How to solve jigsaw puzzles faster

What a jigsaw puzzle is

The usual story starts with an 18th-century English mapmaker who glued a map to wood and cut it along borders to teach geography. The name comes from the fretsaw, or jigsaw, used to cut them.

Today's common shape is a grid where each edge has a round tab going in or out. Tabs lock pieces together, so you can match by shape as well as picture.

The usual order

Most people go the same way. Pull out the straight-edged border pieces and build the frame, then do areas with strong color or pattern, then fill the plain sky or water by shape.

The frame goes first because it fixes size and position. Once it's up, you know where inner chunks belong.

How this site works

Drop a piece near a neighbor and it joins when the two line up within about a quarter of the piece's short side. Even zoomed out, the snap zone never shrinks below 14 screen pixels. Pieces don't rotate. They all start the right way up.

Drop a piece near its spot in the frame and it locks in. Locked pieces don't move. You can also finish on the table as one group without using the frame.

Flick as you let go and the piece slides at that speed, then stops. If it slides past its match it joins there. Loose pieces under a dropped piece get pushed aside.

There are three cuts. Classic has straight grid lines with one tab per edge. Square has straight lines only, so you match by picture. Irregular wobbles the corners and varies tab size and place. Piece counts follow the painting's shape, so 100 might become 99.

Pieces are cut fresh every time you open a puzzle, even the same painting. In a contest, everyone in a division shares the same tab size and wobble range.

Basic tips

Zoom out once at the start to see the whole table. If pieces overlap, use Spread out.

Gather the border pieces around the frame. The four corners have two straight edges, so they're easy to spot and anchor the frame.

Show picture lays the finished painting faintly in the frame. Turn it on to see where color areas go, then off again so the pieces stand out.

Paintings have brushwork. Horizontal strokes in the sky and vertical ones in grass split pieces even within one color.

Speed tips

Sort by tabs. In plain areas, group pieces by how many tabs stick out. The shape around a gap tells you how many tabs the missing piece has.

Carry chunks. Build small chunks first and drop them into the frame whole. Fewer drops, less time.

Park pieces. Flick pieces you don't need yet toward the table edge. They bounce and stop instead of flying off screen.

In a contest, pick your division before you press Start. The clock starts right away.

Where people get stuck

It won't join. The snap zone is generous, but pieces that aren't neighbors never join. If the shape fits and it won't stick, it belongs one spot over.

It won't pick up. Pieces locked in the frame stay put. Dragging empty space pans the table, so grab the middle of a piece.

Pieces are tiny on a phone. Pinch to zoom, then tap Fit to come back. Puzzles over 300 pieces are easier on a bigger screen.

My contest time didn't show up. The deadline may have passed, or the server couldn't be reached. The finish screen says why.