LinkedIn Tango: suns, moons, the three-in-a-row rule, and how the = and × signs solve the board

The three rules, restated so they're useful

Rule 1 — three and three. Every row and column holds exactly three suns and three moons. The consequence to internalise: once a line has three of one symbol, *every* remaining cell in that line is the other symbol. Count constantly.

Rule 2 — no three in a row. Two adjacent suns force a moon on each side; a sun, a gap, and a sun force a moon in the gap. It is also the rule that gets a board started: on 35 of the 37 archived boards, a pair or gap among the givens supplied the first forced cell.

Rule 3 — the signs. An = between cells means they are the same symbol; an × means they are different. A sign with one side known resolves the other side immediately. A sign with neither side known still constrains: an × pair lying along a line contributes exactly one sun and one moon to that line, which feeds the count in Rule 1.

The solving sequence

A Tango board is solved in passes, and the passes have a natural order. Running them in that order means you never skip a free cell, and you never reach for a hard move while an easy one is waiting.

Pass one — resolve every sign with a known side. Any = or × touching a filled cell fills its partner. On the opening scan this pass often finds nothing — on none of the 37 archived boards did a sign touch a given at the start — but it pays off from the second round, once pass two has filled cells beside the signs.

Pass two — the no-three rule around every pair. Scan every row and column for two adjacent matching symbols and for two matching symbols with a single empty cell between them. Fill the forced opposites.

Pass three — count lines. Any line with three of a symbol gets the rest filled with the other. Any line with two of a symbol and only one empty cell that could take a third without making three in a row is likewise forced.

Pass four — the sign-pair count. In a line with an × pair, those two cells contribute one sun and one moon no matter what. Subtract them and count the rest of the line; often that leaves exactly enough cells for the remaining symbols and forces them.

Repeat. Every placement creates new pairs and new counts. Be ready for these passes to run out, though: in our archive they finished only 6 of the 37 boards on their own, all on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. The line check in the next section is what finishes the rest.

Deductions that look like guesses but aren't

Most Tango boards reach a point where no single rule fills a cell: after the sign, pair and count moves, 31 of the 37 archived boards still had blanks. There are two legitimate moves for that moment, and neither is a guess.

The line check. A six-cell line has only 14 legal fillings out of 64: three of each symbol, never three alike in a row. With a few cells of a row or column known, often only two or three of those patterns survive — and any cell that holds the same symbol in every survivor is forced. Applied across rows and columns in turn, this finished 30 of the 37 archived boards with no trial at all.

The pair beside a symbol. An = pair lying along a line, with a known symbol directly beside it in the same line: if the pair matched that symbol you'd have three in a row, so the pair is the opposite symbol.

A worked board in four passes: Tango #728

Tango #728, on Monday 5 October 2026, had ten givens and two signs, both ×: one in column 4 between rows 2 and 3, one in column 3 between rows 4 and 5. The givens: row 1, a moon in column 4; row 2, moons in columns 3 and 5; row 3, moons in columns 2 and 6; row 4, a moon in column 1 and a sun in column 5; row 5, a sun in column 2 and a moon in column 4; row 6, a sun in column 3.

Pass one. Neither sign touches a given, so the first scan of the signs gives nothing. Note where they are and move on.

Pass two. Row 2 has moons in columns 3 and 5 with a gap at column 4, so the gap is a sun. Now pass one fires after all: the × below that cell makes row 3 column 4 a moon. Row 3 then reads blank, moon, blank, moon, blank, moon — and both gaps between its moons, columns 3 and 5, must be suns.

Pass three. Row 3 now holds three moons (columns 2, 4 and 6), so its last blank, column 1, is a sun. Column 4 reads moon, sun, moon, blank, moon, blank from the top: the gap in row 4 sits between two moons and is a sun, and with three moons already in the column, row 6 is a sun too.

Pass four. That is seven cells from three kinds of move, and the board keeps going the same way: in our checker, the sign, pair, gap and count moves alone fill all 26 blanks of #728 without a single trial. It is one of six archived boards where that is true, all from Monday to Wednesday. The full grid is in the Tango archive.

