How to play
Tap tiles to dig. Red means close, blue means far. You have 10 digs.
About Treasure Dig
Treasure Dig is a short game of deduction. A treasure is buried under one of sixty-four tiles and you have ten digs to find it. Each hole you dig tells you something about how close you are, so the game rewards thinking far more than luck.
How to play
The board is an eight by eight grid of brown tiles. Tap one to dig. If the treasure is there, the tile turns gold and you have won. If it is not, the tile changes colour to show how far away the treasure is. Red means very close. Orange and yellow mean you are getting warm. Green is some way off, and blue is far.
Every miss uses up one dig, and the number you have left is shown at the top. Tapping a tile you have already dug does nothing and does not cost you. Find the treasure and you can play again straight away. Run out of digs and the game shows you where it was hiding, which is usually one square from where you were about to look.
Reading the colours
The colour depends on the straight-line distance between the tile you dug and the treasure. Think of each dug tile as the centre of a circle. The colour tells you roughly how big that circle is, and the treasure lies somewhere on its edge.
One clue gives you a ring of possible squares. Two clues give you two rings, and the treasure has to be where they cross. Three well-placed clues usually pin it down to one or two tiles.
A tile right next to the treasure is the reddest you will see. A diagonal neighbour is a touch more orange. Two squares away is a clear orange, three is nearer yellow, and so on through green to blue. After a few games you start to read the shades as numbers.
A plan for your ten digs
Start in the middle. A dig near the centre of the board can never be very far from the treasure, so its colour is informative whatever happens. A dig in a corner might only tell you "not here, and not near here".
For your second dig, move a good distance from the first, three or four squares, in whichever direction you like. Now compare. If the second tile is warmer, the treasure is on that side. If it is cooler, it lies the other way.
Make the third dig off the line between the first two. Two clues in a row leave a mirror-image doubt: the treasure could be above the line or below it. A third dig to one side settles which.
From there you should be looking at a small patch of the board. Use the remaining digs to close in, always choosing tiles that fit every clue so far.
How quickly can it be done?
Finding the treasure in five or six digs is good going. Four takes sharp reasoning. Three needs a slice of luck on top.
A thinking game in miniature
A round lasts about a minute, yet it uses real logic: gather evidence, narrow the options, test your idea. That makes Treasure Dig a good one for children who enjoy puzzles and for adults who like a quick mental stretch.
It is free and runs in your browser on phones, tablets and computers, with nothing to install.