Play Nonogram Online

What are the rules of a Nonogram?

A Nonogram is a grid of empty cells with numbers beside every row and above every column. Each number stands for a block: a run of that many filled cells. A clue of 3 1 means a block of three, then at least one empty cell, then a single filled cell, in that order from left to right (or top to bottom). Where the blocks sit is what you work out, and a 0 means the line has no filled cells at all.

Fill the cells the clues prove, cross out the cells they rule out, and when every row and column matches its clue, the picture is complete. The example here is the Tent from the game's picture bank: rows 1 and 10 and columns 1 and 10 have the clue 0, the 7s in columns 4 and 7 run down either side of the door, and the 3 3 in rows 7 and 8 leaves the gap for it.

• Each number is a block of that many filled cells, in the order shown.
• Blocks in the same line have at least one empty cell between them.
• A 0 clue means the whole line stays empty.
• The puzzle is solved when every row and column matches its clue.

How do you play Nonograms online?

Tap or click a cell to fill it. Fill, Cross and Erase under the grid decide what a tap does; on a computer, a right-click crosses a cell, and you can drag along a row or column to mark several cells at once. With a keyboard, click a cell, move with the arrow keys and press Space or F to fill, X to cross and Delete to erase. Undo and redo, Check (it shows any wrong cells), Reset and pause are next to the grid, and if you'd rather see mistakes as they happen, tick Show mistakes right away. The game saves in your browser, so you can close the page and carry on later.

A few things help you keep your place. The row and column of the cell under the mouse, or the last cell you tapped, are tinted along with their clues. While you drag, a small counter above the cell you're on shows how many cells the stroke covers, so you can fill a block of 7 without counting. And you can tick off clue numbers as you place their blocks: click or tap a number to strike it out, and again to bring it back. Struck numbers are saved with the game.

Hint shows the easiest next step rather than filling a random cell. It names the technique, highlights the line and explains in a sentence which cells it decides and why; apply it, or close it and do the step yourself. If you have marked a cell wrongly, the hint points that out first, and How it works in the hint panel jumps to the techniques below.

Grids come in 5×5, 10×10, 15×15 and 20×20. A 20×20 has 400 cells and takes a while; its Expert puzzles come ready-made, 100 in black and white and 100 in colour, because finding one takes a browser too long, and you get each of them once before any comes back. If the cells are too small on your screen, the size slider above the board (under the buttons on a phone) makes the grid up to 2.5 times bigger; the board then scrolls inside its frame, with the clue numbers pinned to its edges. Focus fills the whole screen with the puzzle, and the X in the top corner or Esc takes you back.

Every puzzle, picture or random pattern, has exactly one solution. The four levels are graded by the techniques a puzzle needs, not by its size or how many clues it shows: Easy needs little more than overlaps and crosses, Medium now and then the filled cells, Hard many steps that use them, and Expert at least one “what if?”. The table shows what that means on a 10×10.

Averages over 200 puzzles per level, 10×10, from the generator that runs this page, solved step by step with the hint techniques. Beginner steps are empty lines, exact fits, finished lines and overlaps.

Picture puzzles, colour, the daily Nonogram and printing

Puzzles are pictures from the start: solve one and the picture's name appears. There are 195 of them, 25 at 5×5, 65 at 10×10, 56 at 15×15 and 49 at 20×20, 48 of them in colour, and each is filed under the level its logic needs, so the level you choose is the level you get. Once you have seen every picture at a size and level, you get random patterns there instead. You can switch Picture puzzles off under the grid to have random patterns from the start. Most of the 5×5 and 10×10 pictures and all the 20×20 ones were drawn for this site; the others are pixel art by Kenney and, from game-icons.net, by Delapouite, Lorc and Skoll. Each one has been through the same checks as the generated puzzles: one solution, graded by the techniques it needs.

Colour puzzles use two colours on 5×5 and 10×10 and three on 15×15 and 20×20: pick one with the swatches under the grid or the keys 1 to 3. One rule changes in colour, explained with an example further down.

The Daily puzzle is a 10×10 that everyone gets on the same day, new at midnight on your clock: Easy on Mondays, Medium on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Sundays, Hard on Thursdays and Fridays, and Expert on Saturdays. Solve it each day to grow your days in a row; the puzzle you were playing waits until you come back to it.

Share copies a link that carries the whole puzzle, so a friend gets exactly the same grid, and the puzzle number under the board shows you are on the same one. Print makes a PDF of the puzzle you are playing, with its solution, at any size, or a pack of up to 50 new puzzles from 5×5 to 15×15 at the level you choose, one, two or four to a page, in colour if you like. Printable Nonograms has ready-made packs too. Your stats count the puzzles you solve at each size and level, with your best and average times and your daily runs, saved in this browser only.

How to solve a Nonogram: the techniques

Every step in a Nonogram comes from looking at one line, a row or a column, and asking where its blocks can still go. The hints use four techniques, from beginner to expert: overlaps, crossing out, pushing blocks with the filled cells, and the “what if?” for the hardest grids, with colour adding one twist. All the examples below come from the Tent puzzle above, in the order the hints solve it.

