Number Blocks: The Jigsaw-Shaped Logic Puzzle That Never Makes You Guess
Open a shelf of logic puzzle books and it is sudoku, then sudoku again, then another word search collection with a new cover. Number Blocks (also known as Suguru or Tectonic) looks nothing like any of that. The grid is carved into bold, irregular cages, some a single cell, some a bent run of five, and it reads as a jigsaw puzzle that happens to use numbers. It stops a browser mid-scroll.
It also never cheats the solver. Puzzle Maker Pro checks every Number Blocks board for exactly one logic-only solution before it ever reaches your file, at every difficulty from a gentle Easy to a genuinely demanding Hard. No optional “harder mode” that quietly asks for a guess, no asterisk. What you publish is fair on page one and fair on the last page, and that is the review you want under a new title: nobody says “this puzzle is broken.”
See a finished board and its answer key in the gallery above, or try the free demo and carve out a few cage grids of your own before you spend a cent.
What a Finished Number Blocks Page Looks Like
This is the page a buyer actually holds. A real generated board: bold cage outlines of mixed shapes and sizes, a scatter of pre-filled givens, and the matching fully-solved answer key from the same pass.
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Export a page in the demo and judge the output quality for yourself before you choose an edition.
A Puzzle Under Three Names: Number Blocks, Suguru, and Tectonic
You may already know this puzzle. It is Suguru in most English-language puzzle books, and Tectonic on the pages of Dutch magazines, and it has been filling grids in print for years before you ever generated one here. Number Blocks is the same puzzle under its plainest name, so it title-tests well for readers who have never heard “Suguru” and still satisfies the ones who solve it every week under a different cover.
Few niche puzzles hand you that choice: launch it fresh as Number Blocks for a general audience, or lean into the recognition and title a collection Suguru or Tectonic for readers who already search those names. Smart Titles builds either automatically (see “Set Your Title Automatically” below), so the same puzzle serves a brand-new shelf and an established one without you re-learning anything.
It doesn’t play like anything you’ve already published. One row can hold a lone cell, a bent run of four, and a straight three, side by side, so the solve feels nothing like working through sudoku’s rows and boxes. That is new variety in a mixed collection, and a strong headline title on its own.
My spreadsheet said niche puzzle, thin market, skip it. Then a batch finished rendering: a five-cell hook wedged against a lone singleton, a domino jammed sideways into a run of three, nothing like sudoku’s tidy boxes. I killed the “skip it” note on the spot. Thirty-some puzzle types into this catalog, that’s still the test I trust over a spreadsheet: does it look like itself the moment it’s on screen. Number Blocks does.
What You Can Build With Number Blocks
One grid-based logic puzzle, several different shelves. It needs no word lists and no image sets to curate (the digits are the puzzle), so a Number Blocks book comes together with less setup than any word-list or image-based puzzle type in the catalog:
- Standalone Number Blocks or Suguru puzzle books for KDP and other print-on-demand platforms
- Printable Suguru and Tectonic worksheets and activity packs for Etsy, Teachers Pay Teachers, or your own site
- Mixed logic collections that place Number Blocks beside your other Puzzle Maker Pro puzzle types (mixed-book assembly is a Productivity feature)
- A full difficulty ladder in one title, from a gentle Easy warm-up to a Hard closer, with no separate content to source per level
- Branded or region-specific books, titled Suguru or Tectonic to match a market that already searches for it
Every Cage Checked, Every Difficulty
Here is what guess-free actually buys you as a publisher: no refund request because a puzzle quietly needed a lucky guess on page one, and no “allow guessing” toggle sitting around waiting to be left on by accident. What ships is what was checked.
Difficulty is a real ladder, not a cosmetic label. Easy leaves enough of the grid filled in that the next move is rarely a search. Medium asks the same simple logic but trims the givens to the minimum, so a solver has to hunt. Hard leans on cage-elimination logic almost every time on an 8×8 board or larger, the kind of puzzle a confident solver picks up specifically because it will not just fall open. One puzzle type, three genuinely different reading experiences, and every one of them fair.
From One Puzzle to a Full Book
One Number Blocks puzzle is a few seconds of work. A hundred of them, same size, same difficulty, each its own arrangement of cages and givens, is a different kind of job, and it is the one Time Saver is built for. With the Productivity edition, Time Saver generates the whole batch from one saved setup, each board with its answer key in the same pass, and Puzzle Book Studio drops them into a trim-sized interior with margins and page numbers, answer-key section included, alongside your other puzzle types if you want a mixed book. Set the look and the difficulty once, and the workflow produces the pages. That is how you generate a full Suguru or Tectonic puzzle book, cover to cover, from an afternoon’s setup.
Which Edition Should You Choose?
