Articles on Solving Puzzles Better

Strategy, tactics and plain-English guides for the puzzles on this site.

Puzzle Rules →
Puzzle Theory

Why Some Puzzles Are Genuinely Hard: NP-Completeness for Players

Sometimes being stuck is not a failure of insight. Some puzzles belong to a class formally proven to require search - and knowing which changes how you should play them.

6 min
Puzzle Theory

Half of All Sliding Puzzles Are Impossible (And You Can Prove It)

If you have ever popped the tiles out and put them back in a different order, then failed for an hour - you did not make a hard puzzle. You made an unsolvable one.

6 min
Training Pattern Recognition Through Daily Browser Puzzle Games
Numbers

Training Pattern Recognition Through Daily Browser Puzzle Games

Daily browser puzzles train pattern recognition without you realizing it. Learn how to benchmark your skill and turn puzzle habits into measurable leaderboard gains.

8 min