These tips generally apply to the main puzzle mode. Tips specific to the daily challenge are found in the walkthrough for the challenges.
Having a large screen helps. It helps a lot – the larger you can make the pieces, the easier it is to see matches.
When the puzzle starts, the pieces are arranged in two columns on the right side of the screen. You can slide that area out to reveal as many as five columns. Seeing more of your available pieces makes things much easier as well. If the picture is a ‘portrait’ orientation (taller than it is wide), making room for more pieces costs you nothing as the picture will still be the same size. Even when the picture is in ‘landscape’ orientation (wider than tall), being able to see more pieces is usually worth the slightly smaller picture frame size.
As you assemble the puzzle, pieces will “snap” together if they fit and if they are oriented in the right direction. If two pieces look like they should fit, but they aren’t snapping together, try rotating both to a new direction. The absolute position of a piece on the board doesn’t matter.
You can rearrange the pieces in the draw pile, but not directly. If you drag a piece out of the draw area onto the main puzzle, you can then drag it back to the draw area in a new location. This lets you sort the pieces if you want. If you drop the piece into the puzzle, you can rotate it and the piece will keep its rotation when return to the draw.
All the pictures have some amount of animation on them and you can use this animation to help you. The animation shows up in both the partially assembled puzzle, on the unassembled pieces themselves and in the preview picture you can see by hitting the ‘eye’ icon in the bottom right.
There are two modes to the game – the normal jigsaw puzzles and the daily challenges.
Daily Challenges
Every day, there are two daily challenges that come in one of four different types. You can also go back and play any challenges from earlier in the month, so there is no need to play every single day in a month.
The challenges available are based on the local date. You can set the date of your computer to the last day of the month and unlock all of the daily challenges for the entire month. If you’re concerned about having the wrong date when you unlock achievements, you can save a daily challenge in the past and switch back to the current date when you are about to unlock an achievement.
For every puzzle type, you have five hearts and a 25 second timer in which to make a move. If you run out of time, you lose so if you are running low on time, just drag any piece to make a move. Losing a heart is better than running out of time (unless it’s your last heart).
Next to the timer is a gauge that fills up as you place a piece correctly. You must fill up the gauge to win the challenge. You don’t have to finish the entire puzzle.
The 25 second time limit is quite brutal and would make most of these challenges hard, if not impossible, except for a trick. If you click the image preview button in the corner, it stops the clock. Furthermore, the puzzle piece(s) you need to place are usually still visible so you can plan your move. The animations even continue during this time.
Even so, many of these challenges can be very difficult and frustrating. Some pictures have expanses of sky that are identical and with the limited number of guesses you have to get lucky.
The four types of challenges are:
Normal: You get the entire grid and the full set of pieces. This is the easiest as it seems you only need about ten pieces placed to win. Having the full set of pieces makes this harder to find the ones you want – always expand the draw area to the full width.
Start with the four corner pieces. Remember – no rotations so placing those four is trivial. Find an easy border to build from should get you the rest of the pieces.
Correct pieces have to be in their absolute correct spot, so working with interior pieces can be hard because you have to know exactly where in the puzzle they go. However, if you do know where a piece goes, you can place it even if it’s not next to anything.
Border: You have only the border pieces to work with here. This might seem easier than the normal challenge, but you have to solve about half of the puzzle. Again, always start with the corners and work from there.
Checker: The puzzle starts out half-solved, with a checkerboard pattern, and you are given pieces one at a time and must place them in the puzzle.
Pause the game and find where your piece goes in the preview picture. The piece you need to place is still visible (although dimmed a bit). If it is a sky piece (or some other non-descript piece), you can use animations to try and identify where it goes as the animations are still running during this preview mode. Hopefully you won’t be stuck with too many blind guesses.
Connect: The puzzle starts with one piece placed and you are given additional pieces one at a time. Each piece you are given will connect with the current image.
Use the same pause trick as with Checker to place each piece. This can also be frustrating if you get an area with lots of sky or other featureless parts and have to guess.
Each solved challenge earns 50 points and you get a 50 point bonus for doing both challenges in a day. When you earn one quarter of the total possible points in a month (about 8 days worth), you’ll earn a bronze medal for the month and unlock:
The silver medal is at 50%, the gold medal at 90% and when you solve every single challenge in the month, you’ll earn the diamond medal and:
Jigsaw Puzzles
Now to the regular puzzles. There are 18 puzzles divided up into four tiers. Every puzzle comes in three different difficulties and there are six different piece shapes to use for where the pieces fit together.
To get all the achievements, you must do all puzzles in all difficulties in at least three different shapes. The three shapes requirement is across all difficulty levels, so you need only play each puzzle three times so long as you choose a different shape for each difficulty level.
