On your own, or with someone. Everything else you can change later.
Play alone
Pick a picture and solve it at your own pace. Your run is saved if you stop.
Play with friends
Send one link; they join in a click, no account, no download. Live rooms are in beta — if one will not open, the ghost race works with nobody else online.
About 9 pieces in ten have a near-twin at this size. Most pieces carry some texture.
Par is the time your score is measured against at that size. The rest is measured from the picture itself: how many pieces have a near-twin by colour once it is cut.
What the picture shows
Tall, narrow brick houses with ornate gables line the far side of a canal at dusk, many windows lit warm yellow. A brick bridge with three arches crosses the water in the middle, and people hurry across it on the left. A wooden houseboat with pots of tulips on deck is moored on the right under a big green tree. In the foreground black bicycles lean on an iron railing hung with boxes of red, yellow and pink tulips. Brick paving fills the bottom-left corner, and the dark canal reflects the lights.
Solving Canal Houses
At 50 pieces the bridge, the houseboat, the tree and the bicycles are easy, but the houses already repeat: brick, white window frames, lit glass. More than half the pieces have a near-twin at that size. At 500 and 1000 pieces the facades and their reflections become the long middle of the solve.
Start with the bridge and its three arches, then the houseboat and the big tree. Build the houses one at a time by the shape of each gable, and put each reflection straight below its house. The sky goes in after the rooftops. Save the bicycles and tulip boxes for the end: their thin black frames cross many pieces and are easier once the canal behind them is done.
Of the six castle and town pictures, only Hilltop Castle has more look-alikes at 50 pieces. From 100 pieces up Hillside Village passes it too, and Canal Houses settles in the middle of the set, level with Temple Garden at 500 and 1000. Its reflections add plain water as the cut gets finer, and from 500 pieces up it has the most plain pieces in the set, about 1 in 5 at 1000.
