How to solve

A foldable word search is printed as a flat net that you cut out and fold into a cube or a box. The words run in straight lines across the faces and around the edges, so many of them only join up once the shape is folded. Some puzzles hide a secret word in the leftover letters.

A foldable maze is printed as a flat net that you cut out and fold into a cube or a box. The path runs across the faces and over the edges, so you solve it on the 3D shape, or flat on the sheet by following the lettered edges. This page covers the rules, how maze chains link several shapes with numbered portals, and a simple way to solve one.

Foldable mazes and word searches also play in the browser, as a 3D shape you can turn in your hand. This guide covers the controls: watching the net fold, turning the shape, drawing a maze route or selecting words over the edges, jumping between the shapes of a maze chain, and checking your answer.

Foldable mazes and word searches print as a flat net that becomes a cube or a box. This guide covers the hands-on part — printing, cutting, folding, gluing the lettered tabs and closing the lid neatly — plus tips for running it as a classroom activity or selling it as a printable.

A tetromino puzzle is a small board plus a bank of pieces made of four squares, and you win by placing every piece so the whole board is covered with no gaps and no overlaps. This guide covers the five shapes, the rules, a complete worked example and the tips that get kids and first-time solvers to the end.

A pentomino puzzle gives you a board and a set of pieces, each made of five squares; you solve it by fitting every piece onto the board so that every square is covered exactly once. This guide explains the rules, walks through a complete small puzzle, and shows the habits that make most pentomino puzzles fall into place.

Some Suguru boards go down in one long run of forced cells. You read a cage, you see the one digit that fits, you write it, and the cell next door opens up. Then you meet a board that stops. Twenty cells are filled, sixteen are empty, and every cage you look at has two

A Shikaku puzzle is a grid with numbers scattered through it, and the whole job is to cut that grid into rectangles. It takes about thirty seconds to learn and rather longer to get good at, and the gap between those two is where some solvers give up. The walkthrough below uses one original 7×7