Reviews are listed alphabetically. Scroll down the page, choose a section of the alphabet above or select one of the highlighted reviews listed at the right.
Ragnemalm's Macintosh Games - Download Ingemar Ragnemalm's annual Christmas jigsaw puzzles and other games from her Game Archive to play on your Mac. I have not tested these.
Randy Reichle's Animated Jigsaw Puzzle - Online jigsaw puzzle becomes animated when it is solved! 8 rectangular pieces with tabs but no joining. Select piece and press Rotate to rotate 180 degrees.
(For webmasters, The source code is available too.)
I've implemented it at Dotty's Online Jigsaws.
Rumkin - Formerly Minimifidianism Java Puzzle Applet. Puzzles are frame style. Click two pieces to swap their position in a frame. No joining or rotation. Puzzles are available in 3 levels of difficulty. There's good documentation on how to add the puzzle to your own web site and the source is available. The puzzle can also be found at:
Animal Trial - Select puzzles from small thumbnail pictures.
More sites that use this puzzle are listed at Examples.
Scrambler - Online frame type jigsaw puzzle. Press the Start button to begin. Click two pieces to swap their position. The picture has high quality graphics. There is a second frame style puzzle intended for children. Click and drag the pieces to move them to their correct position in the frame - they snap back to their original position if placed in the wrong place. The pictures for both puzzles change weekly and the puzzles may be licensed for your own web site. Other games are also available at this site. I've implemented Scrambler at Dotty's Online Jigsaws.
Seussville - One online frame type jigsaw puzzle for children.
Shockwave- Classic style jigsaw puzzles and lots of other games. A daily jigsaw plus other
jigsaws, some free others not. Requires the free Shockwave Player which is great for lots of other multimedia.
Set your browser to full screen when playing online. There are controls for creating puzzles with pieces rotated or not, viewing the picture on/off, showing only edge pieces or all pieces, moving groups of pieces that are not connected and changing the background. You can save your progress, reload later and continue solving the puzzle. Help is provided.
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Drag pieces to join them. There's a satisfying locking sound when pieces are joined correctly. The puzzle controls are easily available on the silver bars at the top and bottom of the puzzle. Rotate pieces (if rotation is used) by holding down shift while clicking the piece. Pieces must be rotated right side up to be joined. You can save unfinished puzzles.
Here are the steps I use after the puzzle loads:
Press the Mix button to move all the pieces to one side (warning: Mix separates joined pieces)
Press the Edges button to display edges only
Assemble the edges
press the Edges button again to display all pieces
Complete the rest of the puzzle.
You may press Rotate at any time.
These puzzles no longer work in AOL. See Shockwave's Response to my report of this problem.
Use JigsawMaker to create a puzzle from your own picture. However sending a jigsaw from online JigsawMaker 3 and purchased JigsawMaker 1 does not work and is needed display the jigsaw on a website. The problem has been reported to Shockwave many times. Atom Entertainment Customer Support responded "We're aware of this issue, and our
engineering staff is working to fix it." on April 17, 2008 but it has not been fixed yet.
History: Beginning in November 2000, a new twist was added to make some of the puzzles unique and more difficult - colors changed when the pieces were joined. I don't believe any of these are still available on this site - but similar functionality is found in the JigsawMaker available to paid members. Beginning in July 2001, puzzles are provide by Article 19 rather than Jim Collins and the number of puzzles was reduced.
A PuzzleMaker was available as a download with a free trial version and $24.95 for full functionality. Then PuzzleMaker was replaced by JigsawMaker, an online version, on January 15, 2003. For about a year, all functionality in JisawMaker was free, then starting in January or February of 2005, JigsawMaker 3 requires a paid membership for creating fancy puzzles (controlling puzzle shape, piece shape, color change). In May 2006 the online version of JigsawMaker had problems and could not display the jigsaw puzzles sent in emails - this was fixed later in the same month. Also starting in May 2006 Jigsaw Madness and JigsawParty were added and JigsawMaker began requireing Internet Explorer with ActiveX enabled. Jigsaw Madness is a fast paced game where pieces are presented one at a time and are placed in a mosaic-style jigsaw while competing for points. JigsawParty is the internet's first multiple player collabrative jigsaw puzzle - take turns moving pieces in the puzzle while chatting online with the other players.
