How to Do a Jigsaw Puzzle
Start with the edges: pick out every piece with a straight side and build the border, corners first. Then sort the rest into piles by colour and pattern — sky, water, buildings — and assemble each pile into a patch, using the picture as your guide. Join the patches to the border, and leave the plainest areas until last, when the gaps left tell you exactly what shape each piece must be.
The rules, step by step
- 1Choose how many piecesPick 12, 24, 48, 96 or 150 pieces. The picture is cut on a regular grid, from 4 × 3 for the smallest puzzle to 15 × 10 for the largest.
- 2Find where a piece belongsEvery piece has exactly one correct place. The fragment of picture on it and the pattern of knobs, sockets and straight sides around it are what tell you where.
- 3Drop it close and it locksDrop a piece within about a third of a piece-width of its place in the frame and it snaps in. A locked piece cannot be picked up again.
- 4Join neighbours anywhere on the tableTwo pieces that belong side by side join when you drop one lined up against the other. The group moves as one, and snaps into the frame as one.
- 5Straight sides are the borderA piece with one straight side goes on the edge of the picture, and a piece with two is one of the four corners. Pieces never need turning.
- 6Finish the pictureThe puzzle is done when every piece is locked in the frame. Your time and the number of moves are kept separately for each piece count.
Try it — the rules above, running
New puzzle paints a fresh picture and cuts it into the number of pieces you last chose. Drag a piece close to its place and it snaps into the frame; drop two neighbours side by side and they join and move as one. Scatter spreads the loose pieces back out, Edges hides everything without a straight side, and the three-dot menu holds the piece count, today’s shared puzzle, the ghost picture and the box lid. With a keyboard, Left and Right choose a piece and Enter puts it in its place.
Your statistics · 48 pieces
- Played
- 0
- Won
- 0
- Win rate
- 0%
- Streak
- 0
- Best streak
- 0
- Best time
- —
- Fewest moves
- —
Kept separately for each piece count, in this browser only. A puzzle abandoned for a new one counts as unfinished.
Today’s puzzle
One picture for everyone each day, cut the same way for everyone who picks the same number of pieces.
Keyboard
- Left / Right
- Choose a loose piece
- Enter / Space
- Put the chosen piece in its place
- E
- Edges only
- S
- Scatter the loose pieces
- G
- Ghost picture in the frame
- P
- Picture on the box lid
- N
- New puzzle
- F
- Full screen
What are the steps to doing a jigsaw puzzle?
- 1Look at the pictureKnow what you are building before you touch a piece: where the horizon is, where the brightest and darkest parts are, which features appear only once.
- 2Find the four cornersA corner has two straight sides, and every rectangular jigsaw has exactly four. They fix the size of the border before anything else is placed.
- 3Complete the borderEvery other piece with one straight side belongs on the rim. Match them along each side by colour, and by knob against socket.
- 4Sort the rest into pilesGroup the inside pieces by colour and pattern, one pile for each part of the picture. The piles become the patches you build next.
- 5Build the details, then the plain areasAssemble the distinctive features first and connect them to the border. The plain areas go last, when each gap left has only one shape that fits.
How do you tell which pieces fit together?
Colour first, shape second. Two neighbouring pieces continue the same picture across their join — a line of hills, a rooftop, a stripe of fabric carries straight on — so check that the painting matches before you check anything else. Then check the shape: every join is one knob on one piece and one socket on the other, so a piece with a socket on its left needs a neighbour with a knob on its right.
On this site the table tells you when you are right: two true neighbours dropped side by side join and stay joined, and a piece dropped close to its own place in the frame snaps in. Pieces that are not neighbours never join, however well they seem to fit.
How do you sort jigsaw pieces?
- By edge — straight-sided pieces in one pile, the rest in another. The Edges button here does this in one press.
- By colour — one pile for each big area of the picture: sky, water, foliage, buildings.
- By detail — pieces with a unique feature (a window, a sail, a flower) set aside, because they are the easiest to place.
- By shape — in a plain area, sort by how many knobs and sockets each piece has, and try only the ones that match the gap.
Which size should a beginner start with?
Twelve or twenty-four pieces. At those sizes almost the whole puzzle is border — 10 of the 12 pieces and 16 of the 24 have a straight side — so the method above works in a few minutes and the knob-and-socket logic becomes obvious. At 48 pieces half of them are inside pieces, and by 150 more than two thirds are, which is where sorting by colour starts to matter. Try it on the jigsaw puzzles page, or practise the same eye for pattern with Mahjong Solitaire.
How do you win more often?
- Border first, corners before thatSwitch on Edges and only pieces with a straight side stay on the table: the four corners, and the rest of the rim. Place those and the frame gives every later piece something to join to — and on the 150-piece puzzle you have placed 46 pieces before looking hard at the picture at all.
- Sort by what is painted, not by shapePull the pieces into rough piles — sky, water, buildings, flowers — before you try to fit any of them. Every scene here is built from small, distinct things, so a lit window, a star, a leaf or a scrap of quilt pattern tells you a piece's neighbourhood much faster than its outline does.
- Start from the strongest detailThe sun, the moon, the windmill, the rose at the centre of the stained glass: a feature that appears on only a few pieces is the quickest thing to assemble, and it anchors the area around it. Leave the plainest stretches for last, when the gaps around them leave only one shape to fill.
- Read the knobs when the colour runs outEvery join is one knob and one socket, so a gap tells you exactly which sides need knobs and which need sockets. In a stretch of similar sea or sky, count a piece's knobs and sockets first and only try the ones that match.
- Build groups on the table, then drop them inYou do not have to work inside the frame. Assemble a patch in the tray, then drag the whole group to its place and it locks as one — a clean way to build a busy area without disturbing the rest. Scatter spreads the loose pieces out again whenever the tray gets crowded.
Common questions about jigsaw puzzles
- Should you always do the edges of a jigsaw first?
- Almost always. The border is the only part you can find by shape alone, it fixes the size of the picture, and it gives every other piece something to join to. The exception is a puzzle with a very distinctive feature, which can be quicker to build first.
- What do you do when you get stuck on a jigsaw?
- Switch from colour to shape. Look at a gap, note which of its sides need a knob and which need a socket, and try only the pieces with that pattern. Spreading the loose pieces out so every one is visible helps too.
- How many edge pieces does a jigsaw puzzle have?
- Twice the width plus twice the height in pieces, minus the four corners that would otherwise be counted twice. A 15 × 10 puzzle of 150 pieces has 46 edge pieces, and a 4 × 3 puzzle of 12 has 10.
Ready to stop reading? Play jigsaw puzzles on the full board, with controls and statistics tailored to that game.