🖼️ Picture Cross
🧩 Logic · 0 playsPicture Cross
Deduce a picture from the run-length clues beside each row and column.
About Picture Cross
Known elsewhere as a nonogram or picross. The numbers beside each row and above each column give the lengths of the filled runs in that line, in order, and from those clues alone the grid resolves into an image. It is pure deduction — no square needs to be guessed — and the standard opening technique is overlap: marking the cells that a long run must cover whichever position it occupies, then working outwards from those certainties. Grids run from five-by-five to fifteen-by-fifteen, and crossing out the squares proved empty matters as much as filling the ones proved full.
How to Play
Read each clue as the lengths of the filled runs in that line, in the order listed. Fill the cells you can prove are filled, and mark those you can prove are empty. The picture appears once the whole grid has been resolved.
💡 Tips & Strategy
Overlap is the technique that opens large rows. If a clue of 8 sits in a line of 10, the block can start at most two cells from either end, so the middle six cells are filled no matter how it is positioned. The longer the clue relative to the line, the bigger the guaranteed core — mark those first on every long clue.
Edges cut the guesswork. A clue touching the start of a line fixes its whole block, and an X marking a known blank acts as a fresh edge that lets you re-apply the overlap rule to the shorter segment beyond it. Marking blanks is as productive as marking fills.
Work rows and columns in alternating passes. A single confirmed cell in a row becomes a hard constraint on its column, and the puzzle unfolds through this cross-talk rather than through any one line being solved outright.
When a line stalls, count what is left. The clue numbers plus the mandatory single gaps between blocks give a minimum length; comparing that to the space remaining tells you how much slack exists, and a slack of zero means the whole line is forced.