Two Kinds of Circle. One Line. A Puzzle Anyone Can Start and Nobody Can Put Down.
Look at a page of Masyu and you already know what to do. There is a grid, some white circles, some black ones, and a single line that has to thread its way through all of them and come back to where it began. No instructions to wade through. No arithmetic. Not one word of English inside the grid.
That last part matters more than it sounds. Every puzzle book you have ever built had a language attached to it. Word searches need a dictionary. Crosswords need clues written, checked, and translated. Even a number puzzle needs a reader who is comfortable with numbers. Masyu needs none of that, which means the set you generate this afternoon is the same set that works in Spanish, in German, in a class with readers at four different levels, and in a large-format edition for someone who gave up on word puzzles years ago.
And it is beautiful. That is not a small thing when you are trying to stand out on a shelf of near-identical covers. A solved Masyu is a single continuous loop winding through a field of pearls, and it looks like nothing else in the puzzle aisle.
Masyu – Pearl Logic is the Windows puzzle generator that makes them. Try it before you decide: download the free demo.
Why Masyu Earns a Place in Your Catalog
The puzzle categories most creators reach for first are the ones every other creator reached for first too. You already know how that ends. Not a better word search. A different aisle.
Masyu is a well-loved Japanese logic puzzle that most self-publishers have never generated, which makes a Masyu title genuinely unlike the thing beside it on the shelf rather than a slightly better version of it.
Here is the whole game, and it fits on one slide:
- Draw one closed loop through the centres of cells, moving only horizontally and vertically.
- The loop goes straight through every white pearl, and turns in at least one of the cells either side of it.
- The loop turns on every black pearl, and goes straight through both of the cells either side of it.
- The loop never crosses itself and never branches, and every pearl must end up on it.
That is it. A 5 x 5 is a gentle warm-up, a 12 x 12 Expert board is a serious sit-down, and the rules never change between them. Only the scaffolding does.
Every Puzzle Has Exactly One Solution, and None of Them Need a Guess
This is the part that separates a puzzle you can sell from a puzzle you have to apologise for.
Puzzle Maker Pro does not scatter pearls and hope. It draws a complete loop first, works out the full set of pearls that loop implies, then removes pearls one at a time, checking after every single removal that the board still solves by pure deduction from an empty grid. A removal that would force a solver to guess gets put back.
So two promises come with every board, Easy to Expert:
- Exactly one solution. Never two valid loops, never an ambiguous board, never a reader emailing you about page 34.
- No guessing, ever. Expert boards are harder because they leave you about half the pearls, so far more of the loop has to be inferred. They never ask you to try something and see.
Every answer key comes out of the same pass, so you are never back-solving your own book at midnight.
Want to check that for yourself? Generate a few in the free demo and look at the keys.
See the Masyu Puzzles and Their Answer Keys
The proof for a puzzle nobody has heard of is the puzzle itself, so look before you read any further.
Who This Is For
Self-publishers tired of competing in saturated categories. If your last three books were word searches and sudoku, you already know the problem is not your covers. Masyu gives you a title that stands out on a shelf that is mostly word search and sudoku.
Publishers selling into more than one language market. The only text to translate is your title, your front matter, and the two-line rules page. The puzzle pages themselves never change, which removes the re-typesetting and proofreading pass entirely.
Teachers and tutors. No reading level, no arithmetic, no vocabulary. In a mixed-language class it is the rare starter where the students still learning the language are not a step behind, because everyone reads the same board. Differentiate without writing a second worksheet: the same rules run from a 5 x 5 Easy warm-up to a 12 x 12 Expert extension. The puzzle and its answer key render as separate sheets, so a class set prints without the key and you keep one copy for marking.
Site owners and online creators. Puzzles your visitors actually play, on your pages, with your own message on the finish screen.
Build a Full Masyu Puzzle Book
A single Masyu page is a nice thing. A hundred of them, graded from gentle to brutal, is a product.
Time Saver builds the batch from rows, each row carrying its own board size and difficulty. Its Add Progression button fills those rows in for you: name a square board-size range, let it ramp across the four difficulty bands, and a book that opens at 6 x 6 Easy and finishes at 10 x 10 Expert is one dialog instead of forty separate setups. Puzzles are checked against each other as they are made, so no board repeats inside a run. (The ramp works on square boards; the rectangles are there for rows you set by hand.) Productivity.
