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.
Jayzeebear - Online jigsaws for children, put pieces in place, no joining, very small work area. The puzzle is by Eric Harshbarger but does not appear at his site. Eric's puzzle program is also implemented at other sites including Kids Domain Thanksgiving Mac Puzzles.
JC Play Zone - 6 online jigsaws for children from the International Lutheran Laymen's League. Click the right arrow until the jigsaw puzzle icon displays, click it and then select the picture for the puzzle. Drag pieces to correct position in frame. Pieces with tabs and joining but no rotation.
Jig Jigsaw Puzzle - One frame style puzzle to play online or obtain a license for your website. On the main screen, select Web Games for License, click on the arrows at the bottom for a list of games and then select Jigsaw Puzzle. Drag and drop the scattered pieces to their correct position in the frame. The frame contains an outline of the piece shape. Sound effects indicate whether the piece has been positioned correctly. Pieces have classic jigsaw shape, but no joining or rotation. They snap easily into position when near the correct position - so easily that this puzzle will appeal more to children than adults. Requires the Flash Player.
Jigidi - Classic jigsaw puzzle without rotation. Play online puzzles from a rapidly growing collection or create a puzzle by uploading your own picture. In the puzzle, click the plus sign to make the piece size larger or the minus sign to shrink them. I like to immediately shrink the pieces to create more playing space. Puzzles are timed and the best score is saved. I wish this puzzle had a pause button. I've implemented this puzzle at Jigidi Jigsaw. Requires the Flash Player.
Jigkids - Classic jigsaw puzzles for kids of all ages. The homepage displays the daily puzzle. Recent daily puzzles are listed at the bottom of the left column and the gallery of puzzles is accessed by clicking MORE JIGSAW PUZZLES, also at the bottom of the left column.
Having the puzzle start with pieces distributed around the edge of the playing area is a nice feature. The puzzle has optional rotation and the ability to change the background color. Use the menu below the picture thumbnail to change the cut (number of pieces from 4 to 100), start over (rearranges pieces, separating them), reshuffle (rearranges pieces, keeping joined pieces together) and pause. If rotation is selected (the default), click a selected piece again to rotate it 1/4 turn. The puzzle pieces are low quality with jagged edges, no beveling and no shadow. Puzzles are timed and a list of top scores is available.
A Google Gadget for this puzzle can be added to your website or your customized Google personal page. There is also an RSS feed which lists top scores and links to puzzles but it takes forever to load.
Jigsaw Break - Square mosaic style puzzles can be played online for free. Every puzzle is a contest to see who can complete a square of n by n pieces in n2 turns. It's interesting to see a contest that counts moves rather than seconds. There are a limited number of pictures available, but players can also use pictures from the web.
Jigsaw Flash - Classic Flash jigsaw puzzles, created by MochiGames, have 9, 100 or 144 pieces. Pieces do not rotate. They can be played in competitive (timed) or relaxed (untimed) mode. MochiGames members can record their times.
A variety of pictures are organized by category. There are also mystery puzzles and a daily puzzle.
This is a quality puzzle, although the playing space is too small to organize the pieces easily.
JigSawedME - Download a jigsaw program to convert any bmp, gif or jpg picture on your pc into a jigsaw puzzle. Joining but no rotation. 12-324 pieces. There are no drawers for sorting pieces. You can change the background color, but there's a bug and it doesn't display the color you select. The puzzle can be timed.
Jigsaw Maverick - Shareware jigsaw to download and play offline. Registration is $10. This frame style jigsaw has standard jigsaw piece shapes with no joining or rotation. Five pictures are included with the free download and may be played with 9 or 25 pieces. Registered users may uses any picture in bmp format and may increase the difficulty to 'medium puzzle' or advanced puzzle'. To play, run the program, select an image, click Scramble in the menu and select the number of pieces. The background color can be changed and sound may be toggled on/off.
Jigsaw Power - Classic style jigsaw for offline play on PC or Mac. Includes 250 pictures and the ability to create jigsaws from your own pictures. The demo version has 1 picture without animation and is for PC only.
Jigsaws Galore - very powerful, $25-$41, created by David Gray. $15 for
additional picture sets. Multiple sites are listed for downloading the demo, but I could only get winsite.com to work. 4 to 4,000 pieces. There's optional rotation and music and an impressive list of other options. You can create puzzles with your own pictures, including gift puzzles, which are standalone puzzles that can be run with out the Jigsaws Galore program. Gift puzzles are available free at
David Gray has also created a version of his puzzle program for 21st Century Games, which have similar functionality. See also the Jigsaw Galore entry in my Jigsaw Comparison Chart.
Jigsaw Mania - Play jigsaws on your computer or create jigsaws to share. The puzzles are high quality classic jigsaws with joining, traditional shaped pieces and optional rotation. Created jigsaws have the option of including a lite version of the puzzle software (Jigsaw Mania Lite), so the receiver does not need to have Jigsaw Mania installed on their computer to play the puzzle. There are five versions of Jigsaw Mania:
Standard version
Free demo version - full functionality with 15 minute playing time
Pro version - for creating commercial puzzles
Jigsaw Mania Pro, trial version
Lite version - A self contained puzzle program created by one of the above versions for playing a specific picture with specified number and shape of pieces.
