Jungle Nonogram

How To Play Jungle Nonogram

Each puzzle hides a picture. Use the number clues to work out which squares are filled. When every square is right, the picture appears in colour.

Reading the clues

The numbers beside each row and above each column are runs: blocks of filled squares next to each other.
Runs appear in order: left to right for rows, top to bottom for columns.
There is always at least one empty square between two runs.
A clue of 0 means the whole line is empty.

For example, a row clue of 3 1 means a run of three filled squares, then at least one gap, then a single filled square.

Controls

Tap a square to fill it.
Drag to fill several squares in one go. A drag locks to the row or column you start along, and the number in the top-left corner counts the squares you're covering.
Switch to the ✕ tool to mark squares you know are empty. Crossed squares are protected, so you can't fill them by accident.
Start a tap or drag on a square that already has a mark to erase it.
Undo and redo as much as you like.
On a computer, right-click to use the other tool. Keyboard shortcuts: Z undo, Y redo, X or Space switch tool, H hint.

Help along the way

A clue fades when its line matches it.
A clue turns red when the marks in its line can no longer fit it, so something there is wrong.
Catch mistakes (on by default) marks a wrong fill with a red ✕ straight away and counts it. Turn it off in Settings if you'd rather find your own errors.
The hint button first clears any wrong mark. After that it fills in the next step you could have worked out, and highlights the clue it came from, so you can see why.

Getting started: three tricks

1. Big numbers overlap. Picture a run pushed as far left as it can go, then as far right. Any square it covers both times must be filled. A clue of 8 in a row of 10 always fills the middle six:

Pushed left, pushed right, and the six squares that must be filled.

2. Add it up. If the runs plus the gaps between them add up to the length of the line, there is only one way to place them. For example, 4 5 in a row of 10 is 4 + 1 + 5 = 10.

3. Cross what you know. Once a line is done, cross its empty squares. Every cross and every filled square gives you new information about the lines running the other way. Solving is a steady back-and-forth between rows and columns.

Packs, difficulty and Endless

There are three packs of hand-drawn pictures: Seedlings (5×5), Canopy (10×10) and Treetops (15×15). The dots on each puzzle show its difficulty, which depends on the kind of thinking it needs, not its size:

Easy: the lines fall into place quickly.
Medium: expect more back-and-forth between rows and columns before things settle.
Hard: at least once, you'll need to ask "what if this square were filled?" and follow it until something breaks.

Endless makes a fresh abstract puzzle whenever you like, at 5×5, 10×10 or 15×15 in any difficulty.

Every puzzle, hand-drawn or generated, has exactly one answer, and you can always reach it by logic. You never have to guess. Progress in the packs and Endless saves automatically, so you can leave a puzzle and come back to it later.

Make your own puzzles

Open Create from the home screen and choose a size: 5×5, 10×10 or 15×15. Draw a picture and it becomes a puzzle.

Tap or drag to draw. Start on a filled square to erase instead. The clues around the grid update as you draw.
The buttons along the bottom are undo, redo, invert (swap filled and blank squares) and clear.
Give your picture a name at the top. In the ⋯ menu you can change the size or pick the colour it reveals in when solved.
On a computer, right-click to erase. Keyboard shortcuts: Z undo, Y redo, I invert.

As you draw, the bar under the grid checks your puzzle:

✓ Ready, with a difficulty: it has exactly one answer that logic can reach. Tap Play to try it.
More than one answer: the hatched squares could go either way, so the clues can't tell them apart. Add or remove a square near them.
Needs guessing or Too tangled: logic alone can't settle the hatched squares. Simplify that area.

Your puzzles save as you draw and wait for you under My puzzles.

Share a puzzle

When your puzzle is ready, open the ⋯ menu and tap Copy puzzle code. Codes start with JN1. and can be sent in any message. To use one, go to Create → Enter a puzzle code and paste it:

Play solves it. The picture's name stays hidden until you finish.
Open in editor gives you your own copy to look at or change.

Print a puzzle

Any puzzle can be downloaded as a black-and-white SVG image, ready to print. Download it blank to solve on paper, or download the solution as an answer key. Blank sheets include a short reminder of the rules.

While playing: open Settings → Download this puzzle (SVG).
Your own puzzles: use Download puzzle or Download solution in the editor's ⋯ menu.

Contact: Feel free to contact us with any bugs, complaints, or requests.

Release Date: September 26, 2026

History

Nonograms are a young puzzle. Crosswords go back over a century and tangrams further still, but the picture-grid puzzle only appeared in the late 1980s, in Japan, and it was invented twice at almost the same time.

Pictures made of windows

In 1987 a Japanese graphics editor named Non Ishida won a competition in Tokyo for designing pictures from the lit and unlit windows of a skyscraper. Seeing an image as a grid of on-and-off squares gave her the idea for a puzzle: describe each row and column with numbers, and let the solver rebuild the picture. In 1988 she published three of these as Window Art Puzzles.