Puzzle Book Studio then turns that set into a finished interior: trim size, margins, running heads, and the answer-key section, laid out and ready for print. Instant Puzzle Books, available from Lite up, does the fast version instead, a book PDF straight from your current settings without the layout control.
And because there is nothing inside the grid to translate, the set you build once ships into every language edition unchanged. For a catalog built on reuse, Masyu is about as efficient as content gets.
Make It Yours: Swap the Pearls for Your Own Artwork
Most puzzle types lock you into their look. A sudoku is digits. A word search is letters. There is nothing to theme.
Masyu is different, because the solver is not reading the pearls, only telling them apart. Black or white, turn or straight. That is the entire information content of a clue, which means you can replace those two circles with any two pictures a reader can distinguish at a glance and the puzzle still works perfectly.
Sun and moon for a summer book. Holly and snowflake for a Christmas edition. Two contrasting icons for a branded corporate set. Your own logo against a plain marker. Drop in one image or both, and the theme carries through the printed puzzle and the answer key from Creative up, and into the online version your readers play once you add Interactive.
One engine. A book that looks like nobody else’s, every single time.
Teach It Live with Puzzle Slides
A puzzle book sits on a table. A Masyu board on a screen fills a room.
Puzzle Slides exports your puzzles as an interactive PowerPoint deck where the solver drags loop pieces from a six-piece palette and builds the circuit in front of everyone. Open the deck in PowerPoint on the classroom machine and drag the pieces straight onto the board. Nothing to install, nothing to sign into.
Because the rules fit on one slide and need no reading, one worked example on the board is enough to send a room off solving. That works in places a word puzzle cannot go: a mixed-language class, a tutoring session with a reluctant reader, a webinar warm-up, an activity hour. Creative Interactive or Productivity Interactive.
Play Masyu Online on Your Own Site
Most puzzle books end at the last page. This one keeps working on your website.
Export the set as web output and publish it through the free BookPublisherTools WordPress plugin. Visitors click and drag to draw loop segments, tap to clear a mistake, and check their work against the pearl rules. Present it as a simple puzzle list they pick from, or as a leveled game where levels unlock in order, progress and stars save in the visitor’s own browser, and a finish screen shows your own message and your own button.
That finish screen is the useful part. Someone who has just solved five of your puzzles is the warmest reader you will ever have, and that is the moment you put the book in front of them. Meanwhile the puzzles give people a reason to stay on your site and a reason to come back. For a course, set the levels as a practice path learners work through at their own pace. Progress saves in their own browser only, so there is no teacher dashboard and no class reporting. Creative Interactive or Productivity Interactive.
Which Edition Should You Choose?
The quick version: want your own artwork in place of the pearls, so every book carries its own theme, choose Creative. Want to build books in batches, choose Productivity. Want your puzzles playable online or on screen, add Interactive to either.
Lite gives you the complete puzzle engine, every board size and every difficulty, and the same commercial license as Creative. What Creative adds is the thing that makes a Masyu book yours: your own pearl artwork. The higher editions add what you do around the puzzle.
| Lite | Creative | Creative Interactive | Productivity | Productivity Interactive | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All 13 board sizes, all 4 difficulties | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Answer key with every puzzle | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| JPG, PNG, SVG, PDF | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Instant Puzzle Books | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Custom pearl artwork | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Puzzle Book Studio | No | One puzzle set per book | One puzzle set per book | Several collections in one book | Several collections in one book |
| Time Saver batch creation | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| JSON data export (for your own apps and sites) | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Web play on your own site | No | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| Puzzle Slides | No | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| Commercial license | Sell to readers and end customers | Sell to readers and end customers | Sell to readers and end customers | Also sell or supply to other publishers | Also sell or supply to other publishers |
Interactive adds two things: puzzles your readers play on your own website, and Puzzle Slides for teaching on screen. It is a separate choice, not a higher rung, so it combines with either Creative or Productivity.
Choose your edition at the top of this page, or download the free demo and generate a few boards first.