Shockwave Unlimited is Shockwave's paid membership area and replaces Gameblast. Members can play additional jigsaws plus many other premium games and can use the advanced options in JigsawMaker. Pricing plans vary from $9.95 per month to $59.40 per year with a 10 day free trial.
Shockwave also offers jigsaw downloads of 60 puzzles for $19.95 with limited demo versions.
Shockwave puzzles are implemented at:
Third Age - Daily puzzle has same picture as at Shockwave.
WebShots - Daily puzzle has same picture as at Shockwave.
Shockwave's jigsaw motto is "A puzzle a day keeps the brain sharp". See also the Shockwave entry in my Jigsaw Comparison Chart.
Sitepoint Flash Jigsaw Puzzle - An article about creating a classic jigsaw puzzle with joining and sound. The picture may be static or a video. This article was written to show how to develop a jigsaw puzzle in Flash and is aimed at website developers. However the article includes no online example of the puzzle or instructions for installing the puzzle on a website - shame on them! I've created Flash Jigsaw Puzzle from Sitepoint
as an example of how to implement the puzzle on your website. (I've only provided the html and not changed the Flash files.)
Slayeroffice - Frame style puzzle contains 6 pictures and has from 16 to 80 pieces. Piece movement requires 2 mouse clicks - one to start moving and one to stop moving: this is somewhat cumbersome. This puzzle has great potential but needs some refinements to be ready for prime time.
Smoke & Mirrors - Great jigsaws by Jim Collins. Jim's site is no longer available, but his puzzles are still available at other sites.
Puzzles have joining and optional rotation. The Shockwave Player is required. Jim's jigsaws are also available for your website by contacting him at the email address provided inside the puzzles or on the puzzle help screen.
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The silver bar above the puzzle is the control bar. The menu under the word Jigsaw on the control bar contains toggles for displaying the picture, showing only edge pieces and moving pieces, plus other controls.
You can save and reload a partially finished puzzle and change the color of the background. See Help on the control bar for further instructions.
Jim's puzzle program is used at
Atlas Archives - A daily puzzle plus archived puzzles for the past year.
uClick - Provides a daily jigsaw puzzle service for other websites - puzzles are archived by date. Four sample jigsaws are available here to play online, but not the daily puzzle. The daily jigsaw is available at:
Puzzle Society - Free demo of three styles of the Universal Puzzle. Daily puzzle and jumbo weekly puzzle, plus lots of other games, are only available with paid membership ($3.95 a month or $19.95 a year). Site is also called uPuzzles.
See also my review of Shockwave, which formerly used Jim's jigsaw engine and PuzzleMaker.
Steve White has created 3 different jigsaw puzzle versions.
Version 1.4 of his java jigsaw puzzle applet is available free for download to use on your own web site. There are many parameters available in v 1.4 so the different implementations look different. Rotation is optional and usually not included.
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('Rotation' is actually a combination of rotating 180 degrees and mirroring - confusing at first, but a good challenge.) Pieces are not joined, but rather placed in their correct positions. There are no drawers for sorting pieces, so puzzles with larger numbers of pieces are more cumbersome. Background color is chosen by the implementer of the puzzle (web site owner). Other web pages using his v 1.4 are
Version 2 has a front end that allows the user to select the picture, rotation, background, showing the picture and other controls, but the java applet is the same v 1.4.
Version 3 has a similar front end as version 2 except it only uses pictures on your own computer and it also uses v 1.4 of the jigsaw applet. V 3 requires Internet Explorer and changing it's security settings, which many players will not want to do. (Other jig saw puzzle creators have opted to require download of their program rather than changing security settings.)
SurfNetKids - Flash jigsaw puzzles are listed by title and organized by whether or not they are timed. The puzzles are frame style with classic shaped pieces. The site is designed for children but these jigsaws appeal to all ages.