Jigsaw Games

How many pieces should you choose?

Piece count is the one dial that changes everything, and most of these games let you set it before you start. Under fifty pieces is a few minutes and a picture that assembles almost by itself. A hundred to two hundred is a comfortable sitting. Three hundred and above is an evening, and on a small screen it is an evening spent zooming.

Piece count is not the whole story though. Two puzzles at the same count can be very different work, because difficulty also comes from the picture: a photograph of a market stall has colour everywhere and sorts itself, while a sky, a lawn or a stretch of water gives you nothing to sort by and has to be done by shape alone.

Where to start

• The Daily Jigsaw brings a new picture every day, which removes the choosing.
• Favorite Puzzles lets you set the piece count yourself, and gives you a wide choice of pictures to set it on.
• Jigsaw Puzzle: Deluxe and Royal Jigsaw are the straightforward ones, with themed collections.
• Jigsaw Surprise hides the finished picture until you have built it, which sounds like a small change and is not.

A method, for anyone who wants one

• Edges first. It is a cliche because it works: the border is the only part of the puzzle with a rule attached to it.
• Sort before you build. Group by colour, then by the pieces that carry a line or an edge of an object.
• Build regions rather than sweeping across. A finished patch gives you two working edges instead of one.
• When a region stalls, switch to another one. Coming back to it a minute later genuinely helps, which is the strange part of this puzzle.
• Leave the flat expanses until last, and then work them purely by shape.

The seasonal ones stay all year

Several puzzles here are built around a season, and they do not disappear when the season does. Play the Christmas or Valentine sets in July if you like. Nothing here expires.