How to play

The board

Placing a piece

Drag it near where it belongs and let go: it snaps in. You do not have to be precise — anywhere within about half a piece will do, and the game gets more forgiving the further out you are zoomed.

Joining pieces away from the board

This is the one most people never find. Two neighbouring pieces will lock to each other anywhere on the table, not just in the frame. Butt them together edge to edge — you do not have to seat the knob. Build a chunk in the open and slot the whole thing home in one drag; a group that lands together counts as every piece at once.

Guided, Classic and Table

The picker's second row decides how much the board tells you before you let go. The window a drop may miss by is the same on all three; what changes is the information. Guided draws a blue outline under the piece wherever it would lock — good on a phone, and for a first board. It clears the picture for your wall, but medals are for the other two. Classic says nothing until the drop: it locks or it does not, and a dead drop counts against your chain, so finding a piece by trying it everywhere is possible but costs you. Table has no home on the frame at all. Pieces lock only to each other, like a real box, and when the last join makes one picture it slides into the frame on its own.

Moving the view

Drag empty table to move the board around. Pinch or scroll to zoom. The Move / Select button in the top bar swaps what a drag does: Move means a drag moves the view, Select means a drag selects pieces. Shift-drag always does the opposite of whichever mode you are in.

Selecting several

Drag a rectangle over loose pieces to select them; they then move together. On a phone, hold empty table for half a second first and the drag becomes a selection.

Pausing

The Pause button stops the clock. It covers the board while it is paused, on purpose — reading the picture for free would be a better hint than the one you pay for. Your board is saved either way, and closing the tab does not lose it.

Chains and charges

The chain

Every drop that connects something extends your chain, and a longer chain is worth more per piece. Three drops in a row that connect nothing break it. Thinking time does not — you can stare at the board as long as you like.

Charges

Chains bank charges, up to three at a time. They are the currency for the three tools below, and finishing a section of the picture pays one as well.

Hold — 1 charge

Your next three drops that connect nothing will not break your chain.

Focus — 2 charges

Gathers loose pieces that belong side by side and brings them to you.

Hint — 1 charge

Lights up where one piece belongs. It costs a charge and nothing else — no score penalty.

Finding a piece

The piece finder

The strip along the bottom shows loose pieces, closest first to whatever part of the picture you are looking at. Tap one to jump the camera to it, or use its button to bring it to you.

Piece edges — the strongest tool here

The little cross filters by the shape of a piece's four sides: sticking out, cut in, or flat. On a 1000-piece board, setting all four sides cuts a thousand candidates to about fifty, and unlike colour it still works on a picture where everything looks the same. Tap a side to cycle it; shift-click or right-click steps back. Crosses you have used appear under "Asked before" so you can ask again in one tap.

Piles

Select some loose pieces and file them as a pile. The finder can then show only that pile — your own sorting, on top of the game's filters. Piles are saved with the board.

Sections

Big boards are split into named sections with a row of dots showing how each is doing. Tap a dot to go there. The rectangle drawn over the dots is where you are looking now.

Scores, medals and the wall

Your score

Board size, plus how fast you were against par for that size, plus the chains you built. The server works it out, not your browser.

Medals

Bronze for finishing, silver and gold for scoring well. One per picture per size.

The collection wall

Every picture you have finished, in colour, with the medal on each size. Boards marked "shapes only" are ones where colour will not help you sort — they are counted separately, because they are the hard ones.

Difficulty

Each size chip says what that picture is like at that size, measured from the picture itself. "Sorts easily" means colour does most of the work; "shapes only" means it will not. Every picture in the catalogue has its own page with the reading at each size.

The daily puzzle

One picture at one size, the same for everyone, new every day at midnight UTC, with a ranking for the day. Play today's daily puzzle.

Playing against someone

Ghost races

Race a time somebody already set. No lobby and nobody else needs to be online — you see their pace against yours as you go. Timed races covers par, medals and who you can race.

Live rooms

Battle gives everyone their own copy of the same picture; co-op is one shared board. These are in beta and need a live connection — if a room will not open, the ghost race works with nobody else there.

Your progress

You do not need an account. Until you sign in, your collection lives on this device, so if you clear your browser data it goes with it. Sign in with Google on your profile and it belongs to your account instead, on any device you sign in on. Without signing in, the profile has a transfer code you can copy to move everything to a phone or another browser — treat it like a password.