What is Stitches?
Stitches is a sew-the-grid logic puzzle that spread through Conceptis Puzzles and the puzzle-site networks alongside Nonograms and Hashi. The board is cut into regions by bold borders, like patches on a quilt, and your job is to sew the patches together. Each pair of neighbouring regions has to be joined by exactly one stitch - a short thread that crosses the border they share.
A stitch always lands between two cells, one in each region, and it punches a hole in both of them. The catch is that every cell can hold at most one hole, so a single cell can never be the end of two different stitches. The numbers along the top and the left edge are your guide: they count how many holes end up in each column and each row. Put those three ideas together - one stitch per neighbouring pair, one hole per cell, and the right number of holes in every line - and the whole quilt has only one way to be sewn.
- Bold borders cut the grid into regions.
- Join each pair of neighbouring regions with exactly one stitch.
- A stitch crosses the shared border and puts a hole in the cell on each side.
- Each cell can hold at most one hole - no cell ends two stitches.
- Top numbers count the holes in each column; left numbers count them in each row.
- Every neighbouring pair must be stitched, and no pair more than once.
How to play Stitches online
Click or tap the gap between two cells that lie in different regions to drop a stitch there; the thread appears with a hole at each end. Click the same spot again to remove it. Because a cell can hold only one hole, adding a stitch that would reuse a cell automatically clears the old one, so you can always reroute a stitch by clicking its new home. Right-click a cell to pencil in a small cross when you have decided it stays empty - it never changes the puzzle, it just keeps your reasoning on the board.
Check looks at your board and flags any stitch that disagrees with the unique solution, without telling you which way to fix it. Hint sews one correct stitch or unpicks a wrong one, Undo steps back, Reset clears the cloth, and Solution sews the whole quilt when you would rather study a finished board. The row and column numbers turn green as each line reaches its target and red if you overshoot.
- Tap a border between two regions to add or remove a stitch.
- Adding a stitch that reuses a cell reroutes the old one automatically.
- Right-click a cell to mark it empty; it is just a note for you.
- Check highlights stitches that conflict with the solution; Undo steps back.
- New puzzle builds a fresh board for the chosen size and difficulty.
Start where regions barely touch
The fastest opening in Stitches is to hunt for neighbouring regions that share only a single border crossing. If two regions touch along just one spot, the stitch between them has nowhere else to go - it must be sewn exactly there. Sweep the whole board for these forced stitches first and lay them all down before thinking any harder, the way you would clear the zeros in other puzzles.
Those first forced stitches are worth more than they look, because each one fills two cells with holes, and a filled cell can never hold another hole. So every forced stitch quietly removes options from the borders around it. A neighbouring pair that had two possible crossings may suddenly have only one left, because the other would reuse a cell you have already used - and now it is forced too. Trace these knock-on effects and a surprising amount of the quilt sews itself.
- Regions that touch at one crossing only must be stitched right there.
- Lay down every forced stitch before attempting anything subtle.
- Each stitch fills two cells, and a filled cell blocks every other stitch.
- A blocked crossing can force its pair's stitch onto the one spot left.
- Follow the chain: forced stitches keep forcing their neighbours.
One hole per cell is the real engine
It is tempting to treat Stitches as a counting puzzle, but the rule that does the heavy lifting is the quiet one: a cell may hold at most one hole. That single restriction turns the board into a web of exclusions. Whenever you place a hole, you are not just sewing one stitch - you are forbidding a hole on that cell forever, which can rule out a stitch two regions away.
Think about a region from the inside. If a region touches four neighbours, it needs four stitches leaving it, and each one needs its own cell to hold a hole. A region with exactly as many usable border cells as it has neighbours is fully committed: every one of those cells must hold a hole, and you can read off where the stitches go. Counting a region's neighbours against its available cells is one of the most reliable deductions in the game, and it often unlocks a corner that the row and column numbers alone could not.
- Placing a hole forbids any other stitch from using that cell.
- A region needs one hole-cell for every neighbour it touches.
- If a region's spare cells exactly equal its neighbours, all are holes.
- Use the one-hole rule to rule out crossings far from where you started.
- Region-degree logic often beats the edge counts on its own.
