Nonograms (PuzzleMadness)

About Nonograms (PuzzleMadness)

Nonograms, also called Picross or paint by numbers, is a grid puzzle where the answer is a picture. Every row and column has a list of numbers, and each number is a run of coloured squares in that line, in that order, with at least one blank square between runs. On PuzzleMadness the coloured squares are purple, and the larger grids run to 20x20 and beyond.

The daily page opens today's puzzle on its own, and its title carries the date (on 3 October 2026 it read "Daily Medium Nonograms Puzzle for Saturday 3rd October 2026"). There is a separate dated puzzle for each size: Small, Medium, Large, Extra Large and Mixed. Past days stay in the archive, so a missed puzzle can be played later, and there is a print version and an image download of the grid. PuzzleMadness does not publish solutions: the site tells you when you have finished a grid correctly or made a mistake. Each completed puzzle adds to your total on the Nonograms monthly and all-time leaderboards, where only your best score on any one puzzle counts.

The usual way in is overlap: in a long run clue, the squares that are coloured whether the run is pushed to the left end or to the right end must be coloured in any solution. Marking squares you know are blank matters as much as colouring, because it narrows the other lines. The grid sizes make it easy to scale the day: a small grid is a short warm-up, an extra large one takes a long sitting.

PuzzleMadness is a British puzzle site with dozens of daily puzzle types in the browser, from many sudoku variants to logic grids such as Nurikabe, Hashi and Slitherlink. It is free to play and carries ads. A free account keeps track of the puzzles you have finished and puts your name on the leaderboards, and the badges next to usernames mark how many puzzles a player has completed.

How to play Nonograms (PuzzleMadness)

1. Open the day's Nonograms page and choose a size: Small, Medium, Large, Extra Large or Mixed.
2. Read the clues: each number is a run of purple squares in that row or column, in order, with gaps between runs.
3. Colour squares you can prove are filled, and mark squares you can prove are blank.
4. Work back and forth between rows and columns until every clue is met and the picture appears.
5. The site tells you when the grid is complete and adds your score to the leaderboards.

Screenshots

Tips

• Start with the biggest clues: a run longer than half the line always fixes some squares in the middle.
• Mark blank squares as you prove them; they split lines into shorter pieces that are easier to solve.
• When a line's clues add up (with one gap each) to the full width, the whole line is fixed.

Questions