Patches.cafe

About Patches.cafe

Patches.cafe dresses the rectangle-dividing puzzle known as shikaku in a coffee and fabric theme: each rectangle is a patch, and you sew them until the board is covered. It was shown on Hacker News in August 2026.

The rules are short. Drag across the board to draw a rectangle; its area must match the number inside it, so a 4 can be 2 by 2 or 1 by 4. Every patch holds exactly one clue, and every playable cell must be covered without overlaps. Later boards add twists: gold clues that need a square patch, hidden numbers marked with a question mark, linked clues that must share a shape, arrows that ask for a wider or taller patch, fixed patches, buttons that block cells, double-layer cells crossed by two patches, and coffee stains that hide a clue until you build next to it.

The Daily Brew is numbered from 29 August 2026 and generated from the UTC date, so every player gets the same board; the 5 October board, #38, was an 8 by 8 grid. Each date has its own leaderboard, ordered by completion time and showing hint use. There are also a 1,000-level campaign, a 45-second Blitz, a Perfection mode and a level editor whose boards can be shared by code. No account is needed, and an optional private code syncs progress between devices.

It suits players of LinkedIn's Patches and other shikaku puzzles who want one fresh board a day with a few extra rules.

How to play Patches.cafe

1. Open Patches.cafe and choose Daily Brew.
2. Drag across the grid to draw a rectangle around a clue; its area must equal the number.
3. Make sure each rectangle holds exactly one clue.
4. Cover every playable cell without overlaps, working around buttons and fixed patches.
5. Finish the board to post your time on the day's leaderboard.

Tips

• Start with clues that have only one possible shape, such as a large number in a corner.
• A gold clue must be a square, which often fixes its patch at once.
• Coffee-stained clues reveal themselves when you place a patch next to them, so build around them early.

Questions