Puzzle Glossary
Every puzzle has its own small vocabulary, and once you know a handful of words the rules for any game read like plain English. A cell is a cell whether it is lit, filled or coloured; a move is a move whether you are sliding a tile or pressing a switch. This page gathers the terms you will meet across all seventeen games on Puzzle.now and explains each one in a sentence or two.
You do not need to memorise anything. Skim the list, get a feel for the words, and come back whenever a rule mentions something unfamiliar. The terms are grouped by what they describe - the board itself, the logic that solves it, and the pieces you push around - and a few link straight to the game where they matter most. When you are ready, read the full puzzle rules or jump into a game.
💡 Tip: learn the four building blocks first - board, grid, cell and move. Almost every rule you read is built out of those four ideas.
Board and setup terms
Board
The whole play area of a puzzle, whether that is a grid of cells, a set of pegs or a field of letters. Reading the board as rows and columns, rather than one square at a time, is the habit that separates quick solvers from slow ones.
Grid
A regular arrangement of squares, the shape most games here are built on. A grid is measured by its side length, so a 5x5 grid holds twenty-five cells in five rows and five columns.
Cell
One square of a grid. A cell may be empty, filled, lit or coloured depending on the puzzle, and most moves change the state of a single cell or a small cluster of them.
Tile
A single movable piece, most often a numbered square in a sliding puzzle. Tiles slide, merge or lock into place, and getting every tile into its target spot is usually the whole game. See it in Slide Puzzle →
Move
One legal action, such as sliding a tile, pressing a cell or lifting a piece. Nearly every puzzle counts your moves, and finishing in fewer of them beats a rushed, sloppy solve.
Scramble
The shuffled starting position you are handed at the start of a round. A fair scramble is mixed up enough to be a real challenge but always built so that a solution exists.
Seed
A number that decides exactly how a board is shuffled. Because the same seed always produces the same board, a seed is how everyone can share one identical puzzle on the same day.
Daily challenge
A single puzzle generated from the day's seed, so every player faces the very same board. It resets at midnight and is a fair way to compare your time and moves against other people. Try today's daily challenge to see it in action.
Solvable
A board that has at least one valid path to the finish. Every puzzle we deal with a single win state is built to be solvable, so if you feel stuck the answer is there to be found.
Parity
A hidden even-or-odd property that decides whether some shuffles can ever be solved. It is the reason half of all random slide-puzzle layouts are impossible, which is why we only ever deal you the solvable half.
Clues, logic and deduction
Clue
A fact the puzzle gives you for free, like the run lengths printed beside a Nonogram row. Strong solvers use clues both to fill cells they are sure of and to rule other cells out.
Run
An unbroken line of filled cells, or a straight line of letters that spells a word. In a Nonogram each number is the length of one run; in a word grid a run is the word you trace.
Line clear
The moment a full row or column empties out and frees up space, as when you complete a line in Block Puzzle. Setting up two clears at once is worth far more than clearing lines one at a time.
Deduction
Reaching a certain conclusion purely from the rules and clues, with no guessing. A well-made logic puzzle can always be finished by deduction alone.
Frontier
The border between the part of a board you already control and the part you do not, a key idea in Flood It. Choosing the move that widens your frontier usually beats the move that grabs the most cells right now.
Recursion
Solving a big problem by solving smaller copies of itself. The Tower of Hanoi is the classic example: to move a tall stack you first move a shorter stack out of the way, then repeat the same idea.
Nonogram
A picture-logic puzzle where number clues along each row and column reveal a hidden image, one filled cell at a time. It is also known as a Picross or Griddler. See it in Nonogram →
Picross
Another name for a Nonogram, made famous by a long-running video-game series. The rules are identical: use the number clues to work out which cells are filled and which stay empty.
Light chasing
The standard method for Lights Out. You sweep from the top row downward, pressing the cell beneath each light still on, until only the bottom row is left to reason about. See it in Lights Out →
Pieces, actions and scoring
Peg
One of the upright posts in the Tower of Hanoi that discs are stacked on and moved between. With three pegs, the one that is neither your source nor your target is always your working space.
Disc
A ring in the Tower of Hanoi, part of a stack that grows larger toward the bottom. You may only ever move the top disc of a peg, and never place it on a smaller one. See it in Tower of Hanoi →
Merge
Combining two matching tiles into one of greater value, the core action in 2048 where two equal numbers fuse into their sum. Lining up a chain of merges lets a single swipe collapse the whole run. See it in 2048 →
Flood
The growing region you control in Flood It, spreading out from one corner and swallowing neighbouring cells that match your chosen colour. The aim is to flood the entire board in a single colour. See it in Flood It →
Polyomino
A shape made of squares joined edge to edge, the family of pieces you drop onto the grid in Block Puzzle. Because you cannot rotate them, you plan the board around the shapes you are given. See it in Block Puzzle →
Pair
Two face-down tiles that hide the same symbol and belong together, as in Memory Match. Finding every pair with the fewest flips is the whole challenge of the game. See it in Memory Match →
Streak
A run of correct moves made back to back, which many puzzles reward with a rising score or a saved daily record. A single miss usually resets it to zero.
Undo
Taking back your last move. It turns a puzzle into a place to experiment, letting you explore a line of play and step back if it leads nowhere.
Hint
A nudge that points out a helpful next move when you are stuck. It is great for learning a game, though the hinted move is not always the most efficient one for a clean finish.
That is the core vocabulary of the site. Keep this page open in a tab the first few times you try a new game and the words will stick fast. Ready to use them? Jump into the Slide Puzzle or browse the whole line-up on the puzzle library page.