Picture Puzzle is a digital jigsaw puzzle game where you rearrange scrambled pieces of an image to recreate the original picture. The image is divided into a grid (3×3, 4×4, or 5×5), pieces are shuffled, and you swap them to put everything in the correct positions. It works on desktop, tablet, and mobile devices with drag-and-drop, touch, or keyboard controls.

Three simple steps: (1) Choose your difficulty from the dropdown (Easy, Medium, or Hard), (2) Select a puzzle image or upload your own, (3) Click the "🎮 New Game" button. The puzzle will shuffle and the timer starts automatically. Start swapping pieces to solve it!

Easy (3×3) has 9 pieces and is perfect for beginners. Medium (4×4) has 16 pieces and offers a good challenge. Hard (5×5) has 25 pieces and is for puzzle experts. Start with Easy if you're new to puzzles!

No! Picture Puzzle requires no account, no login, and no personal information. Everything runs 100% in your browser. Your games, scores, and custom images are saved locally on your device using localStorage. No data is ever sent to servers.

Picture Puzzle works best on modern browsers: Chrome 90+, Firefox 88+, Safari 14+, and Edge 90+. It uses standard web technologies (HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript) and should work on any recent browser.

Use drag-and-drop with your mouse: Click and hold on a puzzle piece, drag it over another piece, then release to swap them. Pieces grow slightly when you hover over them to make them easier to see.

Two methods: (1) Tap-to-swap: Tap the first piece (it gets a pink outline), then tap the second piece to swap. (2) Touch-and-drag: Touch and hold a piece, drag to another piece, release to swap.

Blue outline = piece focused via keyboard navigation. Pink outline = piece selected for swapping. Green glowing border = piece is in its correct position! Pay attention to green borders—they show which pieces you've solved correctly.

Yes! Pieces with green borders (correctly placed) can still be moved. This is intentional—you might need to temporarily move a correct piece to solve the rest of the puzzle. Be careful not to accidentally move them!

You get 3 hints per game. When you click the Hint button, up to 3 pieces that are in their correct positions will flash with a green glow. After using all 3 hints, the button becomes disabled. Save hints for when you're truly stuck!

The Undo button reverses your last piece swap. You can undo up to your last 10 moves. When you undo, the pieces swap back to their previous positions and your move counter decreases by 1, so it doesn't penalize you for mistakes!

Click the "👁️ Preview" button to show a small reference image in the bottom-right corner of your screen. Click "🚫 Hide Preview" to hide it. Use Preview frequently—it's not cheating, it's how real jigsaw puzzles work!

Yes! 100% guaranteed. Picture Puzzle uses move-based shuffling (random swaps from the solved state) which ensures every puzzle is solvable. Easy puzzles perform 180 random swaps, Medium does 320, and Hard does 500.

Yes! Click the "📁 Upload Image" button and choose a file from your computer. Supported formats include JPG, JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, WebP, and SVG. Maximum file size is 5MB.

5MB maximum. If your image is larger, you'll see an error message. The app automatically compresses uploaded images to 85% JPEG quality and resizes them to 800×800 pixels to save storage space.

All puzzle images must be square for the grid to work properly. If your image is rectangular (e.g., 1920×1080), the app automatically crops it to a square using center-crop (keeps the center, trims edges). To avoid cropping, upload square images (1:1 aspect ratio).

Custom images are stored locally in your browser's localStorage under the key "customPuzzleImage" (as a base64-encoded data URL). They never leave your device and are not uploaded to any server. You can only have 1 custom image at a time—uploading a new one replaces the previous one.

Yes! Picture Puzzle automatically saves your game when you: (1) Click the Pause button, or (2) Close the browser/tab during an active game. Your puzzle state, timer, moves, and hints used are all saved to localStorage.

If you have a saved game, a "▶️ Resume Game" button will appear in the control panel. Click it to restore your puzzle exactly as you left it—all pieces, timer, moves, and hints will be restored.

Saved games are automatically deleted when you: (1) Complete a puzzle (victory), or (2) Start a new game (after confirmation). If you cleared your browser data or used private/incognito mode, the save would also be lost.