Prefer to watch first? Our three-minute tutorial solves a 10×10 with the three beginner tricks: the overlap, crossing out and switching between rows and columns. For a slower introduction with a full worked example, read how to play Nonogram.

Overlap: push the blocks both ways

Slide a line's blocks as far as they go to one end, then as far as they go to the other. A cell that the same block covers both times is filled, wherever the block really sits. In the Tent, the 0 rows cross out rows 1 and 10, so column 4's 7 has the eight cells between them. Pushed up it covers rows 2 to 8, pushed down rows 3 to 9: rows 3 to 8 are covered both times, so all six are filled.

The same works with several blocks, as long as you keep them in order. Row 7, with the clue 3 3, has the eight cells from 2 to 9: pushed left the blocks cover 2–4 and 6–8, pushed right 3–5 and 7–9. Each block overlaps itself on two cells, 3–4 and 7–8, so cells 3 and 8 can be filled (4 and 7 already are).

For a 10-cell line, computed from the rule: the blocks plus one gap between each need the cells shown; slack is 10 minus that, and every block longer than the slack gives its length minus the slack.

Crossing out: finished lines and gaps too small

Crosses matter as much as fills, because they shorten the lines the other blocks can use. Cross a cell as soon as you know it is empty. The easiest case is a finished line: once every block of the clue is in place, everything else in that line is empty. In row 8 of the Tent, the 3 3 is complete in cells 2–4 and 7–9, so cells 5 and 6, the door, are crossed.

The second case is a gap too short for any block. Column 2 has the clue 2, and by this point its only empty stretches are single cells in rows 2 and 4 and three cells in rows 7 to 9. A block of two can't fit in a one-cell gap, so rows 2 and 4 are crossed, and the 2 must lie in rows 7 to 9: pushed up it covers rows 7–8, pushed down 8–9, so row 8 is filled as well.

Switch lines and push from the filled cells

Every cell belongs to a row and a column, so a cell one line decides becomes a clue for the line crossing it. That is why the best habit in Nonograms is to switch: after each step, look at the lines that cross the cells you just marked. In the Tent, the overlaps in columns 4 and 7 filled rows 3 to 8 of both columns, so row 3 now has filled cells in columns 4 and 7.

Row 3's clue is a single 4. On its own the row gives nothing: the 4 could sit anywhere in the eight cells between the crosses. But one block must cover both filled cells, and columns 4 to 7 are exactly four cells, so the block is pinned there. Fill cells 5 and 6, and cross 2, 3, 8 and 9, which no block can reach. This is the push: the overlap again, but now the filled cells hold the blocks too. Medium puzzles need it now and then, Hard puzzles over and over.

Expert puzzles: the “what if?”

Sometimes no single line gives anything more. Expert puzzles then need one cell tested: suppose it is filled (or empty), follow the line logic, and if some line ends up with no way to fit its clue, the cell must be the other way round. The hint picks the cell whose contradiction comes soonest, so the chain stays short enough to follow. In the Tent it comes near the end, at row 9, column 2. What if that cell were filled?

• Step 1, row 9 (2 2): the first 2 would be cells 2–3, so cell 4 is empty.
• Step 2, column 2 (2): rows 8 and 9 would be its block, so row 7 is empty.
• Step 3, column 4 (7): with row 9 empty, the 7 runs from row 2 to row 8, so row 2 is filled.
• Step 4, row 7 (3 3): with cell 2 empty, the first 3 is cells 3–5 and the second 7–9: fill 5 and 9, cross 6.
• Step 5, row 2 (2): cell 3 is crossed and cell 4 filled, so the block is cells 4–5: fill 5, cross 6 and 7.
• Result: column 5 (5) now has rows 2 to 7 filled, six cells in a row. That breaks its clue, so row 9, column 2 is empty.

Colour Nonograms: what changes

In a colour Nonogram each clue number has a colour, and the blocks must appear in the clue's order and colours. The one new rule: blocks of different colours may touch, because the colour change already shows where one ends. Only blocks of the same colour need an empty cell between them.

That changes the arithmetic. Row 5 of this colour Heart has the clue 1 6 1, blue, pink, blue. In black and white those blocks would need 10 cells, eight plus two gaps; here they need only eight, exactly the cells between the crossed ends, so the whole row is decided at once. All the techniques above work the same way in colour, as long as you count gaps only between blocks of one colour.

Stuck on a Nonogram, and puzzles like it

If you are stuck on a Nonogram from a book, an app or a newspaper, our Nonogram solver finds the picture from the clues and tells you if they have more than one solution. A puzzle with two solutions is broken: at some point you would have to guess. Every puzzle on this page is checked for that before you see it, as described in how we make and test our puzzles.

If you like filling cells from numbers, try Mosaic, also called Fill-a-Pix, where each clue counts the filled cells in the 3×3 square around it, itself included, and the solution is a picture too. Aquarium and Thermometers use row and column counts like a Nonogram's, with water levels and mercury that fill from one end.