How to play our jigsaw puzzles
Each puzzle is a famous painting cut into pieces, laid out around an empty board. Put the pieces together on the board, just as you would on a table at home. There's no timer and no score: take as long as you like, and the puzzle is saved in your browser whenever you stop.
Moving the pieces
- Drag a piece with your mouse or finger. Drop it close to its spot on the board and it snaps into place and stays there.
- Pieces join up anywhere on the table: drop a piece next to the one it belongs beside and the two lock together, then move as one. Only pieces that really fit together ever join, so you can't make a mistake.
- Pieces never need turning. Every piece lies the right way up, so you only have to find where it goes.
- On a keyboard, Tab moves from piece to piece and the arrow keys move the one you're on (hold Shift to move it a whole piece at a time).
The buttons
- Hint lights up a piece worth trying next and outlines its place on the board: a corner first, then the edge pieces, then pieces next to the picture so far.
- Tidy lays the loose pieces out in neat rows, edge pieces first, which is the quickest way to sort out the frame.
- Undo takes back your last moves, and New game starts a different picture.
- Settings lets you choose the number of pieces, turn the faint picture on the board on or off, and pick any picture from the list.
How many pieces?
Every picture can be cut into 12, 24, 48, 96 or 150 pieces. Fewer pieces means bigger ones. On a phone, 12 or 24 pieces are the easiest to handle; on a tablet or computer, 48 or 96 make a relaxing puzzle, and 150 is a proper challenge. The edge pieces are a bigger share of a small puzzle:
- 12 pieces: 10 edge pieces (83%), including the 4 corners.
- 24 pieces: 16 edge pieces (67%), including the 4 corners.
- 48 pieces: 24 edge pieces (50%), including the 4 corners.
- 96 pieces: 36 edge pieces (38%), including the 4 corners.
- 150 pieces: 46 edge pieces (31%), including the 4 corners.
Turning off the faint picture on the board in Settings makes any size harder, because you then have only the pieces themselves to go by.
Tips
- Start with the frame. Edge pieces have a straight side, so they're easy to spot, and the frame shows you the size of the picture. Tidy puts them first.
- Sort by color. Sky, water, grass and flowers each have their own colors: gather similar pieces in one part of the table and build each area separately.
- Look at the shapes. A piece with a tab sticking out on one side fits a neighbor with a gap on that side. When two pieces of the same color could both fit, the shape decides.
- Build out from what's done. A piece that goes next to pieces already in place is the easiest to find, because you know just what its edges look like.
A new puzzle every day
Today's puzzle is the same picture for everyone. Finish it to count toward your daily streak, alongside our other daily puzzles.
Our pictures
All 27 pictures are paintings and prints in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, by artists such as Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Georges Seurat and Katsushika Hokusai. Choose one to put it together:
Flowers and gardens
- Poppy Field (Giverny) by Claude Monet (1890–91). In July 1890 Monet began four paintings of poppy fields near his home in Giverny, France.
- The Artist's House at Argenteuil by Claude Monet (1873). Monet and his family lived in Argenteuil, outside Paris, from 1871 to 1878.
- Water Lily Pond by Claude Monet (1917–19). Monet painted this during World War I, after several years of poor health and grief.
- Chrysanthemums by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1881–82). Renoir said that painting flowers let his mind rest.
The seaside
- Cliff Walk at Pourville by Claude Monet (1882). Monet painted this clifftop view in 1882 at Pourville, a fishing village in Normandy, France.
- The Beach at Sainte-Adresse by Claude Monet (1867). In the summer of 1867 Monet stayed with his aunt at Sainte-Adresse, near Le Havre, where he grew up.
- Bordighera by Claude Monet (1884). Monet went to Bordighera, on the Italian Riviera, in early 1884 for three weeks and stayed nearly three months.
- The Bay of Marseille, Seen from L'Estaque by Paul Cezanne (c. 1885). In a letter to Camille Pissarro, Cezanne compared this view of the sea from L'Estaque to a playing card.
Rivers
- A Sunday on La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat (1884–86). Seurat's largest and best-known painting shows Parisians relaxing in a park on La Grande Jatte, an island in the River Seine.
- Les Andelys, Côte d'Aval by Paul Signac (1886). This is the harbor of Les Andelys, a village on the River Seine near Giverny, France.
- Fishing in Spring, the Pont de Clichy by Vincent van Gogh (1887). The scene is the River Seine at the Clichy bridge near Asnières, a suburb north of Paris.
The countryside
- Croquet Scene by Winslow Homer (1866). Homer began as an illustrator during the Civil War and turned to oil painting in the late 1860s.
- Catskill Mountains by George Inness (1870). In the mid-1800s the Catskill Mountains in New York were America's favorite place to visit.
Autumn
- Stacks of Wheat (End of Day, Autumn) by Claude Monet (1890–91). Monet painted the stacks outside his farmhouse in Giverny in 1890 and 1891.
- Grapes, Lemons, Pears, and Apples by Vincent van Gogh (1887). Van Gogh painted this in the fall of 1887, one of a group of paintings of fruit in season.
Winter and snow
- Love of Winter by George Bellows (1914). Bellows liked to paint snow at least once a year, and in January 1914 he complained to a friend that it hadn't snowed yet.
- Stacks of Wheat (Sunset, Snow Effect) by Claude Monet (1890–91). The wheat stacks Monet painted stood 15 to 20 feet tall just outside his farmhouse at Giverny.
- Sandvika, Norway by Claude Monet (1895). Monet traveled to Norway in 1895 and painted 29 Norwegian scenes in two months.
- Rabbit Warren at Pontoise, Snow by Camille Pissarro (1879). Pissarro painted nearly 100 snow scenes in his career.
- The Winter Sun by George Gardner Symons (about 1909). Symons was born in Chicago and probably studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
City streets
- Paris Street; Rainy Day by Gustave Caillebotte (1877). This is Caillebotte's largest painting: a busy Paris crossroads a short walk from his home.
- The Place du Havre, Paris by Camille Pissarro (1893). This busy street was the view from Pissarro's hotel window in Paris early in 1893.
Fruit, flowers and rooms
- The Bedroom by Vincent van Gogh (1889). Van Gogh painted his own bedroom in the Yellow House in Arles, in the south of France, where he moved in 1888.
- The Basket of Apples by Paul Cezanne (c. 1893). This was the first painting by Cezanne to join the Art Institute of Chicago's collection.
- An Abundance of Fruit by Severin Roesen (c. 1860). Roesen moved to the United States from Cologne, Germany, in 1848.
Japanese prints
- The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai (1830–33). Hokusai began his series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji in 1830, when he was 70 years old.
- The Emperor Tenji by Katsushika Hokusai (c. 1835–36). The print illustrates a poem by the Emperor Tenji, who reigned from 668 to 671 and gave Japan its first code of civil law.
Questions
Is it free? Do I need to sign up?
It's free, and there's nothing to sign up for or download. Your puzzle in progress, your settings and your record are kept in your own browser.
Where do the pictures come from?
They're photographs of public-domain works from the Art Institute of Chicago, which shares them for anyone to use. The facts about each picture are adapted from the museum's descriptions, which are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. The museum hasn't endorsed this site.
Can I play on a phone or tablet?
Yes. On a phone the board fills the width of the screen and the pieces lie below it; if you drag a piece to the top or bottom of the screen, the page scrolls with you. A tablet shows the board and the pieces together, like a computer.
Can I make it easier or harder?
Choose fewer pieces to make it easier, and use Hint as often as you like. For more of a challenge, choose more pieces and turn off the faint picture on the board in Settings.