Two short decisions, not four competing tiers. Step one: Creative or Productivity decides your scale. Step two: step up to Creative Interactive or Productivity Interactive if you also want your puzzles to run on a screen. All four editions create and export real Number Blocks puzzles with matching solutions, full styling control, print-ready PNG, JPG, SVG, and PDF output, and single-set Puzzle Book Studio. Here is what actually changes between them.
Step 1: Creative or Productivity
Creative is best if you make and export puzzles one book or one product at a time. You get the full creator, every grid size and difficulty, complete styling control, and print-ready output. Number Blocks skips the Lite tier entirely: with no content to re-theme, there is no lighter version of the creator worth shipping, so Creative already gives you the full generator and every grid size. If you own other Puzzle Maker Pro modules, this is the same Creative tier you already know.
Productivity is best if you are producing full books or catalogs at volume. You get everything in Creative, plus Time Saver batch creation and unlimited, mixed-set Puzzle Book Studio, so a whole title, or a mixed logic book, comes from one saved setup.
Step 2: Step Up to Creative Interactive or Productivity Interactive (optional)
Creative Interactive and Productivity Interactive add interactive PDF, Puzzle Slides, and Online Play to the edition you chose in step one, so the same set that goes to print can also run on a screen. JSON export, the data format behind the interactive and web formats, ships with them too. Interactive is a new optional add-on chosen per module, not a higher rung on the same ladder; the on-screen formats are explained just below.
| What changes between editions | Creative | Creative Interactive | Productivity | Productivity Interactive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Time Saver batch creation | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Puzzle Book Studio, unlimited / mixed books | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Interactive PDF, Puzzle Slides, Online Play, JSON | No | Yes | No | Yes |
Every edition includes a commercial license: the Number Blocks puzzles you generate are yours to publish and sell (full terms below). Online Play is included in the Interactive editions and rolling out to the storefront shortly.
Not sure yet? Try the free demo and generate a few boards on the core feature set before you decide on scale or Interactive.
Make Your Puzzles Move With Creative Interactive or Productivity Interactive
Everything above prints exactly as shown on screen. Creative Interactive and Productivity Interactive turn the same generated set into formats a solver fills in on a screen, all from one purchase:
- Interactive PDF: a typed-entry PDF where the solver clicks a blank cage cell and types the digit, no printer required.
- Puzzle Slides: an interactive PowerPoint deck you project and a room fills in live, right on the slide. Run one at the front of a class before the worksheets come out, or as the five-minute icebreaker on a club night. It is a normal PowerPoint file start to finish, nothing to install.
- Online Play: publish your set to your own site and a curious visitor solves it right in the browser, on any device, before you have asked them to buy anything. (Rolling out to the storefront shortly.)
Whether your puzzles move is a different decision from how much you produce, which is why Interactive is a combined edition rather than a bigger tier. A single-title print seller may never need it. Someone building a lead-generating web game steps up without paying for batch tools they will not use. Choose the named edition that fits how you already work, per module, only for the puzzles you actually want to make interactive.
Style It Once, Reuse It Everywhere
Want your cage lines bold and your outer frame quiet, or the reverse? The region border draws the cage outlines and the puzzle border frames the page, and the two style independently, so one never forces the other to match. Four more controls round it out: digit font, canvas color, cell fill, and the thin cell border inside a cage. Set them once on a sample board, and the whole run, one puzzle or a thousand, carries the same look.
Set Your Title Automatically
Smart Titles fills in each puzzle’s grid size and difficulty automatically, so a hundred pages label themselves correctly without retyping a single one. Pick the name the batch carries, Number Blocks, Suguru, or Tectonic, plus value-only and fully custom options when you want your own words.
Who This Is For
Puzzle book publishers and POD sellers. Number Blocks is far rarer than sudoku, and still unknown to most readers under this name, so it is a shape your catalog can claim before it saturates the way sudoku already has. Save the setup once, and a print-ready title, dozens of boards, all checked and none of them guessed at, comes out of that same file.
Existing Puzzle Maker Pro customers. The Style tab, Time Saver, and Puzzle Book Studio work exactly like they do on every other module, so Number Blocks fits how you already build, just cages instead of your usual grid. To fold it into a mixed logic book alongside your other puzzle types, you will want Productivity, where unlimited, mixed-set Puzzle Book Studio lives; Creative builds Number Blocks-only titles. It is a new module added to your account as its own edition, not bundled into puzzle types you already own. Already run Puzzle Maker Pro? Add the module and it installs straight into the app you use now, no new workflow to learn.
