Grid puzzles are puzzles built on cells, rows, columns, regions, lines or intersections. The grid might hold numbers, letters, shaded squares, paths, ships, lights, stars or word clues, but the appeal is the same: each small local decision changes what the rest of the board can be.
The guide stays broad and scan-friendly. It does not go deep on any one ruleset; instead, it gives a useful starting description for each puzzle type and points to a playable Logic Puzzles Online version where one is available.
Grid puzzles list
Use the list below as a map of the grid puzzle world. Linked names open playable games, while unlinked names stay in the guide as useful references for real grid puzzle types you may want to learn about, print or look up elsewhere.
Classic number grid puzzles
Number grid puzzles are the core of the grid puzzle category, covering digit placement, sums, inequalities, visibility clues and ordered number paths. This section is the best starting point for solvers searching for math grid puzzles, Sudoku-style puzzles or classic logic grids with numbers.
Sudoku
Fill a 9x9 grid with digits 1 to 9 so every row, column and region contains each digit once.
Killer Sudoku
Combine normal Sudoku placement with dotted cages whose digits must add to the given totals.
Kakuro
Fill crossword-like runs with non-repeating digits so each across and down run matches its sum clue.
Futoshiki
Place numbers in a Latin-square grid while using greater-than and less-than signs between cells.
KenKen
Use arithmetic cages and no-repeat row and column rules to complete a compact number grid.
Calcudoku
Calcudoku combines Latin-square placement with arithmetic cages, so each row and column still avoids repeats while every cage reaches its target. It is a good fit for solvers who like KenKen-style calculation but want a slightly more general name for the same family.
Suko
Place the digits 1 to 9 so each marked circle and coloured region reaches its required total.
Suguru
Fill irregular regions with digits while keeping matching numbers apart, including diagonally.
Skyscrapers
Arrange tower heights so each outside clue sees exactly the right number of visible buildings.
Hidato
Build one consecutive path of numbers through the grid, using the given numbers as anchors.
Numbrix
Numbrix is a consecutive path puzzle where numbers connect horizontally and vertically from start to finish. The challenge is to thread the missing sequence through the grid without breaking the route forced by the given anchors.
Binary Puzzle
Fill the grid with two symbols while balancing rows and columns and preventing three-in-a-row repeats.
Str8ts
Str8ts divides the grid into white runs, or streets, that must contain consecutive numbers without repeats. Black cells shape the runs, so solving is about narrowing which number sets can still fit each street.
Latin Squares
Latin Squares are the base idea behind many number grid puzzles: each symbol appears once in every row and column. They are useful to understand because Sudoku, Futoshiki, KenKen and several variants all build extra clues on top of this structure.
Thermometers
Enter digits so every thermometer rises from bulb to tip while still satisfying the grid rules.
Fillomino
Divide the grid into regions whose size matches their numbers, while equal-sized regions cannot touch.
Hitori
Shade repeated numbers until every row and column is unique, with all unshaded cells still connected.
Kuromasu
Shade cells so each numbered cell sees the required count of white cells in straight lines.
Ripple Effect / Hakyuu
Ripple Effect, also called Hakyuu, fills each room with numbers while keeping equal values separated by enough cells. It feels like a region puzzle first, but the distance rule creates a steady chain of candidate eliminations.
Crossnumber
Crossnumber puzzles use a crossword-style grid, but the entries are numbers found from arithmetic or numerical clues. Crossing digits confirm each other in the same way letters do in a word crossword.
Picture, shading and painting grid puzzles
Picture and shading grid puzzles use clues to decide which cells become black, coloured, empty, lit or part of a hidden image. They are ideal if you are looking for visual grid puzzles, Nonogram-style puzzles, paint-by-logic grids or cell shading logic puzzles.
Nonogram / Picross
Use row and column number clues to decide which cells are filled and reveal a hidden picture.
Mosaic
Paint cells so every clue counts the shaded squares in its surrounding 3x3 neighbourhood.
Minesweeper
Minesweeper is a hidden-cell grid puzzle where number clues reveal how many neighbouring mines touch each square. Good solving comes from comparing overlapping clue areas and marking what must be safe or mined.
Nurikabe
Grow numbered islands and a connected wall, keeping islands separate and avoiding 2x2 wall blocks.
Tapa
Shade cells around clue numbers to create one connected wall without making any solid 2x2 block.
Norinori
Shade domino-like pairs inside regions while preventing oversized shaded groups.
LITS
Shade tetromino shapes in regions while keeping the shaded area connected.
