Shakashaka (PuzzleMadness)

About Shakashaka (PuzzleMadness)

Shakashaka is a Japanese puzzle about shapes. The grid is mostly white with a few black squares, some numbered. You add black triangles, each filling half a square on a diagonal, so that every white area left over is a rectangle. The rectangles can be upright or tilted at 45 degrees. A number on a black square counts the triangles in the squares next to it.

The daily page opens today's puzzle on its own, and its title carries the date (on 3 October 2026 it read "Daily Medium Shakashaka Puzzle for Saturday 3rd October 2026"). There is a separate dated puzzle for each size: Small, Medium, 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 Shakashaka monthly and all-time leaderboards, where only your best score on any one puzzle counts.

Numbered squares with as many open neighbours as their number are the start, and the shape of each forced triangle is usually decided by the walls around it. Remember a white area must be a clean rectangle: any corner that would be a notch needs a triangle to cut it.

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 Shakashaka (PuzzleMadness)

1. Open the day's Shakashaka page and choose Small, Medium, Large or Mixed.
2. Fill squares around numbers that need every open neighbour to hold a triangle.
3. Pick each triangle's orientation so the white space beside it stays rectangular.
4. Make every white area a rectangle, upright or diagonal; the site marks the puzzle solved.

Screenshots

Tips

• A 0 means no triangles touch it; its neighbours are plain white.
• Triangles in corners usually have only one orientation that fits.
• Diagonal rectangles are built from triangles along all four edges.

Questions