Nonograms: a practical guide with interactive examples
lab174.com118 points by merelysounds 6 days ago
118 points by merelysounds 6 days ago
I built this, the list started as a tutorial and then grew out of control. Especially when I started experimenting with mixing text and interactive elements. I think nonograms are underrated and relatively unknown, I hope this text changes it a little.
I link to my app[1] frequently, it's free right now, I hope this is fine. There's no Android version yet; for anyone who wants to try nonograms on an Android smartphone I recommend Simon Tatham's Puzzles[2] - like my app it is also free, has no ads, etc; nonograms there are called "pattern".
Feedback very welcome; thanks! If you use other nonogram solving techniques and want me to add them to the list please share too.
Great js implementation! I don't have any iThing but I'd happily play your js version in a browser for a while.
Since you mentioned Simon Tatham puzzles there's a js version here[1], but it really just isn't quite as good
[1] https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/patt...
(if I were to nitpick, for large grids one might want to make the separating line a bit thicker every 5 blocks for faster counting, and repeat numbers at the bottom/right -- but at the size the examples are in neither are needed)
(BTW you didn't mention for overlapping but there's a nice trick: just try from either end, count how many cells are leftover, and take that off the starting side of each block)
I am unfamiliar with nonograms. I don't understand from the explanation how the grouping hints work.
"When there are two or more numbers, this means there will be two or more groups of filled cells."
Is the "group number" the size of the first group? That seems to fit the tutorial example where (1, 2) = (., x, ., .) and (2, 1) = (., ., x, .).
Thanks for making this - I've stumbled across these puzzles but never took the time to try one.
Yes, that’s exactly how it works.
Each number specifies the size of the corresponding group. E.g. numbers “5 4 7” would mean: “three groups of filled cells, first group will consist of 5 cells, second will consist of 4 cells, third group will consist of 7 cells”.
Have fun and I’m happy to hear that this is useful!
The Google play link is broken for me:
> We're sorry, the requested URL was not found on this server.
Fixed link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=name.boyle.chr...
Sorry, cannot edit the grandparent post. I copied that invalid link from safari's url bar, perhaps Google Play store did something unexpected with URLs.
[flagged]
This is a free app. Always look at the native iOS in app popup and here it says the same thing. Double check your charge, it must be something unrelated. Don’t accuse people of scams without doing this check first.
How? If you look at the purchase history in your apple account it should show the actual price, and in mine it shows as free
Apologies. You are right. I got an unrelated charge on my card from apple 1 sec after their in-app upgrade.
Can you post screenshots of your purchase history in 2026? It’s in the upper right profile icon in the main view of the App Store app.
A couple years ago I wanted to design a custom Nonogram as a birthday present. We had a photo of the giftee and pixelated it. But how do you make sure the Nonogram is uniquely solvable, without any guessing? Of course I wrote a solver in Python.
But now I needed to test the solver. I had a couple of magazines with Nonograms. Transfer those manually into the computer? No way! So I wrote a utility that uses OpenCV to parse these low resolution pixel grids from photos, from the solutions page of the magazine. This was way harder than I imagined. A huge waste of time, but quite a fun project on its own.
For the solver I added one technique after the other. In the beginning it would not be able to solve all puzzles. Then it gradually became more capable, until it would no longer get stuck on the test inputs. A list of techniques like this would have been very helpful!
The solver was still quite slow, but it was really fun to watch it fill in the solution pixel by pixel. It took about 10-20 s to solve the larger puzzles.
This is a great website for learning this type of puzzle. Certainly better than what people had available to them before.
Once you have learned and want to keep playing, this site has tens of thousands of good nonograms, in both black-and-white and color: https://www.nonograms.org/
There are also "Picross" games for Nintendo consoles (and recently Squeakross for Steam).
I thought this was going to be about nomograms. TIL that monograms, nonograms and nomograms exist
I've been playing this one for a long time now. You can play both on mobile and on the web: https://nonograms-katana.com/ the game has quite big community.
I got hooked on these back in 2016 when the GCHQ Christmas challenge had one. Solving it actually created a QR code with the solution which led to the next phase of the puzzle.
Oooh that's nice! I made a nonogram game as well but never made a tutorial because of how much extra work it would be. Good job on doing the work.
My twist on the game is that it's multiplayer. I posted it on the nonogram subreddit a few years ago and to my surprise I still have a few daily players. I'd recommend posting it there as well, they're nice folks.
Here's mine. Multiplayer, free, browser-only, no ads/tracking. https://berendswennenhuis.nl/nonogram/
Nonogram enjoyers might enjoy star battle, which I came across after having done lots of nonograms over the years(https://www.puzzle-star-battle.com/ or plenty of other places online). Though maybe it is a little too close to sudoku for some.
10x10 2star is the standard for me, I solved up to 6 stars but 10x10 is the sweet spot imo.
There was a fun hacker news post a while back [0] about a website that had generated every solvable-without-backtracking 5x5 nonogram. I found it very addictive, and the creator has since released it as a paid mobile app. Highly recommended for commutes!
This is currently the best nonogram game (with random generator) on the Internet:
I frequently play it on 15x15 and I regenerate it until there are no numbers above 6 (and as few 5s and 6s as possible).
I love nonogram puzzles, they're incredibly calming in times of stress.
The only issue I have is I'm limited with the size of board I can comfortably play on my phone, and I rather keep my laptop as a games free zone.
i agree... i play with a stylus on my iPad (the nonograms katana app) and find that phone/laptop pale in comparison.
oh I love nonograms!
There's some good nonogram games on Steam - Paint it Back, Picross Touch, Pictopix.
(Depixtion is a bit of a twist on nonograms which I play from time to time also)
Voxelgram has gotten the most playtime out of me, the second dimension really makes it feel like whittling or something
Or just play through the PC98 classic featuring nonograms, YU-NO[0], now translated to English[1].
1. https://romhackplaza.org/translations/yu-no-a-girl-that-chan...
Just wanted to say: thanks for the implementation. Butter smooth on mobile - great we have nice things still and someone cares for UX <3
Thank you so much! I’m very happy to see this noticed, pleasant UX was a major goal here.