Battleships

Learn About the Game Battleships

Ever since I first sat down with a friend and a couple of pencils, Battleships has felt like the ultimate test of patience and gut instinct. You both sketch out a square grid in front of you, secretly positioning a fleet of vessels—everything from nimble destroyers to the looming aircraft carrier. Then it’s a back-and-forth: you call out a coordinate, your opponent responds with “hit” or “miss,” and you frantically mark your own grid, trying to piece together where their ships might be hiding. There’s something addictive about that moment when you finally nail a piece of the enemy formation and hear that satisfying “boom.”

It’s fun to experiment with different hiding strategies, too. Some people swear by clustering ships together in a corner and pretending to be reckless, while others scatter them in a way that feels almost random—but is really a carefully calculated dance of misdirection. I’ve learned the hard way that patterns matter: start with sweeping moves to cover large areas, switch to pinpointing the edges of any suspicious hits, and don’t forget to adapt as the board fills up. Once you get in the flow, you’ll find yourself anticipating each “miss” like it’s the calm before a storm.

What makes Battleships special is how it turns two quiet opponents into hype men for each shot. You might lean forward, remembering that time you barely missed a carrier, or groan aloud when you give away the location of your own submarine. There’s a surprising amount of camaraderie in the defeat, too—you end up trash-talking each other over a destroyed battleship, promising a rematch, and feeling like you’ve shared a real moment. And all it takes is some graph paper, two pens, and the thrill of outsmarting someone one square at a time.