Heyawake
Shade cells inside rooms while obeying room counts, no-adjacent-black rules and white-cell connectivity.
Akari
Place lamps in open cells so the whole grid is lit and numbered walls touch the required lamps.
Yin-Yang
Colour cells into two connected groups while avoiding forbidden 2x2 blocks.
Cave / Bag
Cave, also known as Bag, asks you to separate one connected cave from the surrounding wall. Number clues describe visible cave cells in straight lines, so each clue controls both local shading and the global cave shape.
Nurimisaki
Nurimisaki is a shading puzzle built around cape clues and narrow white corridors. Numbered cells mark the ends of straight white paths, giving the puzzle a very clean mix of visibility and connectivity logic.
Shakashaka
Shakashaka uses small black triangles placed around numbered cells to make the remaining white space form rectangles. It is a geometric grid puzzle where progress often comes from spotting which triangle orientations are still possible.
Kurotto
Kurotto asks you to shade cells so each clue counts the total size of neighbouring shaded groups. Unlike many shading puzzles, clue cells do not simply count adjacent squares; they measure the connected shaded areas touching them.
Mochikoro
Mochikoro creates shaded islands under size and separation rules. It belongs near Nurikabe and other island puzzles, but the exact island-building restrictions give it a different rhythm from standard wall-and-island solving.
Shimaguni
Shimaguni is a region shading puzzle where each region has its own count and adjacent regions cannot share matching shaded patterns. The result is a compact deduction puzzle about local totals and cross-border pressure.
Aquarium
Aquarium divides the grid into tank shapes and asks you to shade water while keeping each tank's water level flat. Row and column counts tell you how much water appears in each line, making it a visual counting puzzle.
Stained Glass
Stained Glass puzzles use colour or shading rules to complete a patterned grid. The appeal is similar to other picture-style grid puzzles: each local clue helps build a larger visual design.
Path, loop and connection grid puzzles
Path, loop and connection grid puzzles are line-drawing logic puzzles where the solution is a route, loop, bridge network or set of non-crossing paths. This group targets solvers looking for loop grid puzzles, route puzzles, connection puzzles, bridge puzzles and other grid puzzles solved by drawing through the board.
Slitherlink
Draw one continuous loop around grid edges so each numbered cell has the right number of used sides.
Masyu
Draw one loop through black and white pearl clues, following their turn and straight-line rules.
Yajilin
Draw a single loop while using arrow clues to place the correct shaded cells in each direction.
Numberlink
Connect matching numbered endpoints with paths that cover the grid without crossing or sharing cells.
Hashi
Connect numbered islands with horizontal and vertical bridges until all islands form one network.
Galaxies / Tentai Show
Divide the grid into rotationally symmetric regions, each centred on a dot or marked point.
Country Road
Country Road asks you to draw one loop through a map of regions, with clues controlling how many cells the road uses in each area. The region boundaries matter as much as the route itself, which makes it more structured than a simple maze.
Arukone
Arukone is a connection puzzle closely related to Numberlink. You join matching endpoints with paths that do not cross, and the empty space becomes the main constraint because every path must still fit.
Pipe Puzzles
Pipe puzzles ask you to rotate, place or connect pipe pieces until the network works without loose ends. Some versions are pure logic grids, while others feel more like route-building or mechanical connection challenges.
Mazes
Mazes are the simplest path grid puzzles: find a route from start to finish through walls and passages. Logic maze variants add numbers, directions or conditional moves so the path has to be reasoned out rather than just traced.
Castle Wall
Castle Wall is a loop puzzle where clues indicate whether parts of the loop pass inside or outside numbered cells. It combines Slitherlink-style edge drawing with a spatial inside-outside rule.
Araf
Araf divides the grid into regions whose sizes fall between the clue numbers they contain. The puzzle is about growing regions carefully while making sure no area becomes too small, too large or incorrectly grouped.
Placement, region and tiling grid puzzles
Placement and region grid puzzles ask you to put objects into cells, divide the board into valid areas or tile the grid with shapes. They are strong choices for anyone searching for spatial logic puzzles, region puzzles, object placement puzzles or grid puzzles about rows, columns and adjacency.
Tents and Trees
Place one tent beside each tree while matching row and column counts and keeping tents apart.
Battleship
Hide a fleet in the grid using row and column counts while keeping ships from touching.
Star Battle
Place stars in rows, columns and regions without letting any two stars touch, even diagonally.
Queens
Place queens or crowns so rows, columns and regions are satisfied without attacks.
Shikaku
Split the grid into rectangles where each rectangle contains one number showing its area.
