Nonogram

Also called picross or a Japanese crossword. The numbers down the side and across the top say how many squares in that line are shaded and in what order, with at least one blank between blocks — so "4 2" means four together, a gap, then two. Work line by line and a picture comes out. Every picture on these pages is checked by a solver that is only allowed to reason about one row or column at a time, exactly as a child does, and is thrown away if that is not enough to finish it: no page here needs a guess. The 5x5 is a five-minute warm-up, the 10x10 is the standard puzzle, and the 15x15 is a long sit-down. The simple shapes are drawn for this job and come out looking like themselves at every size; a picture squared off from a clip-art theme is a silhouette rather than a portrait, and wants the bigger grids.

Age

ages 7–12

Answer key

Included, free

Skills

logicproblem solvingconcentrationcounting

What you can change

• Grid size

  5 x 5, 10 x 10, 15 x 15

• Picture

  Simple shapes, From a theme

• Which shape

  Surprise me, Heart, Star, House, Tree, Fish…

• Show a worked example

• Every page also takes the book's language, page size, theme and pictures.