A free daily nonogram: Grandma’s Knitting

What a nonogram is

Nonograms come from Japan. In 1987 Non Ishida, a graphics editor, won a competition in Tokyo with a picture made from the lit windows of a skyscraper, and it gave her the idea for grid puzzles that make a picture. The puzzler Tetsuya Nishio came up with the same puzzle on his own. James Dalgety, a British puzzle collector, named them nonograms, after Non, and from 1990 The Sunday Telegraph printed one every week.

Nintendo calls them Picross, short for “picture crossword”, and Mario’s Picross brought them to the Game Boy in 1995. Simon Tatham’s free puzzle collection has them as Pattern. The rules are the same everywhere: the numbers, the runs, and a picture at the end.

How Grandma’s Knitting plays

• Read the numbers. Each number is a run of knitted squares in its row or column, in order: left to right, and top to bottom. Two numbers mean two runs, with at least one empty square between.
• Knit the squares. Tap a square to knit it, or drag along a run. Switch to Empty to mark a square you know stays empty with an ✕.
• See the picture. Get every row and column right and Grandma knits your squares into the picture, in its own yarns.

A row or column whose squares match its numbers goes faint, so you can see what’s left. Back one takes your last move back, and Start over asks “Sure?” first. On a keyboard, the arrow keys move between squares, Enter knits one, and X marks it empty.

A new picture comes every day at midnight, your time, the same for everyone. Monday to Saturday the swatch is 8 × 8 squares, and Sunday’s is 8 across and 10 tall.

A worked example: the practice swatch

Every new player’s first swatch is a tiny practice one, 5 × 5. Its rows say, from the top: 1 1, 5, 5, 3, 1. Its columns say, from the left: 2, 4, 4, 4, 2.

1. A 5 in a row of 5 fills the whole row. The second and third rows are both 5s: knit them all the way across.
2. The two 2s at the sides are done. The first and last columns each say 2, and each now has two knitted squares, one above the other. That’s the whole run, so mark the rest of both columns ✕.
3. Only one way to fit. The top row says 1 1, and its two corners are ✕, which leaves three squares. Two runs of 1 with a gap between fit three squares only one way: knit, empty, knit. The fourth row says 3, and with its corners ✕ it has exactly three squares left. Knit them.
4. The middle columns. The second and fourth columns each say 4, and each has its four knitted squares in a row now, so their bottom squares are ✕. The middle column says 4 too, but its top square is ✕, so its run is the four squares below: knit the bottom one. Every row and column matches. It’s a heart.

Every step used one of three ideas: a run that fills its line, a line that’s finished, and a run that only fits one way. Bigger swatches work the same way, with more of these small steps, and on harder days a line where you check every way its runs could fit.

Tips for solving nonograms

1. Start with the big numbers. A long run always covers the middle of its line. In a row of 8, a 6 covers the middle four squares wherever it sits, and a 5 the middle two. Knit those first.
2. Add a line up. Add the numbers, plus one for each gap between them. If that comes to the line’s length, there’s only one way to fit it: 4 3 in a row of 8 is four knitted, one empty, three knitted.
3. Finish what’s done. Once a line has all its runs, mark the rest of it ✕. Each ✕ gives the lines crossing it less room.
4. Work from the edges. A knitted square on the edge of the swatch has to be the start of that line’s first run, so you can knit the rest of the run straight away.
5. Go back and forth. Every square you settle in a row is a new fact for its column. Sweep the rows, then the columns, then the rows again.
6. Mark empties freely. An ✕ is only a note to yourself, and it never counts against you. A swatch full of ✕s is often the quickest way to see the last few squares.

How it compares with other nonograms

Grandma’s Knitting plays by the classic rules, with a few things of its own:

• The puzzle is one color: a square is knitted or it isn’t. The yarns only show at the end, when the picture appears. (In color nonograms, each number also has a color to match.)
• The swatch is always 8 squares across, so the squares stay big enough to tap on a phone. Many nonograms in books and apps run much bigger.
• There’s one picture a day, the same for everyone.
• Once it’s knitted, the picture shows for a moment, then the swatch goes plain, so a screenshot of your result doesn’t give the day’s picture away.

If you came here looking for paint-by-number coloring, that’s a different thing: there, the numbers say which color goes in each space. In a nonogram you work the picture out. And if you like numbers that count what’s around them instead of runs, try The Kid’s Treasure Map, our daily minesweeper puzzle with no guessing, and our guide to it.

Why every picture has exactly one answer

Each of Grandma’s pictures is drawn by hand. Before it ever goes on a day, a solver knits it from the numbers alone, the way a player does: one row or column at a time, using only what that line’s numbers and its known squares say. If the solver can’t finish it that way, the picture is redrawn. A picture those rules finish has exactly one answer, and you can always reach it by logic, with no guessing. How we make puzzles with exactly one answer explains how the family’s other dailies are checked.

Your result, par and the streak

Every picture has a par time, about what the fastest third of players take. It shows while you play. Finish under par for a gold button on Grandma’s scarf. Your result shows your time and your streak, with a band of the scarf for each day you knit.

Share sends your picture’s number and your time, never the picture or its squares, with a link for a friend to try to beat your time. Grandma’s Knitting has its own board for your group and for the whole world, fastest first.

More daily puzzles from the Fibbersons

Grandma’s Knitting is one of the family’s free dailies. The others:

• Lie of Sight: a room seen from above, a family who each say what they saw, and one of them lying. About three minutes.
• Rex’s Fetch: lead Rex the dog through every square of the yard to the ball. See our guide to path puzzles.
• Lacey’s Web: spin a spider’s web back together from its numbered knots. See our Lacey’s Web guide.
• The Kid’s Treasure Map: each number counts the treasure around it. Flag every one. See our guide to it.

They’re all on the game picker, with the rules for each in How to play.

Questions people ask