How to play

Everything the game does, in the order you are likely to need it. It takes about two minutes to read and you can ignore all of it and still finish a puzzle.

Starting a puzzle

Pick a picture from the home page or from any category under Explore. Choose how many pieces you want, whether the pieces should start rotated at random, and which piece shape you prefer. Press Start game and you are playing — there is no account step and nothing to install.

Moving pieces

There are two ways to move a piece, and you can mix them freely:

• Drag — press on a piece and move it, the way you would on a table.
• Click to carry — click once to pick a piece up, move the mouse, click again to put it down. This is far easier on a large puzzle, because your hand never has to stay still, and it is the only comfortable way to move a piece across a long distance.

Press Escape to drop a carried piece back where it came from. If rotation is switched on, Q and E turn the piece you are holding.

Joining pieces

Bring two neighbouring pieces close together and they snap, with a soft click. Joined pieces become one group and move together from then on. Pieces never snap to the background, only to each other — the puzzle is not solved for you.

Playing with other people

Every game has a four-character code and a link. Send either one and whoever opens it lands on your table, seeing every piece as it moves. There is no limit worth worrying about and nobody needs an account.

Two pieces of etiquette the game enforces for you: only one person can hold a given piece at a time, and if someone else is already moving it you will be told rather than fighting them for it.

The tools

• Reference image — show the finished picture at any time, small in the corner or full screen. Some people consider this cheating. It is your table.
• Shuffle — re-spreads the pieces you have not placed yet. Nothing moves for anyone else; a shuffle is yours alone. It is the fastest way to get a fresh look at a pile you have stopped seeing properly.
• Timer — counts up, and can be paused. Pausing blurs the board for everyone, so nobody can quietly keep working.
• Scoreboard — counts pieces placed per player. It can be hidden completely, or held back until the end, if you would rather this not be a race.
• Table colour — change the background behind the pieces. A darker table is easier on the eyes over a long session.

Choosing a difficulty

Piece count matters less than the picture. Every photo in the library is graded automatically by how much its neighbouring pixels differ, because what makes a jigsaw hard is sameness rather than subject: a busy market scene at 500 pieces is gentler than a clear sky at 200. The badge on each picture is that measurement, not an opinion.