Educators and puzzle-club leaders. Print a whole class’s worksheets from one setup, differentiated by grade: a 5×5 Easy to introduce logic grids to upper-elementary students (grades 3 to 5), an 8×8 Medium for middle-school practice, and an 11×11 Hard as a genuine stretch puzzle for a gifted group or a high-school logic elective. Every board arrives with its answer key from the same pass. There is no theme skin to distract from the reasoning, which keeps it a clean fit for a logic or number-sense lesson rather than a seasonal activity page. A single differentiated set is a Creative job; building an ongoing worksheet line is where Productivity’s batch creation earns its keep, and every edition’s license already covers selling those worksheets on Teachers Pay Teachers or your own store. With Creative Interactive or Productivity Interactive, run a live round on the projector or publish a set for practice online.
Licensing and Commercial Use
Every edition includes a commercial license, and the two tiers cover two different kinds of selling:
- Creative gives you the right to sell the puzzles you generate to the people who solve them: publish and sell them as books, worksheets, and printables on KDP, Etsy, Teachers Pay Teachers, or your own storefront.
- Productivity adds a business license on top: supply or sell your generated Number Blocks puzzles to other publishers and sellers, not only to end readers.
The puzzles you make are yours to keep and sell under either edition.
Product Details
| Product | Number Blocks (also known as Suguru, Tectonic) |
| Editions | Creative, Creative Interactive, Productivity, Productivity Interactive |
| Platform | Windows desktop |
| Internet required | Download and activation only; you create and export puzzles offline |
| Grid sizes | Nine in all: 5×5 through 11×11, plus 5×10 and 10×5 |
| Difficulty levels | Easy, Medium, Hard (always guess-free) |
| Static output | PNG, JPG, SVG, PDF |
| Interactive formats | Interactive PDF, Puzzle Slides, JSON, and Online Play, rolling out shortly (Creative Interactive / Productivity Interactive) |
| Time Saver batch creation | Productivity |
| Puzzle Book Studio | Single set on Creative; unlimited / mixed on Productivity |
| Commercial license | Sell to readers (Creative); adds selling to other publishers and sellers (Productivity) |
| Delivery | Immediate, in your member area |
| Free demo | Yes |
Questions Before You Buy
Is there a free demo?
Yes. Every Puzzle Maker Pro module includes a free demo, so you can try Number Blocks and see real output before buying.
What is a Number Blocks puzzle?
A cage logic puzzle played on a grid carved into irregular cages of one to five cells. Each cage holds a run of digits from 1 up to its size, once each, and identical digits can never touch, including diagonally, even across cage boundaries.
Is Number Blocks the same puzzle as Suguru or Tectonic?
Yes. They are the same puzzle under different names, Suguru in most English-language puzzle books, Tectonic in Dutch magazines. Number Blocks is not related to the Numberblocks children’s television series.
Are the puzzles really solvable without guessing?
Yes, at every difficulty. Every board is checked to have exactly one solution reachable by logic alone before it is used. There is no “harder mode” that trades that guarantee away.
Can I adjust the difficulty and size?
Yes. Nine grid sizes in all, from 5×5 through 11×11, plus tall and wide 5×10 and 10×5 layouts, each available in Easy, Medium, or Hard.
Which edition do I need?
Choose Creative to create and export puzzles for a single book or product. Choose Productivity for batch creation and unlimited or mixed-book assembly. Step up to Creative Interactive or Productivity Interactive for interactive PDF, Puzzle Slides, and Online Play.
Can I create a full book quickly?
Yes, with Productivity. Time Saver runs a batch of unique puzzles from one saved setup, and Puzzle Book Studio assembles them into a finished book.
Can I re-theme the digits into images or icons?
No. Number Blocks digits are fixed puzzle logic, not customizable content, in every edition.
Does it support interactive or web output?
Yes, with Creative Interactive or Productivity Interactive: a typed-entry interactive PDF and a presentable Puzzle Slides deck. Web-playable Online Play is part of the same edition and is rolling out to the storefront shortly.
Can I use the puzzles in books I sell?
Yes. Every edition includes a commercial license. Creative covers selling finished puzzles to readers and end customers (books, worksheets, and printables on KDP, Etsy, Teachers Pay Teachers, or your own site); Productivity adds the right to sell to other publishers and sellers.
How do I get the software after I buy?
Immediately. Your download and license appear in your member area the moment your order completes.
The Shelf Is Full of Sudoku. Give It Something Else.
A shelf of interchangeable sudoku books competes on price. A shelf with a puzzle almost nobody else is running does not have to fight on price alone. Number Blocks is carved into jigsaw cages instead of nine-by-nine boxes, so a reader spots the difference before they read a single clue, and it is a shape you will not find on the sudoku table beside it.
That’s the whole pitch, really: a grid that reads differently at a glance, backed by a solution guarantee that holds at every difficulty. Generate one batch, look at it next to whatever else you’re selling, and choose the edition that fits above.
Try the free demo and see the cages for yourself.
