Free Online Puzzle games!
Here are some free online puzzle games for you.
you might find some old favourites here.
But take a look below. Are there any that are new to you?
Free Online Puzzle games!
Here are some free online puzzle games for you.
You might find some old favourites here.
But take a look below.
Are there any that are new to you?
Riddles
The earliest puzzles were, perhaps, in the form of riddles. You’ve
probably heard this one:
“What creature walks on four legs in the morning,
on two legs in the afternoon
and on three legs in the evening?”
The answer is of course, humans. We crawl around on all fours when we’re babies, then learn to walk on two legs. When we get old, we use a walking stick.
This riddle occurs in the story of Oedipus, the king of Thebes.
All through ancient times and the Middle Ages, riddles held
sway in the world of puzzles. They’re still very popular.
Some are just funny bits of wordplay, or they can be trick questions. Others may
need a bit of thought to unravel.
Try your hand at some:
- Why is a game of tennis like a bunch of teenagers having a
party?
- What do poor people have, but rich people need?
- What breaks without ever falling? And what always falls but
never breaks?
- If there are three
apples, and you take two, how many do you have?
- Jane has as many brothers as sisters, but each of her brothers has only half as many brothers as sisters. How many siblings are they?
Rebus puzzles
In ages past when most people couldn’t read, pictures were
used to carry messages.
A common example: a picture of a bee with that of a leaf. This would be read as bee + leaf or belief.
This way of putting an idea across is called a rebus.
Rebuses were often used in early writing systems such as
Egyptian Hieroglyphics and ancient forms of Chinese.
But Rebuses have a fun side to them too. Since the middle of the 19th
century, rebuses have been created purely as entertainment. And they can be
pretty engaging, too. They're still very popular, and nowadays you can find them if you search for free online puzzle games.
Would you like to try some right now? Here are a few:
Tangrams
Dissection puzzles, also called tiling puzzles, have been around for a really long time. They have several pieces that can be assembled in different ways to create different shapes. They were known 2500 years ago, in ancient Greece.
A special type of dissection puzzle is the Tangram. It’s also called a Chinese Reassembly Puzzle. It has seven flat pieces, each of which is called a tan. There are five triangles, a parallelogram, and a square.
You can assemble them to form a square. In fact, this is how they are assembled when not in use. They are stored in a square box into which they fit exactly. But they can be assembled into many other shapes. And that is the point of the puzzle, to assemble the shapes into different shapes.
Here are the seven basic tans. If you like, you
can print them out and paste them onto stiff card. Make sure the card is stiff enough for the
tans to stay flat. Then you can cut out out each tan and try your luck with
them.
There are more than a billion possible combinations that these seven shapes can give you.
Here are a couple:
What can you come up with?
Sudoku
Who hasn’t heard of Sudoku? It’s a great little game which helps you strengthen your logical thinking, your concentration. Much more than that, its so much fun that it can get quite addictive! It's a favourite among free online puzzle games
The Japanese word Sudoku means “no number appears twice," and that describes the essence of the game. You’re given a square that’s divided into 9 smaller squares, which are sometimes called ‘houses’. These houses are themselves divided into 9 littler squares. So you have 81 little squares in all. Some of these smallest squares are filled with numbers from 1 to 9, and your job is to fill in the rest of them.
The catch is that you’ve got to fill them in such a way that no number is repeated in a row, column or ‘house’. This can be simple, or hard—or even fiendishly difficult!
We’ve got a sudoku app on this website, which is free. Or if
you want to use pencil and paper, you can print out some of the puzzles here
.
How fast can you solve a Sudoku?
Nonograms
A nonogram is a puzzle that you solve by colouring in
squares to create a picture.
There are numbers along the left edge and the top of the puzzle:
The numbers give you clues about which squares should be filled in
and which should be left empty. When all the squares that should be filled in
have been filled in you get a picture, which can be simple
like the stick man below:
Or it can be a complex and detailed picture, with many colours and shades:
Answers to the Riddles
Why is a game of tennis like a bunch of teenagers having a party?
—Because there’s always a racket.
What do poor people have, but rich people need?
—Nothing.
What breaks without ever falling? And what always falls but never breaks?
—Day. And Night.
If there are three apples, and you take two, how many do you have?
—Two.
Jane has as many brothers as sisters, but each of her brothers has only half as many brothers as sisters. How many siblings are they?
—Four sisters and three brothers.
Answers to the Rebus Puzzles
Do you understand me?
Apple pie
That's just pie in the sky!
Would you like some tea?
We're having a bridge party on Sunday.