Spatial reasoning puzzles for adults
Spatial reasoning puzzles for adults ask you to picture a space and work out what fits, what blocks what, and what can be seen from where. Lie of Sight is a free daily one: a room seen from above and a family who each say what they saw. One of them is lying, and you prove who by working out each person’s line of sight. It’s told in pictures, so there’s almost nothing to read.
What spatial reasoning is
Spatial reasoning is thinking about where things are. It’s what you do when you pack the trunk of a car, read a map upside down, or wonder whether the sofa will fit through the door. You hold a picture in your head, turn it, and ask what is in the way.
A spatial reasoning puzzle gives that kind of thinking a job. The good ones are fair, so you can always get there by looking harder, and there is a lovely click when the picture finally makes sense.
A logic puzzle told in pictures
Each Lie of Sight case is a room seen from above: walls, furniture and the Fibberson family. Each of them says what they saw, or didn’t see, from where they stood, and exactly one of them is lying. Their stories are pictures too: a face, an eye, and the thing they saw.
So every story is a question about space. “I saw the clock” means “I stood somewhere with the clock in view”. You drag each person around the board and watch which squares their sight reaches, until every story but one fits at once. The one that never fits belongs to the liar.
How each of the family sees
The puzzle is in their differences. Each of them notices things by one rule, and the shaded squares in each picture are what the game itself works out.
Dad
How Dad sees
Sees his whole row and column. Walls and tall things block what's behind them.
In your head: Straight lines. Picture his row and his column as two beams, stopped by walls and anything tall.
The Kid
How the Kid sees
Sees his whole row and column, but he's short: low things block him too, like tables, sofas, the cake and the vase. He can crawl under tables and sofas, but others still see him there.
In your head: The same beams, lower down. A sofa or a table that Dad sees over is a wall to the Kid.
Grandma
How Grandma sees
Sees all 8 directions, but only 2 tiles. Walls and tall things block her. She can peek around a corner only if she could step around it.
In your head: Eight short beams, two squares long: along her row, her column and both diagonals, stopped by walls and tall things.
Rex
How Rex sees
Can't see. Smells the 8 tiles around him, through walls and furniture.
In your head: No lines at all: the ring of eight squares around him, and walls don’t count.
Fibs
How Fibs sees
Fibs never looks at anything straight on. She watches along her four diagonals, as far as they go. Walls and tall things block her; low things don't.
In your head: Only the diagonals, like a bishop in chess. Her own row and column are blind spots.
More about each of them in meet the Fibbersons.
No reading needed
Because the stories are pictures, the puzzle itself needs no reading. That makes it a good one for children who are still learning to read, for players whose first language isn’t English, and for a family sharing one phone. Grown-ups get the same fair, one-answer puzzle, and the later cases ask a lot of them.
Playing with grandchildren? See brain games for seniors. Want three small ones first, with the answers hidden? Try find the liar puzzles.
Questions people ask
What is a spatial reasoning puzzle?
A puzzle you solve by picturing things in space: where things are, what is in the way, and what can be seen from where. Mazes, tangrams and block puzzles are spatial; so is working out who could see the clock from across a room.
Do I need to read to play Lie of Sight?
Not to solve a case. Each story is shown as a picture: a face, an eye or a nose, and the thing they say they saw or smelled. The menus and the help have words, in English.
How long does a case take?
Most take 2 to 5 minutes. There is one new case a day, free in any browser, with no sign-up to start.
Ready for today’s case?
A new case every day. Free, with no sign-up to start.