Summary:
Yin Yang puzzles are created in Puzzle Maker Pro by choosing a grid size and difficulty, generating, and exporting the puzzle with its matching solution as PNG, JPG, SVG or PDF. This tutorial shows how to make your first puzzle, re-skin the two circles as letters, numbers, colours or images, set a Smart Title, and scale one puzzle up to a book.
Overview
Yin Yang (also called Shirokuro) is a two-colour connectivity logic puzzle. This tutorial walks through creating one in Puzzle Maker Pro, from opening the module to exporting a print-ready puzzle and solution. The Creator has four tabs: Main, Content, Style and Layout. New to the puzzle itself? Read How Yin Yang Puzzles Work first.
Required Modules
- Yin Yang — pick your edition on the product page.
Yin Yang (Standard) makes the puzzle at every size and difficulty with the classic light and dark circles, exports PNG, JPG, SVG and PDF with a matching solution, generates up to 999 puzzles in one run, and includes Instant Puzzle Books, a book PDF assembled straight from your current settings. Creative adds the Content tab described below, so the two circles can print as letters, numbers, colours or images, plus full style control, Puzzle Book Studio Creative and Puzzle Slides. Productivity adds Time Saver for saved multi-row runs with an Add Progression ramp, Puzzle Book Studio Productivity for mixed books, and JSON export. Creative + Interactive and Productivity + Interactive add online play, so the same puzzles are solved in the browser on your own site.
You can upgrade later to any higher edition, or add Interactive on top of Creative or Productivity, so start with the edition that fits what you are making today. See Puzzle Maker Pro Editions Explained.
Commercial rights: every edition carries the licence to sell the finished puzzle products you make, books, worksheets and printable packs, to your own readers and customers, including on KDP, Etsy and Teachers Pay Teachers. Productivity adds the right to sell or supply the puzzles themselves to other publishers and sellers.
A free demo is available: it makes one watermarked puzzle at a time, so you can check the settings and the output look before buying.
Preparation
Nothing to prepare: Yin Yang needs no word list. If you plan to use pictures for the two states, prepare square images large enough to stay sharp when printed at cell size, or use one of the built-in sets. For your first puzzle, an 8×8 grid at Medium difficulty is a comfortable starting point. Each puzzle is generated with exactly one solution that can be reached by logic alone.
Choose the Main Settings
On the Main tab, set the options that define the puzzle:
- Width and Height: the grid, each from 4 to 12 cells, default 8×8. Width and Height are independent, so non-square boards are fine. As a guide: 4×4 to 6×6 for a first exposure or younger solvers, 8×8 for a general worksheet, 10×10 to 12×12 when you want a longer sitting. Even a 12×12 board generates in about half a second, so a batch of a few dozen is ready almost immediately.
- Difficulty: Easy, Medium, Hard, or Expert. Easy fills about half the grid with clues; Medium cuts that to a bit over a third; Hard strips the clues back as far as the connectivity rule allows, so the deduction chains run long. Expert has about as many clues as Hard; the difference is that it is the only level that needs a short look-ahead, where the solver tests one cell and rejects the colour that breaks a rule. All four are solvable by logic alone, with no guessing. For a graded book, the visible steps are Easy, Medium and Hard, with Expert as a finale for experienced solvers.
Generate and Preview
Click Preview in the main window to render one puzzle while you dial in the size and look. A preview always renders a single puzzle, whatever the Quantity says, and Puzzle Maker Pro builds the matching solution in the same pass.
You should now see a board like this one, plus its completed answer key. The solution is generated in the same pass and exported alongside the puzzle as its own image or page. In the classic look, light cells are drawn as open rings and dark cells as filled discs, so clues stay distinct from blank cells on the puzzle page.
When the look is right, enter the number of puzzles you need, up to 999, in the Quantity box above the tabs and click Create. The puzzle and solution files land in your output folder, one pair per puzzle. Every board is generated independently, so a run gives you varied puzzles rather than the same layout repeated.
Choose the Cell Content (Creative and Up)
By default a Yin Yang puzzle prints the classic circles. Underneath the drawing, though, the puzzle is just two states, so with Creative or a higher edition you can print those two states as something else. Open the Content tab. On Standard the tab shows the same controls, locked, with a caption naming the edition that unlocks it.
Pick one content type and the values it uses:
- Numbers — two numbers, taken from a list you type or a range you set. Numbers with the number type left on Default prints the classic circles; choose a list or a range to print two numbers instead.
- Letters — two letters from the alphabet you choose.
- Colors — two colours, printed as an inset shape in each cell. A circle is the default and keeps the yin-yang feel; tick Use Shapes for Colors on the picker’s Options tab to choose a square, triangle, bar, star, cross or diamond instead.
- Images — two pictures, from a built-in set or from your own files.
To make every page in a book look different, build a pool to draw from:
- Set the number of items to the size of your pool, for example ten images (the picker takes up to 25).
- Choose Draw x Random Values. Each puzzle then draws its own pair from that pool, so every page in the book looks different with no extra work.