Jigsaw Mania puzzles feature a large playing area that can be scrolled and an option to arrange pieces around an empty rectangle for the joined puzzle. (Large pictures require scrolling even on monitors set to 1280x1024. You may want to change your computer's display settings to play these puzzles.) Multiple pieces can be selected with ctrl-click or by dragging the mouse. Selected pieces are indicated by a white dot in the center. There is no option to separate edge pieces - but you can easily select multiple edge pieces and drag them to an empty area of the playing surface for assembly. Dragging a piece to the edge of the playing window automatically scrolls the window in that direction - a nice feature. To rotate pieces 90° clockwise, double-click them or click and press the space bar. (Multiple pieces can be rotated with the space bar.) Shortcut keys are available in both versions:
Ctrl-A Auto-Arrange the Pieces
Ctrl-C Change background Colour
Ctrl-F Preview Window
Ctrl-L Load a Previously saved Position
Ctrl-P Preferences
Ctrl-R Reset the Jigsaw (start again)
Ctrl-S Save Your Position
The Jigsaw Mania Pro version creates stand alone jigsaw puzzles with advertising and links to your website. This version must be used if you want to sell the puzzles created by Jigsaw Mania.
The Help in Jigsaw Mania Lite puzzles does not give instructions, but the puzzle plays the same as the standard version.
Jigsaw Mania Lite puzzles are implemented at The Jigsaw Puzzle Shop where you can purchase custom made jigsaws to play on your computer or download free samples. These puzzles were created by Jigsaw Mania Pro.
Jigsaw-Puzzles.net - (Formerly jpuzzles.com.) Frame style Java puzzles with rotation, joining and classic jigsaw pieces to play online or offline. Piece location is automatically saved, so you do not need to complete the puzzle all at once - a great feature. You can also send an electronic greeting card containing an online jigsaw puzzle. The site is available in French at Le Puzzle.
To rotate a piece use the right mouse button, the keyboard arrows or the space bar. Pieces can also be joined - unusual in a frame style puzzle. Puzzles are timed and the results displayed by clicking the Scores link. There is excellent help for the puzzle.
Another unusual aspect of this puzzle is that the piece locations can be saved and the puzzle completed at a later time. The piece locations are saved when "Auto. Rec." is checked - which is the default.
You can use your own picture for the jigsaw in the online or downloaded version and in the Jigsaw-Puzzles.net electronic greeting card.
JigZone - Great online jigsaw puzzles in a Java applet.
Your browser must be Java-enabled. Puzzles have joining, but no rotation. Puzzles are timed. Press the shapes button at the left to control the number (6 to 247) and shape of pieces - try bird shape. You can send a puzzle in email and receive a link to the puzzle of the day in email.
Poll temporarily discontinued
As a JigZone member, (free) you can create and share jigsaw puzzles from your own pictures and add the jigsaws created from your pictures to your own web pages. Pictures may be gif or jpg and finished puzzle size will be 400 pixels wide x 300 high. See Links to Jigsaws for your Own Web Site for more information about putting Jigzone puzzles on your website. JigZone is the most often implemented puzzle on the web because it's one of the best and is free.
For each of the following sites, see the link under 'More puzzles', when the puzzle is complete, for a complete list of Jigzone puzzles created by the owner of the site. Jigzone puzzles are used at:
About - A search for 'jigsaw' yields 765 entries in the About network, most of which are Jigzone puzzles. Here are a few of the sites containing multiple jigsaw puzzles:
Red Jellyfish - Puzzles are devoted to environmental issues. Membership is no longer required to play the puzzles.
See also the Jigzone entryin my Jigsaw Comparison Chart and the review of Kiama Jigsaw, an earlier jigsaw applet by the makers of Jigzone. There's also a review of Jigzone by another author.
Jixxa Jigsaw Puzzles
- Download a shareware Jigsaw to play on your PC. Drag pieces to join them. There is a very
large working surface and scroll bars control which part is visible. You can create up to 9 boxes for storing pieces but you cannot join pieces in a box or put joined pieces in a box. The program does not provide the ability to use your own picture or make standalone puzzles to share. It can save unfinished puzzles and plays midi music (optional). Registration is $9, which adds functionality (including rotation and hints) to the game and provides additional pictures. Delete the download in 60 days if you do not register it.
Poll temporarily discontinued
Additional pictures are available for $3 to $72 and a few are free. Jixxa is also reviewed at Quandary Reviews. See also the Jixxa entryin my Jigsaw Comparison Chart.
J Maker - Drag Puzzle is a customizable frame style jigsaw puzzle. Drag pieces to their correct position in the frame. No joining or rotation. See Links to Jigsaws for your Own Web Site for information about putting the Drag Puzzle on your website. Another frame style jigsaw, Recover Puzzle, is no longer available at this site.
Joy Luck Club - 3 online frame style puzzles without rotation. The quality of the pictures is poor. To get to the puzzles, press the green gem, select Games, select the 3rd icon down on the left (green frog) and click on the desired picture. The frame contains outlines of the pieces. Drag the pieces to their correct position in the frame. The piece flashes when it is placed correctly. Occasionally a piece does not drop correctly - click it again or select another piece to fix this. The Flash plugin is required.
JS Games - Mosaic style puzzle requires Internet Explorer 5 or higher. Select from pictures provided or enter the link to a picture on the internet. Uploading a picture from your computer does not appear to work. Select the number of pieces in each row and column (for a total of 4 to 144 pieces). Load the picture then press the Start Game button. Drag a piece to a new position to swap the position of the 2 pieces. The puzzle is timed and indicates how many moves it took to complete it.
This puzzle may be placed on your website - see JSGames Jigsaw for your website for my comments about adding it to your website.
Jude Fernando - Mosaic style puzzle and a poem. This javaScript puzzle counts the number of moves. Press the Help button for instructions. Use the Back button in the puzzle to return to the picture selection screen and choose another picture from the drop-down list at the bottom right of the screen.
Justin Everett-Church - One frame style puzzle with 56 pieces. The Flash plugin is required. Select Quick Jump from the menu at the bottom of the screen, then Arcade, Miscellaneous, Jigsaw Puzzle. Drag pieces to their correct position in the frame. No joining or rotation.
