Play tangram online

How to play

Not sure where to start? How to play has the rules and the controls, and walks through a whole figure one piece at a time. If you would rather learn with the pieces in your hands, the interactive tutorial solves the square with you.

How difficulty is rated

There are four difficulties, each with the tag it wears on the shelf and over the board:

• Difficulty: easyThe outline gives most of the pieces away.
• Difficulty: mediumSome of the pieces have to be worked out.
• Difficulty: hardThe outline gives almost nothing away.
• Difficulty: impossibleOnly the variations, with pieces of their own and one plain shape to fill.

Every tangram puzzle is rated easy, medium or hard, and the rating is measured from the shape rather than guessed. What makes a tangram hard is how little its outline gives away: a piece with its edges on the outside of the figure shows where it goes, while a piece hemmed in by other pieces has to be worked out.

To rate a puzzle, we add up the length of piece edge hidden inside the figure, where one piece meets another and the silhouette shows nothing. The more of it there is, the harder the puzzle. That is why a figure with parts sticking out is usually easy, and a plain square, which looks the simplest of all, is among the hardest. We checked the measure against how long people take over their first solve of each puzzle, and it holds.

Beat your best time

Every tangram puzzle here is free to play online, as often as you like. Your best time on each one is saved, in this browser or in your account if you are signed in, so a puzzle you have already solved is still worth coming back to. Each puzzle also has a record, the fastest anybody has solved it: beat it and it is yours until somebody is quicker.

The board counts your moves as well as your seconds. Solving in fewer moves is a different challenge from solving fast, and for a harder run still, leave the three hints alone.

A note from us

We made this collection because we love tangram puzzles and wanted a place to play them online that is free and quick to open. Every silhouette here is one we have made sure can be solved, and we keep adding new shapes.

We would love to hear what you think. If a puzzle plays badly, or there is a shape you would like to see, tell us.

More

• Daily tangram: one shape a day, the same for everyone
• Archive: how each of your days went
• Printable PDFs: the pieces and shapes on paper
• What is a tangram?: where the puzzle comes from