At about the same time a professional puzzle maker, Tetsuya Nishio, came up with the same kind of puzzle independently and published it in a different magazine. That is one reason the puzzle has so many names: nobody owned it from the start.

A name from Britain

The British puzzle collector James Dalgety came across Ishida's puzzles and helped bring them to the West. He named them nonograms, joining "Non", from Non Ishida, with "gram", from "diagram". In 1990 The Sunday Telegraph began printing one every week, and by 1993 there were nonogram books in both Japan and the UK.

In 1998 the Telegraph asked its readers to pick a new name. They chose Griddlers, which is why many British puzzle books still use it. Elsewhere the same puzzle is called Hanjie, Paint by Numbers, Picture Logic and Japanese Crosswords, among others.

Into video games

In 1995 Nintendo released Mario's Picross for the Game Boy. Its name for the puzzle, "Picross", is short for "picture crossword". The series ran on through Nintendo's handhelds and consoles and introduced a generation of players to the genre, often before they had ever seen one in a newspaper.

Harder than it looks

Mathematicians have shown that solving nonograms in general is one of the famously hard "NP-complete" problems: no known method solves every large nonogram quickly. Good puzzles avoid that trap. They are designed so that each step follows from the last, and the only answer can be reached by logic. Every puzzle in Jungle Nonogram is checked for exactly that.

Behind the Scenes

Jungle Nonogram: picture logic, no guessing

I'll admit it: until recently, nonograms had somehow slipped past me completely. Once I found them, it was obvious they belonged on Cheery Chimp. It's a puzzle of pure logic that ends with a little picture you've been drawing without knowing it.

What's a nonogram?

You get an empty grid with numbers beside every row and above every column. Each number is a run of filled squares, in order, with gaps between the runs. Work out which squares are filled and a hidden picture appears. It's part Sudoku, part pixel art. The game's How to play page explains the rules and three tricks to get you started.

What's in the game

34 hand-drawn puzzles in three packs: Seedlings (5×5) to learn on, Canopy (10×10) for the real thing, and Treetops (15×15) for bigger pictures. There are coconuts, toucans, a very determined snail, and a chimp or two.
Endless mode makes a fresh abstract puzzle whenever you want one, at 5×5, 10×10 or 15×15, in Easy, Medium or Hard.
Create: draw your own pictures and turn them into puzzles, then play them or share them as a code.
Printable sheets: download any puzzle, or its solution, as a black-and-white image for solving on paper.
A colour reveal when you finish: the grid lines melt away and the picture fills in.

The no-guessing promise

The worst thing a nonogram can do is make you guess. Some puzzles you'll find online have two possible answers, or can only be finished by trial and error, and it's deflating to get to the end of one of those. So every puzzle in Jungle Nonogram, including every Endless puzzle, is run through a solver before you see it. It has to have exactly one answer, reachable by logic alone.

The same solver sets the difficulty. It's graded by the kind of thinking a puzzle needs, not by size. On an Easy puzzle the lines fall into place quickly. Medium needs more back-and-forth between rows and columns. Hard needs at least one "what if this square were filled?" line of reasoning that you follow until it breaks. A 10×10 Hard is a much tougher puzzle than a 15×15 Easy.

Draw your own

Making a good nonogram is harder than it looks. Draw a picture carelessly and you usually get a puzzle with two answers, or one that can only be finished by guessing. So the Create screen does the checking for you. As you draw, the clues build themselves around the grid, and the same solver that checks the built-in puzzles works on yours in the background.

When your picture has exactly one answer that logic can reach, it says Ready and tells you how hard it is. When it doesn't, it hatches the exact squares causing the trouble: the ones that could swap, or the ones logic can't pin down. Usually one added or removed square fixes it.

Once it's ready you can play it, download it to print, or copy its puzzle code and send it to a friend. They paste the code into Jungle Nonogram to solve it, and your picture's name stays secret until they finish.

Take it offline

Any puzzle can be downloaded as a clean black-and-white sheet, ready to print. You get the grid, the clues, a two-line reminder of the rules, and a separate answer key if you want one. It's handy for a classroom, a waiting room, or anyone who likes a pencil in hand.

Made for a phone

Big grids on small screens are the classic nonogram problem, so a few things are there to help:

Drags lock to a single row or column, and a counter shows how many squares you've covered.
The row and column under your finger light up, clues included.
Clues fade when their line is done, and turn red if something in the line can't be right.
Catch mistakes is on by default and flags a wrong square as soon as you fill it. Turn it off in Settings for a purer challenge.
If you're stuck, the hint doesn't just reveal a square. It fills in the next step you could have worked out and shows you which clue it came from.

Start with Seedlings if nonograms are new to you too. Five-by-five puzzles take a minute or two, and by the end of the pack the rules will feel natural. Then head up into the Canopy, and when you're ready, try drawing one of your own.