Common traps

Forgetting the diagonal doesn't matter. Tango's adjacency rule is horizontal and vertical only (LinkedIn help). Diagonal suns are fine. It's easy to over-constrain if you've just come from Queens, where diagonal touching is banned.

Treating × as "opposite of the whole line". An × only relates two cells. It says nothing about the cells beyond them.

Counting columns but not rows. Every placement changes two counts. The mistakes come from updating one.

Rushing the last row. When five rows are done, the sixth is fully determined by the column counts. Fill it from the columns, not the row, and it can't be wrong.

The board's difficulty is in the signs, not the givens

Givens and signs varied widely across the archive: 4 to 12 givens and 2 to 8 signs per board, 84 = signs and 85 × signs in all. Neither count alone predicted difficulty — the six boards the basic moves finished outright had 6 to 10 givens and 2 to 8 signs. What matters is whether givens and signs touch each other. At the start of every archived board, the signs sat among blanks, so the first cells came from pairs and gaps of givens; the signs began paying off a round later. When you open a board, find the pairs and gaps first, then watch for the signs they reach.

LinkedIn doesn't publish a difficulty rating for Tango. In our archive the basic moves finished 6 of the 15 Monday–Wednesday boards and none of the 22 Thursday–Sunday boards, so expect to need the line check later in the week. The results page compares your score with averages for all members, your company and CEOs (LinkedIn help).

Getting faster

Every Tango rule is local, which makes a fixed scan order effective: pairs and gaps → signs → counts → line check, left to right, top to bottom, and repeat. Don't look for anything cleverer until the scan produces nothing.

On a phone the cells and signs are small, so check which two cells a sign sits between before you rely on it. LinkedIn's help page lists Undo and Clear for mistakes, a Hint that highlights a cell where a symbol must go or flags incorrect placements, and an Auto-check setting that marks rule violations with red stripes.

If you're guessing in Tango, you've skipped a pass. Go back to the signs.— HintSheet Tango notes

Where Tango came from

The underlying puzzle is Takuzu, also sold as Binairo, Binero and Binary Puzzle. Wikipedia credits Binairo to the Belgians Peter De Schepper and Frank Coussement in 2009 and lists LinkedIn's Tango as a version of the game. LinkedIn launched Tango on 7 October 2024 as its fourth game — after Pinpoint, Queens and Crossclimb, which launched together on 30 April 2024 — adding the = and × signs and the sun-and-moon theme. The official help page describes the rules and controls; the strategy above is what it leaves out.

Tango versus Takuzu and Binairo

Takuzu grids, per Wikipedia, commonly range from 4×4 to 20×20 and usually use 1s and 0s, and standard Takuzu has a rule Tango lacks: no two rows or columns may be identical. It has no = or × signs. Tango's contribution is the signs and the small board — all 37 archived boards were 6×6 — which puts the interest in the interplay between local signs and line counts rather than in long counting chains. Players coming from Takuzu may reach for the identical-rows rule, which LinkedIn's rules don't include; players coming from Queens may look for region logic that isn't there. Tango is its own thing: pairs and signs first, then lines.

The scan, as a checklist

For a board that's stalled.

• Every sign with one known side resolved?
• Every pair of adjacent identical symbols has opposites on both ends?
• Every gap between two identical symbols filled with the opposite?
• Every line with three of a symbol filled out?
• Every line with an × pair counted with the pair subtracted?
• Any = pair two cells from a known symbol?
• If all yes and still stuck: list the legal patterns for the line with the fewest blanks.

Reader questions

"Is there a hint?" Yes. LinkedIn's help page says Hint highlights a cell where a symbol must be placed or points out incorrect placements; it doesn't say whether using it affects your score.

"Do signs ever sit between non-adjacent cells?" No. LinkedIn's rules describe a sign as separating two cells, and all 169 signs on the 37 archived boards joined two cells that share an edge, horizontally or vertically.

Frequently asked questions

Recent Tango answers

Every past puzzle is in the Tango archive. New here? Start with the Tango guide.