Parks
Parks asks you to place one object in each row, column and region, usually with a rule that objects cannot touch. It is closely related to Star Battle and Queens, but often presented with park-shaped regions.
Tatamibari
Tatamibari divides the grid into rectangles according to clue symbols. Each clue controls the orientation or shape of its rectangle, so the puzzle becomes a quiet tiling problem with exact local requirements.
Dominosa
Dominosa gives you a grid of numbers and asks you to pair adjacent cells into dominoes. Every domino value must appear exactly once, so solving is a process of ruling out duplicate pairings.
Pentominoes
Pentomino puzzles use the twelve five-cell shapes made from connected squares. In grid form, the challenge is to tile a board with those shapes while handling rotations, reflections, gaps and awkward corners.
Polyomino Tiling
Polyomino tiling puzzles ask you to cover a grid with multi-cell shapes. They are broader than pentomino puzzles and can use any set of shapes, but the core challenge is still exact spatial fitting.
Statue Park
Statue Park places a set of given shapes into a grid while preserving connectivity rules for the shaded cells. It blends polyomino placement with the kind of global structure found in Japanese logic puzzles.
Tiling Puzzles
Tiling puzzles focus on covering a board with shapes without gaps or overlaps. They can be mathematical, visual or logic-led, but all of them reward careful thinking about space and boundaries.
Battleships Solitaire
Battleships Solitaire is the single-player logic form of Battleship. You place the full fleet using row and column counts while making sure ships have the right lengths and never touch each other.
Sudoku-style grid puzzle variants
Sudoku-style grid puzzle variants keep the familiar no-repeat structure but add extra constraints such as cages, arrows, diagonals, parity, thermometers or outside clues. This section helps readers compare Sudoku grid puzzles and related number-placement puzzles without needing a full rules guide for every variant.
Jigsaw Sudoku / Irregular Sudoku
Jigsaw Sudoku replaces the standard 3x3 boxes with irregular regions. The familiar row and column rules stay in place, but the unusual shapes change where hidden singles, pairs and region interactions appear.
Samurai Sudoku
Samurai Sudoku overlaps five Sudoku grids into one larger layout. Shared sections link the grids together, so a deduction in one corner can unlock progress in a different grid.
X Sudoku / Diagonal Sudoku
X Sudoku adds the two main diagonals as extra no-repeat regions. Those long diagonal constraints give solvers more cross-grid information than a standard Sudoku puzzle.
Hyper Sudoku / Windoku
Hyper Sudoku, also called Windoku, adds four extra 3x3 regions inside the grid. The added boxes create more overlap and make ordinary Sudoku placements interact in new ways.
Mini Sudoku
Play a smaller Sudoku grid with shorter rows and regions, useful for quick practice or beginners.
Wordoku
Wordoku uses letters or symbols instead of digits while keeping the Sudoku no-repeat structure. It is still a logic puzzle; the alphabet theme simply changes the look of the grid.
Arrow Sudoku
Arrow Sudoku adds arrows whose line digits must sum to the circled digit. It is popular because it combines familiar Sudoku placement with clear arithmetic pressure.
Sandwich Sudoku
Sandwich Sudoku uses outside clues that show the sum of digits between 1 and 9 in each row or column. The clues create long-range restrictions that can reshape the whole grid.
Kropki Sudoku
Kropki Sudoku marks neighbouring cells with dots for consecutive or double relationships. Those small edge clues make local pairs important from the very start.
Thermo Sudoku
Thermo Sudoku places thermometer shapes in the grid, with digits increasing from bulb to tip. The rising order is easy to understand but powerful enough to force many placements.
Greater Than Sudoku
Greater Than Sudoku adds inequality signs between neighbouring cells. Each sign gives a small ordering clue, and together they narrow candidate ranges across rows, columns and regions.
Consecutive Sudoku
Consecutive Sudoku uses markers or rules showing when neighbouring cells must contain consecutive digits. It rewards attention to pairs, near-pairs and numbers that cannot sit beside each other.
XV Sudoku
XV Sudoku uses X and V marks between cells to show pairs summing to 10 or 5. The absence of marks can matter too, depending on the rules of the puzzle.
Even-Odd Sudoku
Even-Odd Sudoku marks cells that must contain even or odd digits. Splitting the digit set this way gives quick early structure without changing the basic Sudoku goal.
Anti-Knight Sudoku
Anti-Knight Sudoku forbids matching digits a chess knight's move apart. This adds a wide spatial restriction that can eliminate candidates far beyond a cell's row, column or box.
