Magnetism as a rule, not a fastener
A magnetic jigsaw puzzle that pushes back.
Every magnetic puzzle you can buy uses its magnets to hold still. This one uses them to argue with you. Each piece carries a charge, positive or negative or neutral, and opposites attract the way they do in the world. Two pieces that plainly belong together will refuse each other if their charges match, and the one on the table slides out from under the one in your hand. It is called Monopole, it plays in your browser, and it is free.
free · no sign-up · in your browser · 25 to 600 pieces
Where it came from
It started with a puzzle on a fridge door.
We saw a jigsaw made to stick to a fridge, and instead of buying it we started wondering what would happen if the magnets did more than hold. What if the pieces pulled at each other. What if some of them pushed each other away, and you had to build the picture around that.
Cardboard cannot do it. Glue a magnet behind every piece and they clump together in the box, or they shove each other off the door, and either way the puzzle stops being a puzzle some time before you have finished it. A screen has no such trouble. It can hand you the thing physics denies us, and then hold it steady while you play, which is the only argument this page really makes for doing a jigsaw on a screen at all.
So we built Monopole. It adds a whole dimension to a jigsaw without adding a single new control: you still pick pieces up and put them down, and the board decides the rest. Nothing about the picture changes, and nothing about the cut is unusual. What changes is which of the joins you can see are actually available to you tonight.
The rule
Opposites attract. Like charges will not have it.
Pick a piece up and drop it near a neighbour it belongs beside, and what happens next depends on the two charges. Opposite charges reach for each other: the piece in your hand drifts through the last of the gap and joins. Matching charges refuse, and the refusal is not a message on the screen, it is a thing you watch happen. The idle piece slides away from yours, about a third of a piece width, directly along the line between them. Neutral pieces pull at nothing and push at nothing. They join the plain way, when you set them close enough to snap.
Only true neighbours are ever involved. A piece from the far side of the picture has nothing to say to the one you are holding, and neither does one sitting corner to corner. Charges also act between pieces turned the same way, so if you let the table deal your pieces tumbled you can still build at any angle you like and set the picture upright at the end.
| What you are holding | What it lands beside | What the board does |
|---|---|---|
| positive | negative | they join, and the block is neutral |
| negative | positive | they join, and the block is neutral |
| positive | neutral | they join, and the block turns positive |
| negative | neutral | they join, and the block turns negative |
| neutral | neutral | they snap together as usual, still neutral |
| positive | positive | no join, and it backs away from you |
| negative | negative | no join, and it backs away from you |
Here is the part that keeps the game moving, and it is the reason the mode exists. Joining two opposites cancels them: the block you have just made is neutral, and a neutral block will take anything. So the plan suggests itself straight away. Make neutrals, then tidy up at your leisure.
It does not work, because the moment a charged piece joins a neutral block, the whole block inherits that charge. A block you had been feeding freely turns positive under your hands, and now half of what you had lined up against it is a piece that runs away. Every join is a small decision about what the block is going to become, the board changes its mind about you as often as you change yours about it, and the chase starts over.
What you see
The board tells you only when it matters.
A piece lying on the table wears no badge and no colour. Pick it up and its outline takes the charge it is carrying: blush for positive, sky for negative, ink for neutral. When two matching charges refuse each other, both outlines pulse softly as they part. When a join lands, the new block glows for a moment in the charge it has just become, which is how you find out what you are now holding. Put everything down and the table goes quiet again, and looks like any other jigsaw.
Colour is never left to carry it alone. Picking a cluster up says its charge out loud to a screen reader, and so do the attractions and the refusals. If you have asked your device for less motion, the drift and the recoil go away and the result of the drop is exactly the same.
Five steps
From partners near, to pure charge.
A slider before you deal decides how the charges are laid across the board. It changes the shape of the problem rather than the number of pieces, so a hundred piece table can be a gentle evening or a long one depending only on where you left it.
Gentle, partners near
Every charged piece has its opposite lying right beside it, and neutrals are scattered through the board. Reach for a join and it is usually there. This is the one to learn the rules on.
Partners drift apart
The same board, further out of reach. Matching charges start to deal in short runs, so the piece you want is no longer the piece next to you, and you begin to notice the order you are working in.
Like charges gather
Runs grow, and neighbouring columns begin to share a pattern, so same-charge blocks spread sideways as well as down. Neutrals thin out. Merges want thinking about a move or two ahead.
