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TDM Games Jigsaw Puzzle - This is a frame style jigsaw puzzle requiring Shockwave. The puzzles are available in relaxed or timed mode with 18, 32, 50 or 72 pieces. Shift-click the pieces to rotate them. Move pieces to the correct position in the frame which contains a faded copy opf the image - the intensity of fading is adjustable.
Jigsaws have joining and optional rotation. Gift or promotional puzzles may be created and shared by email or placed on a website.
Download an evaluation copy of the puzzle from their web site. It's good for 30 days and has limited functuality. Register it for $9.95 or buy a set of pictures with a registered copy of Jigs@w for $14.95 to $19.95. Other Jigs@w pictures are available for download from their website.
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The Jigs@w is divided into multiple areas.
Store Room - displays available jigsaws and modifies them.
Play Room - where jigsaws are put together
Create Room - used to create Jigs@ws from images on your computer. (This is active in the evaluation version.)
Modify Room - change the settings for a puzzle. (Also available in the free version.)
Gallery Room - for displaying finished puzzles on virtual walls of a gallery. (Completed puzzles are not available for the Gallery in the unregistered version.)
Throughout the site yes/no questions are answered by clicking a check mark for 'yes' and an 'X' for 'no'. Help is available by pressing the Help or '?' button. Press the Exit button to stop the Jigs@w program.
To play Jigs@w, run the Jigs@w puzzle you downloaded. The program begins in the Store Room. Double click the desired picture to begin. Left click a piece to select it. A selected piece may be moved by dragging it or rotated by right clicking it. (A piece must be selected before rotating - somewhat cumbersome to need two clicks.) The Rescue button brings loose pieces to the top. Sounds useful if pieces are hidden under joined pieces, but it selects all loose pieces and minimizing the window was the only way I could find to unselect the loose pieces. The Ghost button toggles a dimmed full size version of the picture. The Picture button toggles viewing the picture, which can be shown in 5 sizes. When the puzzle is complete, the amount of time used if displayed. Press the Back button to return to the Store Room.
To create your own Jigs@ws, go to the Store Room and press the Create button. Press the Import button to select an image on your computer. Scroll the Image Size to determine the completed size of the puzzle. Scroll the Piece Size, to determine the number of pieces, and the Piece Chaos, to determine the degree of irregularity in the piece shape, or press the Piece Random button to select a random choice of these two settings. (The evaluation version has a maximum of 25 pieces. There's no maximum in the full version.) Optionally select any of the Misc functions. There is no way to select the background in the Create Room - use the Options button on the Tools menu in the Store Room. Click the check mark at the bottom right to complete creation of your Jigs@w and return to the Store Room.
To modify a Jigs@W, click the Modify button on the Tools menu in the Store Room. The functionality is the same as in the Create Room.
When downloading Jigs@ws from their site or receiving Jigs@ws from a friend, put them in the C:\Program Files\Jigs@w Puzzle\puzzles directory (folder). Restart the Jigs@w program to have newly downloaded Jigs@ws appear in the Store Room.
Jigs@w 2 (version 2 of this software) can also create stand alone puzzles that can be freely shared by email or on a website.
More Jigs@ws can be downloaded from:
About.com - Free jigsaw puzzles to download. Puzzles are organized by category.
Download Jigsaw Puzzles - Hundreds of pictures are available as jigsaws with easy medium and hard versions of the puzzle.
Jigs@w eGroups at Yahoo - This is a list of eGoups at Yahoo Groups that specialize in Tibo's Jigs@w puzzles. eGroups tend to come and go, so rather than list them individually, this is a self-updating list. Most provide community and sharing of files for use with the Jigs@w puzzle software.
JigsawADay - Daily jigsaw download. Archived daily jigsaws can be purchased on CD-ROM.
Tibo also has a freeware and professional version of Jigs@w Puzzle Promo Creator for creating jigsaws with your own pictures. The jigsaws you create may be freely distributed. Promo Creator is used at
A1 Puzzles - This site specializes in crossword puzzles but also includes 100 jigsaws for paid members.
Jigetiser - Puzzle packages and personalized puzzles for purchase, and free puzzles organized by category. Puzzles are created with the professional version of Jigs@w Puzzle Promo Creator. Dowloaded puzzles include multiple difficulties in a zip file. Puzzles may not be shared or distributed.
An online version of the Tibo jigsaw is available at their sister site Jigsaw Planet. Play the sample puzzles, send them to friends or display them on your website. You can also create your own online puzzles. When creating your own puzzle, you can select from 10, 20, 40, 60, 80, 100 or 120 pieces, piece shape and whether or not to include rotation. These puzzle creations can also be added to your website. Puzzles hosted by Jigsaw Planet are displayed at the following websites:
Yellow Mountain Enterprises - Free daily jigsaw puzzle. Puzzle may be done with 40, 80 or 120 pieces. Play the puzzle with other pictures by selecting a category from the "Jump to.." selections near the top of the page or by entering a keyword into the search box.