Tier I
There are four different Tier I puzzles. The easy difficulty is 24 pieces (6x4), normal is 35 pieces (7x5) and hard is 54 pieces (9x6). Three of the puzzles have specific achievements attached to them.
The first puzzle is the dandelion puzzle. Finish the puzzle on easy first (to get familiar with what the picture looks like). When you play on normal, you are only going to fill in every other piece to form a checkerboard pattern. You do not have to place those pieces in order. Start with the four corner pieces and work your way from there.
If you identify a piece that is one of the ones you won’t be using, move it to the end of your piece grid so it is out of the way. Use the falling dandelions to help you judge adjacent pieces.
This is what the completed grid should look like.
When you do this, you’ll unlock:
CheckerComplete the dandelion puzzle like a checker board. Begins with top left corner. (Normal difficulty)
When you have solved this puzzle in all three difficulties, you’ll unlock:
The second puzzle is the “sunset house” puzzle. When you solve this puzzle on normal difficulty, you must assemble the puzzle upside down. This really isn’t any harder than doing it right-side up, except that the pieces won’t link together. If you do link two pieces together by mistake, you can drag the pair pack to your piece well where they will disconnect. (If you’re careful about moving pieces into the puzzle, this shouldn’t happen.)
If it helps, this is what the puzzle looks like upside-down:
When assembled this way, you’ll unlock:
Upside downComplete the "sunset house" puzzle upside down (Normal difficulty)
Now move all of the pieces back to their right spots to complete the level.
The third puzzle in this set is the “black cat” puzzle.
Do hard next to get familiar with the puzzle. When solving on normal, you must finish the puzzle in less than two minutes. This is not actually that hard if you’re familiar with the puzzle. Solve the puzzle on easy and hard first (to get used to it) and remember key details of the puzzle to help you out.
The clock does stop when you’re on the preview picture (just like with daily challenges) so use that to your advantage. Even without this, two minutes is not that hard. My first attempt came up five seconds short and I easily did it on my second attempt. When you finish in under two minutes, you’ll unlock:
Sleepy catComplete the "black cat" puzzle within 2 minutes. (Normal difficulty)
Finally, complete the "timepiece" puzzle on easy to unlock:
Before moving on to the next tier, also finish it in medium and hard.
Tier II
There are four more Tier II puzzles. The difficulty is increases here as the easy difficulty is now 35 pieces (7x5), normal is 54 pieces (9x6), and hard is 96 pieces (12x8).
Only one puzzle in this tier has a special achievement, the cow puzzle. On normal difficulty, you must complete only alternate rows of the puzzle. This is quite a bit easier than the other special completions. Start with the top and bottom rows. Then work your way up the sides, finding the anchor pieces on each edge. Lastly build those rows across. This is what it should look like:
When you have done this, you’ll unlock:
Horizontal StripesComplete the cow puzzle in stripes. Begin with top left corner. (Normal difficulty)
From now on, you’re just completing puzzles in all difficulties with a different shape for each difficulty.
Tier III has four puzzles and the puzzle size increases again: easy is 54 pieces (9x6), normal is 96 pieces (12x8) and hard is 126 pieces (14x9).
Tier IV has six puzzles with a staggering puzzle size of 96 pieces (12x8) for easy, 126 pieces (14x9) for normal and 150 pieces (15x10) for hard. At this puzzle size, there isn’t actually much difference in the difficulties, but expect to take 15 minutes (or more) to solve each one.
When you finish the last puzzle in Tier IV on the first difficulty, you’ll unlock:
Assuming you stuck with your plan and did every puzzle on every difficulty and chose a different shape each time, when you complete the last puzzle on hard, you’ll unlock a bunch of achievements:
Shape shifterComplete all tier puzzles with three different shapes of puzzle pieces
Battle Mode
Two final achievements to get and they involve battle mode. This is a competitive multiplayer match. Matches are asynchronous – you play your turn and then wait for your opponent to do their turn.
You’ll get a puzzle and up to six pieces to try and place. Put those pieces into the puzzle where you think they go and hit the checkmark to finish your turn. You’ll get one point for each piece you place correctly. The other player will now get pieces to place. This continues back and forth until the puzzle is solved. Most points wins.
Only gamers on your friends list can be challenged. The easiest way to do this is to use a dummy account. If you have two computers, you can be logged into both accounts at the same time. Even with a single computer, you can so ‘switch users’ to flip back and forth between them.
Start a match by challenging them. The challenged person goes first. When both players have made a turn, you’ll unlock:
Make matches with your real account and intentionally play badly with your second account. When the match is over and you win, you’ll unlock:
If you did this with a real friend, play another game to let them win (you can have two matches going simultaneously as well in this scenario).
Congratulations on assembling another completion.