Few Ships Left

How it works

1. 1Late in a board most cells are settled. Here seven are open in two strips that can't touch each other, and three ships are missing: a 3-ship, a 2-ship and a submarine.
2. 2No single length gets anywhere on its own — the 3-ship still has three spots, so intersecting its placements settles nothing.
3. 3Fit the whole fleet at once instead. The narrow strip is three cells, too tight for a 2-ship and a submarine without them touching, so that pair has to take the wide strip and the 3-ship has to take the narrow one.
4. 4In the wide strip the pair fits only as 2-gap-submarine or submarine-gap-2, and both use its two end cells.
5. 5So the narrow strip and the wide strip's ends are ship — and not one row or column count was needed, which is what separates this from Count the Line.