Each device has its own saved games and high scores because data is stored locally in the browser's localStorage. There's no cloud sync or account system. If you want to transfer data, you would need to manually export/import localStorage (advanced users only).

Scores are ranked by: (1) Time (faster is better), (2) Moves (fewer is better), (3) Hints Used (fewer is better), (4) Date (earlier wins tie-breaks). The top 20 scores across all difficulties are saved. Your latest score is highlighted in green.

The app saves your top 20 scores across all difficulties combined. When you complete your 21st puzzle, the worst score is removed. You can filter the high scores list by difficulty level (Easy, Medium, Hard, or All).

When you complete a puzzle, click "Share Score" in the victory modal. The app uses a 3-level fallback: (1) Web Share API (mobile native sharing), (2) Clipboard API (copies text to clipboard), (3) Alert dialog (displays text to manually copy). Your score is formatted as "🎉 Solved [Difficulty] in [Time] with [Moves] moves!"

Yes! Click the "Clear Scores" button at the top of the High Scores section. You'll see a confirmation dialog to prevent accidental deletion. Clearing scores is permanent and cannot be undone.

When all pieces are in their correct positions: (1) Confetti animation plays (50 pieces flying across the screen), (2) Victory modal appears showing your time, moves, and hints used, (3) Your score is automatically saved to high scores, (4) The saved game is deleted. You can share your score or start a new game!

Yes! Picture Puzzle has complete keyboard navigation support. Press Tab to focus on puzzle pieces, use Arrow keys to navigate, press Space or Enter to select pieces and swap them. See the keyboard shortcuts FAQ below for the full list.

Picture Puzzle includes basic accessibility features: semantic HTML, keyboard navigation, and focus indicators. However, it's primarily a visual puzzle game that relies on seeing piece positions. Screen reader support for the game area itself is limited due to the visual nature of the puzzle.

Press the Escape key or click anywhere outside the selected piece (on desktop). On mobile tap-to-swap mode, tap the same piece again to deselect it. The pink outline will disappear when the selection is cancelled.

Resize your browser window or adjust zoom level (Ctrl/Cmd + Plus/Minus). The puzzle automatically recalculates its size based on window dimensions. On mobile, rotate your device to landscape for larger pieces. Minimum piece size is 100px (to prevent unusably small puzzles).

Check: (1) File size under 5MB, (2) File format is supported (JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, WebP, SVG), (3) Browser's localStorage isn't full (try clearing some data or using a different browser), (4) File isn't corrupted (try opening it in an image viewer first).

Check: (1) You're not in private/incognito mode (localStorage is disabled in private browsing), (2) Browser allows localStorage (check browser settings), (3) localStorage quota isn't exceeded (5-10MB limit per domain). Try opening DevTools (F12) and check the Console for errors.

Some buttons are disabled in certain states: Resume button only appears when you have a saved game. Hint button is disabled after 3 uses. Undo button is disabled when there are no moves to undo. These are intentional limitations, not bugs.

Try: (1) Close other browser tabs, (2) Use a modern browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge), (3) Start with Easy difficulty (fewer pieces = better performance), (4) Close the Preview if open (saves rendering resources), (5) Refresh the page (clears memory). Hard puzzles (5×5) with 25 pieces are more resource-intensive.

Your browser's localStorage is full (5-10MB limit). Solutions: (1) Clear high scores (Click "Clear Scores"), (2) Remove custom image (upload a new smaller one or revert to built-in images), (3) Clear browser data for this site, (4) Use a different browser with more available storage.

No! Picture Puzzle is 100% client-side. Your custom images, saved games, and high scores never leave your device. Everything is stored in your browser's localStorage. There are no network requests (except loading the "Random Image" option from Picsum Photos).

In-app: Click "Clear Scores" to delete high scores. Upload a new image to replace your custom image. Manual method: Open browser DevTools (F12), go to Application tab → Storage → Local Storage → select this domain → delete keys. Or clear all site data in browser settings.

Yes! 100% private. Your uploaded image is processed entirely in your browser using the Canvas API and stored in localStorage as a base64 data URL. It never leaves your device. Nobody else can see it unless they have physical access to your computer/device.