How to find the next unblocked arrow in an arrow puzzle

Find an unblocked arrow by tracing the straight ray ahead of its head all the way out of the board. If it is blocked, inspect the blocking arrow's own exit instead of testing the same blocked tap again.

Give your scan a direction

A crowded board is easier to read when you ask a narrow question. Look only for upward-pointing heads first. For each one, inspect the vertical line above it. Then repeat for rightward, downward and leftward heads. This makes it less likely that you repeatedly inspect the same obvious arrows while ignoring a quieter part of the picture.

The order of directions is a convenience, not a rule of play. Choose an order that you can remember. Your aim is to cover the board systematically while preserving the complete exit test. A fast glance at the nearest gap is still not enough.

Follow a blocker chain

Suppose A points right into B's body. Instead of tapping A, find B's head. If B points upward into C, locate C's head and inspect its path. When you reach an arrow with a clear ray, remove it. Then work back through the chain, checking each path again.

The chain does not guarantee that the next arrow back is immediately unblocked. A's line might cross both B and another arrow farther away. After B disappears, that other obstacle still matters. Think of your chain as a list of promising places to revisit, not a prewritten sequence that you can execute without looking.

Use the outer edge as a starting point

Heads pointing out of the picture often have short rays. Start there if the middle is visually dense. Check the whole ray anyway: a narrow branch, tail or protrusion elsewhere in the picture can extend into it. The visual outline is irregular, so the nearest visible edge may not be the last occupied cell along that line.

Conversely, do not reject an interior arrow merely because it is surrounded. Its exit may run through a gap. A clear ray can pass between nearby bodies without touching them. Side contact and general crowding do not decide whether a move is available.

A repeatable search routine

1. Select a direction and scan every matching head in one region.
2. Trace a candidate's ray from its head to the outside.
3. If blocked, locate the head belonging to the blocking body.
4. Check that arrow, keeping track of the previous candidate.
5. Remove a genuinely unblocked arrow and revisit the affected lines.

If a blocker chain brings you back to an arrow you already checked, stop following that chain. Search another region or direction. Repeating the same reasoning loop cannot reveal an exit that you have already ruled out on the unchanged board.

What to scan after a removal

Focus on the cells that became empty. Any arrow whose forward ray crossed those cells is worth checking again. This is more efficient than rereading every arrow after every move. Arrows pointing away from the cleared area may be unaffected, so leave them until the local opportunities are exhausted.

You can also keep a mental shortlist of clearly unblocked arrows. Removing one does not introduce new occupied cells, so it does not block another already-unblocked arrow. If several legal moves are visible, use the one with the simplest path to inspect and continue from the area it clears.

Turn a hint into a search lesson

When you cannot find a move, inspect a highlighted hint before using it. Ask which direction its head faces, which cells make up the exit ray, and why you overlooked it. Perhaps you mistook a nearby sideways body for a blocker or stopped scanning before reaching that region.

The useful lesson is the search habit that failed, rather than the exact location of that arrow. On your next board, deliberately include that direction or region in the first scan. This builds a method you can use on a different picture.

Where to play

Arvia brings these arrow-removal rules to iOS with campaign and picture-shaped boards. A hint highlights an arrow you can remove. Trace its full exit ray before you tap it.