Long runs of like charges
Long stretches of one charge, in blocks two and three columns wide. An opposite partner is a thing you go and find rather than a thing you happen upon, and the neutral rest is nearly gone.
Pure charge, no rest
No neutral pieces at all, on any board whose rows divide in two. Every neutral on the table is one you made, and spending it in the wrong place is how an evening gets long.
Every one of those can be finished. That is not a compliment about your cleverness, it is arithmetic: the charges in each column cancel out, and a run that cancels out always collapses to a single neutral block, after which the neutral columns merge freely. The slider moves how much planning a table costs you. It never moves whether the picture can be built.
One seat or two
Alone, or with the other chair filled.
On your own it is a table of your own: twenty-five pieces up to six hundred, cut from a painting in the museum gallery or from a photo you upload, and it keeps your place as you go. Close the tab in the middle of an argument with a positive block and the same argument is waiting tomorrow.
For two, the room deals one cut and two seats and nothing else. You each pick your own picture, so the pieces in front of you are yours to look at while the puzzle underneath is shared. The charges are shared as well, and agreed by both screens rather than guessed at locally, which matters more here than on a plain board: a piece that runs away from one of you runs away from the other, the same distance, in the same direction. Voice and chat are already at the table, so you can both watch a block turn positive at the same moment and say something about it.
Questions
Before you deal.
What is a magnetic puzzle?
Usually a physical one. The pieces have a magnetic backing so the puzzle holds to a fridge door or the lid of a travel tin, and the magnets are there to stop it sliding off. This is the other kind. Nothing here sticks to anything, because the magnetism is in the rules rather than in the packaging. Each piece carries a charge, and the charges decide which joins the board will allow.
Are there magnetic jigsaw puzzles for adults?
Most of the ones you can buy are made for small children: fifteen large pieces in a fold-out case for a long car journey. This one runs from twenty-five pieces up to six hundred, cut from paintings at The Met or from a photo of your own, and the charges give you a second problem to solve on top of the picture. Nothing about it is childish.
How do you play a magnetic puzzle game?
The same way you play any jigsaw, with one extra thing happening on every drop. Pick up a piece, or a block you have already joined, and set it near a neighbour it belongs beside. Opposite charges pull it the rest of the way in and join. Matching charges refuse, and the piece already on the table backs away from yours. Neutral pieces snap the ordinary way. All of it resolves when you let go, so the board never squirms while you are still deciding.
Can I play a magnetic jigsaw puzzle online for free?
Yes. This is a web page. It costs nothing, there is no account to make, there is nothing to install, and no piece count or setting is held back behind progress. Open it on a phone, a tablet or a laptop and deal a table.
Can two people play it together?
Yes. A room seats exactly two, and you share one cut, one set of charges and one board. What you do not share is the picture. Each of you chooses your own, so the pieces in front of you show whatever you picked and the puzzle underneath is still the same one. Voice and chat sit in the room.
Is a magnetic puzzle harder than an ordinary one?
It is a different problem rather than a bigger one. On an ordinary table the only question is where a piece goes. Here you often know where it goes and still have to work out whether the board will let you put it there yet, and what has to happen first. A slider before you deal sets how much of that planning the board asks for.
Can the board get stuck?
No. Every deal can be finished, at every step of the slider, and that is built into how the charges are handed out rather than checked afterwards. The charges in each column cancel out, and a run that cancels out can always be collapsed into one neutral block. So a table can cost you a great deal of planning and it can never become impossible.
Can I use my own photo?
Yes. Upload one and the cut falls across it instead of a painting, so you can play a magnetic puzzle on a place you have been or a face you know. The picture is cut up in your own browser and is not sent anywhere. If you would rather browse, there are hundreds of public domain paintings from The Met.
Does it save if I close the tab?
Yes. A solo table keeps its place on the device you are playing on, charges included, so the block you had built and the polarity it had settled at are both waiting when you come back. There is room for one solo table at a time, and the menu offers it to you before you deal another.
Do you sell a physical magnetic puzzle?
No, we sell nothing at all. If what you want is a puzzle that lives on the fridge door between sittings, go and buy one. They are lovely, and this page is not trying to talk you out of it. Come here for the part cardboard cannot do, which is to let the magnets make the rules.
If you wanted the quiet one
The plain table is here too.
Some evenings the right puzzle is the one with no rules in it. The classic table cuts a jigsaw out of whatever you give it, a painting or a photo of your own, from twenty-five to six hundred pieces, and every piece that belongs beside another will simply go there. It is the same board, the same gallery and the same two seats, with the magnets switched off.