Anti-King Sudoku
Anti-King Sudoku forbids matching digits in diagonally touching cells. The rule is simple, but it makes each small 2x2 area much tighter than in normal Sudoku.
Little Killer Sudoku
Little Killer Sudoku uses diagonal outside clues that point into the grid and give sum totals. These long diagonal sums combine arithmetic with standard Sudoku placement logic.
Palindrome Sudoku
Palindrome Sudoku marks lines that read the same from both ends. Matching positions on each line must contain equal digits, so a single placement can echo across the grid.
Outside Sudoku
Outside Sudoku gives clues outside the grid showing which digits appear first from that edge. It turns the perimeter into a source of placement information before the grid is full.
Product Sudoku
Product Sudoku uses multiplication clues for pairs, cages or marked groups of cells. It is useful for solvers who enjoy arithmetic constraints but want something different from sum clues.
Sum Sudoku
Sum Sudoku adds extra total clues to selected cells, regions or lines. The exact format varies, but the solving usually mixes combination logic with ordinary Sudoku restrictions.
Word, symbol and deduction grid puzzles
Word, symbol and deduction grid puzzles show that the grid puzzle format is not limited to numbers. These include word grid puzzles, crossword-style grids, code grids, word searches and logic grid puzzles where the grid organizes clues, letters or possibilities.
Crossword
Crosswords are word grid puzzles where across and down answers share letters. The grid creates confirmation: one solved clue can supply letters that make several other clues easier.
Cryptic Crossword
Cryptic crosswords use clues that usually contain both a definition and wordplay. The grid still works like a crossword, but each answer has to be decoded as well as fitted.
Word Search
Word Search puzzles hide words in a letter grid, often forward, backward, vertical, horizontal or diagonal. They are lighter than most logic grids, but the grid structure is still central.
Codeword
Codeword puzzles use a crossword-style grid where each number represents one letter. Once a letter is identified, every matching number updates at the same time.
Acrostic
Acrostic puzzles combine clue answers with a grid or quote mechanism that reveals a hidden message. They are word puzzles, but the transfer pattern makes the grid part of the solve.
Cryptogram
Cryptograms ask you to decode a substitution cipher, often one quote or phrase at a time. When presented in a grid, repeated letters and word shapes become the main clues.
Logic Grid Puzzles
Logic Grid Puzzles use a table to match people, places, objects or times from written clues. The grid is a reasoning workspace where each eliminated possibility brings the final arrangement closer.
Zebra Puzzles
Zebra Puzzles are classic logic-grid riddles with categories such as houses, colours, pets and drinks. They reward careful clue ordering because one relationship often unlocks several others.
Mastermind
Mastermind is a code-breaking puzzle where each guess receives feedback about correct colours or symbols. The grid of previous guesses becomes the evidence used to narrow the hidden code.
How to choose a grid puzzle
If you like number placement, start with Sudoku, Futoshiki, KenKen, Kakuro or Binary. If you prefer visual progress, try Nonogram, Mosaic, Nurikabe, Shikaku or Yin-Yang. If drawing is satisfying, Slitherlink, Masyu, Numberlink and Hashi are natural next steps.
Difficulty depends heavily on puzzle design, not just the name. A small grid can teach the rules gently, while a larger or more constrained grid can become a serious deduction challenge.
Best first grid puzzles: Sudoku, Nonogram, Futoshiki, Tents and Trees and Binary.
For picture-style solving: Nonogram, Mosaic, Nurikabe, Yin-Yang and Shikaku.
For paths and loops: Slitherlink, Masyu, Numberlink, Hashi and Yajilin.
For quick word grids: Crossword, Word Search, Codeword and Acrostic.
Play grid puzzles online
Many puzzle names here go directly to playable puzzles on Logic Puzzles Online. Names without links are still included because they are real grid puzzle types and useful reference points.
A puzzle does not need a game link to belong in this guide. Some entries are playable on this site, while others are included because they help explain the wider family of number, word, picture, path and placement grid puzzles.
Grid Puzzles FAQ
What are grid puzzles?
Grid puzzles are puzzles solved on a structured grid of cells, lines or intersections, usually by using clues and deduction rather than guessing.
Are Sudoku and crosswords both grid puzzles?
Yes. Sudoku is a number grid puzzle, while crosswords are word grid puzzles. The term grid puzzles is broad enough to include both.
What grid puzzle should beginners try first?
Sudoku, Nonogram, Futoshiki, Binary and Tents and Trees are good starting points because their rules are compact and easy to practise.
Can I play grid puzzles online here?
Yes. Puzzle names with links open the corresponding playable grid puzzle on Logic Puzzles Online.