Introducing the Lovers' Quarrel Bonus Round 💔
A while back we introduced the Lovebirds bonus round, where a unicorn joins the horse on the field and your job is to enclose both of them together in one pen. It was our first bonus mode, and it asked a genuinely different question than the main puzzle: not "how big can you build it?" but "can you bring two animals into the same space?"
Lovers' Quarrel is what happens next in that story. The honeymoon is over.
The lovebirds need some space
In the Lovers' Quarrel bonus round, the horse and the unicorn are both on the field again, but this time they have had a falling out. They do not want to share a pen. Your job is to build two separate enclosures: one around the horse, one around the unicorn, with neither able to reach the other.
It is the exact inverse of Lovebirds, and that small flip changes everything. In Lovebirds, the worst mistake you could make was accidentally building two separate pens. In Lovers' Quarrel, that "mistake" is the entire goal, and the new failure state is letting them end up together.
Both pens count
Here is what makes the scoring interesting: both pens count toward your score. Your total is the combined enclosed area of the horse's pen and the unicorn's pen, plus any special tiles caught inside either one. You are not protecting one pen at the expense of the other — you are trying to make both as large as you can.
So the strategy is a balancing act of a different kind. Your wall budget has to stretch across two enclosures, and the best solutions carve the grid into two generous pens rather than one big one and one cramped afterthought. Where you spend a wall to expand the horse's pen is a wall you cannot spend on the unicorn's, and vice versa.
Players who come straight from Lovebirds tend to focus everything on a single pen out of habit. In Lovers' Quarrel the points are split across two, so think about the whole board.
Why two pens is harder than one
A single enclosure has one boundary to worry about. Two enclosures have two, and they often compete for the same walls and the same terrain. A lake that would make a perfect free wall for the horse might be exactly where you needed to seal off the unicorn. A portal that helps you close one pen might quietly open a hole in the other.
Portals deserve special caution here. Because every portal on a channel connects to every other portal on that channel, a portal inside the horse's pen that links to one inside the unicorn's pen means the two animals can reach each other, and your "separate" pens are secretly one. We have watched a lot of submissions fail on exactly this.
What the horse and unicorn make of it
The characters have opinions about the breakup, naturally. Click the horse once his pen is sealed and the unicorn's is too, and he is suspiciously relieved about the peace and quiet. Click the unicorn and she will insist she is doing great, thanks for asking, and that her pasture has a strict no-horses policy.
Catch them in the same pen by mistake and the mood sours fast. The horse wants a wall between them. The unicorn cannot believe she is stuck in here with him. It is petty, and we are fond of it.
The theme
Lovers' Quarrel drops the cast onto a dark, smouldering field — the same fiery palette as the Hot theme — and when you seal a pen, the enclosed ground fills with little broken hearts instead of the usual swaying wheat. The first-time banner shows the two of them turned away from each other with a cracked heart floating between them, in case the name left any doubt about how things are going.
Strategy differences
A few things we have noticed work well:
- Think about the whole board: you are splitting your wall budget across two pens and want the combined area as large as possible.
- Use terrain and map edges as free walls for both pens, not just one — water and corners that bound a pen save you walls to spend elsewhere.
- Check portals on both pens. A shared channel between them quietly merges your enclosures.
- Bonus tiles count inside either pen, so a cherry near the unicorn is worth grabbing too.
- Before submitting, confirm the unicorn genuinely cannot reach the horse, and that neither one can slip out to the edge.
One more puzzle in the daily routine
Like the other bonus rounds, Lovers' Quarrel is optional and has its own separate score and submission. Play it after your main daily puzzle if you want a second, harder challenge, and a second result to share. It is the same field, the same cast, and a completely different problem.
Give it a go after your next daily, and try clicking on both of them while you are at it. The quarrel is half the fun.