Reading the row and column counts
The edge numbers are exact, and they cut both ways. A 0 on a column means that column holds no holes at all, so no stitch may put an endpoint there - a powerful eraser that can kill several crossings at once. At the other extreme, a line whose number equals the number of cells in it that could ever take a hole is saturated: every one of those cells must be an endpoint, and the stitches around them fall into place.
Between the extremes, treat each number as a budget. As you sew, keep a running tally of holes per row and per column; the moment a line reaches its number it is full, and every remaining crossing that would add a hole there is dead. Watch especially for a line that is one short with a single crossing left to supply it - that crossing is forced. Sliding between the region logic and the count logic, each tightening the other, is how the hardest Stitches boards come apart.
- A 0 forbids every hole in that line - and the crossings that need one.
- A line whose count equals its hole-capable cells is fully forced.
- Tally holes as you go; a full line kills every further crossing in it.
- A line one hole short with one crossing left forces that crossing.
- Alternate between count logic and region logic each pass.
Where Stitches comes from
Stitches belongs to the wave of grid puzzles that reached a worldwide audience through Conceptis Puzzles, the studio that helped carry Nonograms, Hashi and Kakuro from specialist magazines into newspapers and apps. Its theme is sewing rather than arithmetic: the bold regions are patches, the threads are stitches, and the holes are where the needle goes through, which gives the puzzle its warm, crafty look.
Underneath the sewing imagery sits an unusual blend of ideas. The bold regions feel like a jigsaw or a Suguru, where the partition is half the puzzle. The edge numbers feel like a Nonogram or a Magnets board, counted from the margins in. And the one-hole-per-cell rule adds a matching flavour all of its own, because choosing where one stitch goes can quietly decide a stitch on the far side of the grid. Few puzzles braid region logic, counting and matching together this neatly, which is exactly what makes Stitches worth learning.
Stitches vs Magnets, Nonograms and region puzzles
If you have played Magnets, the margins of a Stitches board will feel familiar: numbers around the edge counting something inside each line, on top of a fixed partition you are given. Magnets splits the grid into 1x2 slabs and asks you to charge them; Stitches splits it into free-form regions and asks you to sew them. Both lean on a placement rule - Magnets forbids equal poles from touching, Stitches forbids two holes in one cell - so both reward thinking about what a single choice rules out elsewhere.
Coming from Nonograms you will recognise the edge-counting instinct, though Stitches has no runs to order; coming from jigsaw puzzles like Suguru or Tents you will recognise the value of studying the regions themselves before touching a number. Stitches sits at the crossroads of all three, which is why solvers who enjoy region puzzles, counting puzzles or placement puzzles tend to take to it quickly.
- Magnets: fixed 1x2 slabs, edge counts, no equal poles touching.
- Nonograms: ordered runs of shaded cells from edge clues.
- Suguru and Tents: region logic where the partition drives the puzzle.
- Stitches: free-form regions, one stitch per pair, one hole per cell, edge counts.
- Stitches blends region, counting and matching logic in one board.
Grid sizes and difficulty levels
The 6x6 boards are the place to learn the reflexes: a handful of large regions, short borders, and plenty of single-crossing pairs that hand you forced stitches. On 8x8 the regions multiply, more pairs share two or three crossings, and the one-hole rule starts doing real work as you chase exclusions from one border to the next. The 10x10 boards are full quilts - many regions, long chains of forced stitches, and deductions that travel right across the grid before a single thread is certain.
Difficulty changes how the grid is cut. Easy boards use fewer, larger regions, so most pairs are forced and progress is steady. Medium cuts more regions, leaving more crossings to choose between and leaning harder on the counts. Hard cuts the most regions, so the board is a dense web of exclusions where the region logic and the edge counts have to be played against each other. Whatever you pick, a solver checks every board before you see it and keeps only those with a single solution - so even the busiest hard puzzle is solvable by pure logic, never by guessing.
- 6x6 - learn forced stitches and the one-hole rule.
- 8x8 - more shared crossings and longer exclusion chains.
- 10x10 - many regions and deductions that cross the whole grid.
- Easy, medium and hard change how many regions the grid is cut into.
- Every puzzle is verified to have exactly one solution.