Try It Before You Buy
You do not have to take any of this on trust. The free demo lets you generate real boards, look at the answer keys, and decide whether the puzzle earns a place in your catalog before you spend anything. No card, no subscription.
Licensing and Commercial Use
- Lite and Creative include a commercial license to sell the puzzles you generate to readers and end customers: books, worksheets, and printables on Amazon KDP, Etsy, Teachers Pay Teachers, or your own store.
- Productivity adds a business license, so you can also sell or supply the puzzles you generate to other publishers and sellers.
Product Details
| Product | Puzzle Maker Pro – Masyu – Pearl Logic |
| What it is | Windows desktop software that generates Masyu puzzles and answer keys |
| Editions | Lite, Creative, Creative Interactive, Productivity, Productivity Interactive |
| Platform | Windows desktop. There is no Mac version. |
| Internet required | No, for creating puzzles. Publishing web play needs your own self-hosted WordPress site. |
| Board sizes | 13: squares 5 x 5, 6 x 6, 7 x 7, 8 x 8, 9 x 9, 10 x 10, 12 x 12; rectangles 8 x 6, 6 x 8, 10 x 8, 8 x 10, 12 x 10, 10 x 12 |
| Difficulty | Easy, Medium, Hard, Expert. Guess-free at every band. |
| Solution pages | Yes, an answer key generated with every puzzle, on its own sheet |
| Print and image output | JPG, PNG, SVG, PDF |
| Web play (HTML) | Interactive add-on |
| JSON data export | Productivity |
| Puzzle Slides | Interactive add-on |
| Time Saver | Productivity |
| Puzzle Book Studio | Creative and above. Instant Puzzle Books from Lite. |
| Commercial license | Sell to readers (Lite and Creative); adds selling to other publishers and sellers (Productivity) |
| Free demo | Yes |
| Delivery | Immediate, in your member area |
Questions Before You Buy
Is there a free demo?
Yes. You can generate real puzzles and inspect the answer keys before deciding.
Will my readers know how to play?
The rules take one short paragraph and no prior knowledge, which is exactly why Masyu travels so well. Print the four rules on the first page and you are done. There is also a free how to play Masyu guide you can point readers to.
Do the puzzles always have exactly one solution?
Yes. A board is only accepted if a solver can drive it to a single complete loop by pure deduction from an empty grid, which proves both that the solution is unique and that no guessing is needed.
Can I make the puzzles look like mine?
Yes. Every edition lets you restyle the canvas, cells, grid lines, pearl outline, and the solution loop. From Creative up you can also replace the black and white pearls themselves with your own images. The theme carries into print and the answer key, and into the online version if you add Interactive.
Which edition do I need to build a whole book in one go?
Productivity. Time Saver comes from the Productivity tier, so Creative Interactive does not include batch creation on its own.
Can I regenerate the same set of puzzles later?
No. Every run produces a fresh set, so export and archive each batch, puzzles and answer keys together, as soon as you generate it.
Is there an interactive PDF?
No. A Masyu answer is a continuous loop drawn on the boundaries between cells, not a value typed into each cell, so a fillable PDF form has nothing meaningful to capture. Puzzle Slides and web play both handle interactive Masyu properly.
Can I sell the puzzles I make?
Yes, in every edition. Lite and Creative cover selling to readers and end customers; Productivity adds selling or supplying to other publishers.
Why is there no 11 x 11 board?
Because a grid with two odd sides cannot be covered by a loop completely, and above 9 a side those boards stop generating reliably. Rather than offer a size that sometimes fails, the list holds only boards measured to generate every time. Every board on the list has at least one even side above 9 x 9, which is why the range still reaches 12 x 12.
Publish the Puzzle Almost Nobody Else Has
Another word search lands on a shelf already stacked with them, and competes on price and cover art alone.
A year from now, your catalog could hold a run of Masyu titles: themed for the season, graded from gentle to genuinely hard, playable on your website, and readable in every language market you sell into without a single edit inside the grid. Almost nobody in your category is publishing them. That is the whole point.
Generate a dozen tonight. If they do not look like anything else in your category, you will know in about five minutes.