Leave the pool at 2 and choose Use First x Values to print the same pair on every puzzle.
The rules never change: the puzzle is solved exactly the same way whichever content you use, and your choice carries through to every export, including Puzzle Slides, JSON and online play.
Cell content is set per collection. In Time Saver each row opens the same Yin Yang panel, so different rows in one book can use different content.
Style the Puzzle
On the Style tab you control the canvas colour, the cell background, the grid line (cell border), the thick outer puzzle border, the circle outline, and the font used for themed letters and numbers. The Layout tab has a crop option that trims the outer margin for a tight board; the puzzle size and resolution are set in the main window’s output settings to match your book’s trim size. Full styling options are covered in How to Customize Puzzle Designs.
Set the Title
On the Layout tab, choose a Smart Title. A Smart Title fills in the puzzle’s own details automatically, so every page in a batch is labelled correctly without retyping. Yin Yang offers these formulas; the examples are for an 8×8 Medium puzzle:
- Yin Yang – Grid Size – Difficulty — e.g. “Yin Yang – 8×8 – Medium”
- Yin Yang – Grid Size — e.g. “Yin Yang – 8×8” (the default)
- Yin Yang – Difficulty — e.g. “Yin Yang – Medium”
- Grid Size – Difficulty — e.g. “8×8 – Medium”
- Grid Size — e.g. “8×8”
- Difficulty — e.g. “Medium”
- Custom — your own title text, used exactly as typed
The same options are available for the puzzle Description (the default reads “Fill every cell with a light or dark circle so each colour forms one connected area and no 2×2 block is a single colour.”). See the Smart Titles tutorial for how the control works.
Export Your Puzzle
Export the puzzle and its solution as PNG, JPG, SVG, or PDF for worksheets and books. Depending on your edition you can also export:
- Puzzle Slides (Creative and up) — an interactive PowerPoint for a projector or whiteboard, with a bank of light and dark tiles the class drags onto the blank cells.
- JSON (Productivity) — the puzzle data for your own apps and automation workflows.
- HTML output (Interactive editions) — the files that drive online play, exported as HTML plus a ZIP for the BookPublisherTools WordPress plugin. In the browser the solver clicks each cell to cycle it empty → light → dark, with a check button and a live warning on any solid 2×2 block.
If you used cell content, all of these show your chosen letters, numbers, colours or images, so the on-screen puzzle matches the printed page.
Scale to a Book
Once one puzzle looks right, the same settings make the whole book. On Standard, set Quantity, click Create, and use Instant Puzzle Books for a ready-to-print book PDF from your current settings, with a title page, contents and solution cross-references. On Creative, do the same and open the generated set in Puzzle Book Studio to design the book itself. On Productivity, the book comes from several rows at once:
- Save the settings as a preset from the toolbar at the top of the panel, named for the section, for example
Book-Easy-8x8. Each Time Saver row starts from a preset. - In Time Saver, add one Yin Yang row per section of your book, for example an Easy row, a Medium row and a Hard row, each with its own quantity, or press Add Progression to lay out a graded ramp from a small easy grid to a large expert one in one go. The row editor opens this same panel, so each row can have its own size, difficulty and cell content.
- Generate the set. Every puzzle keeps its matching solution.
- Open Puzzle Book Studio and point it at the folder you just generated to lay out the puzzle and answer-key pages, mix in your other puzzle types, and produce the book PDF.
Time Saver and Puzzle Book Studio each have their own tutorial. See Further Reading.
Outcome
You can now create Yin Yang puzzles with matching solutions, re-skin the two states as letters, numbers, colours or images, style and title them, export them for print or screen, and scale a single puzzle up to a finished book.
FAQ
What grid sizes can I choose for a Yin Yang puzzle?
Width and Height are set separately, each from 4 to 12 cells, with 8×8 as the default. Non-square boards are fine. For books, 8×8 to 10×10 is the usual range.
What do the difficulty levels do?
Easy prints about half the grid as clues and Medium a bit over a third. Hard reduces the clues as far as the connectivity rule allows, so the chains get long. Expert is barely sparser than Hard but is the only level that needs a short look-ahead. None of them require guessing.
Do I need Productivity to make a lot of puzzles at once?
No. Setting Quantity and generating a batch of up to 999 works in every edition. Productivity adds Time Saver, which saves multi-row setups so a whole book regenerates in one click, plus Puzzle Book Studio Productivity and JSON export.
Can I use something other than light and dark circles?
Yes, from Creative. Open the Content tab and print the two states as numbers, letters, colours, or images instead. The rules and the solving are unchanged, and your choice carries through to the exports.
How do I get a book where every puzzle looks different?
Choose Colors or Images, raise the number of items to the size of your pool, then choose Draw x Random Values. Each puzzle draws its own pair, so a pool of ten gives you ten different-looking pages from one setup.
What formats can I export to?
PNG, JPG, SVG and PDF for the puzzle and its solution in every edition. Creative adds Puzzle Slides, Productivity adds JSON, and the Interactive editions add HTML output for online play.