Patches is a logic puzzle about cutting a grid into rectangles. You get a square board with a few clue cells on it, and you divide the whole board into rectangular patches so that every patch contains exactly one clue and matches what that clue says about its shape and size. There is no luck, no word knowledge and almost no arithmetic, just geometry and deduction.
Patches in one minute
A board is a square grid: 6×6 for the daily puzzle, and up to 10×10 here. A handful of cells hold clues. Each clue ends up inside exactly one patch, and each patch is a solid rectangle. When you finish, every cell of the board belongs to exactly one patch, with no gaps and no overlaps.
A clue can tell you two things:
- A shape. Square means the patch is a square. Wide means it is wider than it is tall, and Tall means it is taller than it is wide. A dashed Freeform clue allows any rectangle.
- A number. If there is one, it is the exact number of cells in the patch.
Some clues show both, some show only one, and a blank Freeform clue shows neither. The less a clue tells you, the more you work out from the clues around it.
On the board above, the Square 9 in the bottom row and the two Square clues without numbers all turn out to be 3×3 blocks. The Tall 3 is a single column three cells high, the Square 4 in the top-right corner is a 2×2, and the Wide clue with no number fills the last two cells.
Why it is a logic puzzle, not a drawing game
Every board has exactly one solution, and you can reach it without guessing. On this site a built-in solver checks each board by solving it the way a person would, one forced step at a time, and a board is only used if that works. So every move you make can be justified: this clue has only one rectangle that fits, that cell can only be reached by one clue, this region has exactly enough room.
That is what makes Patches satisfying. The first moves come from clues that leave no choice, and each patch you place becomes a wall that narrows the options around it, until the last patches drop into place. Our Patches tips & strategy page walks through two real boards step by step.
Where the format comes from
Patches belongs to a family of grid-division puzzles. Its closest relative is Shikaku, a Japanese pencil puzzle published by Nikoli, where every clue is a number and each number is the area of its rectangle. Patches keeps Shikaku's core rule, one clue per rectangle and every cell covered, and adds shape clues. Because a clue can name a shape without a size, or a size without a shape, you reason about proportions as well as area, and a small 6×6 board still has plenty to think about. The full comparison, including which techniques carry over, is on Patches vs. Shikaku.
The name and the shape-clue format are best known from LinkedIn, which runs Patches as one of its daily puzzle games. Our page on LinkedIn Patches covers that version and how it differs from this site. Patches Game is independent and not affiliated with LinkedIn; it lets you play the same kind of puzzle with no account and no daily limit.
How Patches works on this site
- A daily puzzle. A new 6×6 Medium board every day at 00:00 UTC, the same for everyone. Every daily since April 2026 is in the archive.
- Three sizes, three difficulties. 6×6, 8×8 and 10×10 in Easy, Medium and Hard, in Unlimited Mode or the catalog of 600 curated boards.
- Difficulty by information. On Easy every clue shows a shape and a number. On Medium about half the clues show only a shape. On Hard most clues are Freeform and many have no number.
- A timed mode. Beat the Clock starts you with one minute and banks extra time for every board you solve.
- Help when you want it. Undo, Reset, and a Hint button that works in steps, from pointing at the next clue to placing its patch for you.
Patches compared with other daily logic puzzles
If you already play a daily logic puzzle, here is how Patches relates to the ones you are most likely to know.