, which is pretty fun.

[00:09:51]And we can uh we can't eliminate these because we might end up in gray instead.

[00:09:58]Let's see if that did anything.

[00:10:02]Uh, I wonder if there's an easier way to see that, but that was pretty neat.

[00:10:07]I enjoyed it. I hope you did.

[00:10:15]>> [snorts] >> I eliminated these.

[00:10:27]I don't think it did anything.

[00:10:30]It was cool, though.

[00:10:38]Um I need something else to do, but I'm just kind of staring.

[00:11:07]Is there something with columns I can do? I already did these five.

[00:11:13]I wonder if there's like a similar piece of logic for the four to the right of it.

[00:11:21]So we need four.

[00:11:23]One's definitely here, two is definitely here, three is definitely here. So the fourth is either in this blue or this gray. So it is kind of the corollary.

[00:11:32]Where in this big region here, we have one and then this staircase here, we have one.

[00:11:38]So, there's definitely a star in there and there's definitely a star somewhere in here.

[00:11:45]So, those are kind of like virtual regions.

[00:11:56]Do they help me at all is the question.

[00:11:58]I don't see how.

[00:12:05]Um so, yeah, I don't see it.

[00:12:32]I need something else.

[00:12:40]I might have to start looking at lookaheads.

[00:12:43]There's some very powerful cells, but I The The thing you want to check, you don't want to just check random stuff.

[00:12:48]You want to check something that's actually going to be useful. So, like one of these two oranges maybe or uh whether it's this one. Like, I think knowing whether it's this one or not would be very powerful. So, because that's sort of the the odd one out. So, I'm going to just going to mark that if we had a star there, then all of these are out as well as all these.

[00:13:16]So, it puts one in this L-shape not L-shape, Tetris shape.

[00:13:21]It forces this one, too.

[00:13:25]And it also forces one in one of these two.

[00:13:29]And so it forces red.

[00:13:34]And that gets rid of all of yellow. Now, that's quite the look ahead.

[00:13:39]But it doesn't work.

[00:13:42]Can I boil that down to something that's that's reasonable to think about?

[00:13:51]So, kind of. I mean, all we really need to think about is that this one scratches these out, puts it in one of these two.

[00:14:04]And so this one's getting rid of these reds.

[00:14:08]These are getting rid of these reds.

[00:14:13]Um this gets rid of these reds as well.

[00:14:16]We're down to these three.

[00:14:17]But this also places this guy, which gets rid of these reds. So, we're down to just one place for red.

[00:14:24]And then now we have nowhere to put yellow.

[00:14:27]Cuz that's out, and this sees the rest of them.

[00:14:32]I don't know. It's like it's a lot, but we can get rid of that, and that means that we have to be in this W, so we're not here.

[00:14:41]Um I wish there was something better, but I couldn't find it.

[00:14:46]Now, we have a lot of like this almost sees everything in the region, right? Like this one almost sees all of gray. We'd have to place here.

[00:14:59]So, this one ends up using these two rows.

[00:15:05]Those are out.

[00:15:08]And that that places this one, which kills red. So, there's something about like squeezing next to the the staircases that cascades in a way that I'm not understanding.

[00:15:20]But for this reason we can't place here because it kills red.

[00:15:27]It places this gray.

[00:15:30]So, these are out.

[00:15:32]But, it also places this blue. So, we're going to X that out.

[00:15:37]That means the rest of this row's out because it's one of these two.

[00:15:42]Now, did that help?

[00:15:52]Um Something to note, I guess we're down to these So, oh, no. It's the four. It's not the three.

[00:16:05]Wait, one, two.

[00:16:09]Okay, I get I guess something we know is that in this row there's a star in one of these two. So, that one's out.

[00:16:15]Uh sorry, I'm in the wrong.

[00:16:17]My pen was taking over. These two are out because they touch the two that are left in this row.

[00:16:23]Um blue's just down to these three. So, that one's out. But, also this one which sees all of blue.

[00:16:29]We're down to these three which line up with these two. So, we can get rid of the rest of green up here and that places the green. Oh, yeah, it was the only left for the column as well.

[00:16:37]Brown's down to these three.

[00:16:41]Blue lines up with blue. So, those are out.

[00:16:44]And that's out.

[00:16:48]Um blue and red line up.

[00:16:52]So, those are out as well as these two.

[00:16:54]That gives us the gray and the yellow.

[00:16:57]Right. There are a few other ways to see that. That's red. That's blue.

[00:17:03]This is dark orange. I hope I haven't made a mistake at this point. That's brown. That's orange.

[00:17:08]That's indigo. Okay, that was tough.

[00:17:10]There's probably some like more kind of I don't know if holistic is the right term, but just kind of like birds' eye view analysis of the staircases that kind of proves some of these locations don't work. And it had a lot of it had to do with the bottom two rows.

[00:17:27]But, I don't know. I couldn't quite get there. I had to use some pretty nasty lookaheads.

[00:17:31]All right. Well, how'd you do?