The following tutorials were written by guest writer Jimi:
Toad Games - One weekly classic jigsaw. To play the game, click the Jigsaw link in the Puzzles section. Shockwave is required. Members can save their scores. Membership is free.
This free online jigsaw has classic shaped pieces and joining but no rotation. There are controls for background color, displaying the picture and turning the sound on/off.
Trun's Puzzles - Online jigsaws. Browser must be Java enabled. Pieces with tabs but no joining. Limited capabilities and number of pictures. Applet is not available for download. Music plays while you do the puzzle.
TuCows - Results of query for "jigsaw" gave me 41 puzzles available for download. Many of them are listed above, but there are some new ones.
VGA Puzzle - Frame style puzzle available for download. Created by Alive Software. Can use your own gif or pcx images. $10 for registration ($20 if mail order).
VMax Puzzle 2 - has irregular square pieces with no tabs and is solved by rotating and swapping pieces in a frame. I've implemented the applet at Dotty's Online Jigsaws.
VMax Puzzle Pro - swap rectangular pieces. I've implemented the applet at Dotty's Online Jigsaws.
Visual Encounters Greeting Cards™ - Select a category from the puzzle menu on the left of the screen and click on a picture to play a mosaic style puzzle online or send the puzzle in an electronic greeting card. Instructions are displayed beside the puzzle and are easy to follow. When completed, the puzzle displays the number of moves used to solve it.
The puzzles require the Java plug-in to run and may not be able to use the Java associated with your browser. There's a link beside each puzzle for downloading this plug-in. Pop-up, pop-under and flashing advertising are used at this site, including pop-ups for downloads.
Walt Kuhn's Jigsaw - Walt Kuhn's website is no longer available, but his puzzle is still used at other sites, which make puzzle files available that require the original puzzle software.
This was a shareware jigsaw puzzle to play on your PC. The puzzle includes both joining
and optional rotation. The download version comes with 19 pictures. Registration is $10, $15 or $20. Registration adds the ability to create jigsaws from you own pictures (using bmp and gif images) and optionally adds more pictures. There's excellent help documentation. Drag pieces to join them. Right click a piece to rotate it counterclockwise. Use Control-right click to rotate pieces clockwise. There are no drawers for sorting pieces, but
the puzzle space is larger than the screen. Instead there are controls to sort pieces by shape or by color. Joined pieces are not sorted and sorted pieces are arranged to not overlap joined pieces. To control the size of the puzzle, number of pieces, rotation and whether pieces are square or have tabs, click the Puzzle menu, then Resize Puzzle and make the appropriate selections. There are also sound controls in the Audio menu. More puzzles that use this program can be found at Billy Bear.
Web Puzzler - Swap pieces in a frame by clicking on the corresponding selection boxes. This is an unusual and cumbersome method of moving pieces. A wide variety of pictures are available.
WaveFormula - Original 3D digital wallpapers are each available as a frame style puzzle. Select the number of pieces from the list just above the puzzle. Drag and drop pieces to swap them in the frame. No joining or rotation. If your screen is set to 800x600 or less, use the full screen mode of your browser because the puzzle is large. The puzzle program is by Puzzle Magic. See my review of Puzzle Magic.
WebProvider - Swap pieces in a frame. This website is no longer available, but you can still play their puzzles at the following sites:
WebPuzzle - Frame style puzzles featuring single player puzzles up to 1802 pieces and multiplayer jigsaw puzzles with up to 3500 jigsaw puzzle pieces. Membership is required to play the puzzles. Visitors can see the puzzles but not move pieces. A free 2 week trial membership is available. A German version of the site is also available.
Web Reference - Three jigsaw puzzles in DHTML for different browsers. The site is
really a web development educational site. You can learn DHTML or just play the puzzles.
Select one of the 3 puzzles listed below and scroll down the page to find the puzzle. The puzzle will not appear until it is fully loaded. It may be on top of another part of the page, but you can drag the entire puzzle to a blank area. The Drag On/Off
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buttons toggles the ability to move the entire puzzle around the page. All puzzles are frame type and function the same. No joining or rotation. Select the number of pieces across (2-9) and down (2-9) and the desired picture from the drop down menu. Press Break to scatter the pieces across the page. Grid On/Off toggles the outline of the pieces in the frame. Drag and drop pieces to the correct position in the frame. Press Hint to put one piece in it's correct position. Pieces flash when they are placed in their correct position. The entire puzzle flashes when it is completed.
DHTML Lab Jigsaw for IE - The 5 pictures are by Escher. This version works in Internet Explorer and AOL, but not in Netscape. There's a bug in the program (when used in Internet Explorer) that causes (1.) the puzzle to continue flashing after it is completed, even when another picture is chosen and it's pieces are 'broken' and then (2.) the puzzle automatically completes itself when one piece is moved. To get around these bugs, refresh your browser page. In AOL, there is a similar flashing problem that occurred before the puzzle was complete. This version is implemented at Askwhy Jigsaw Puzzle with 13 pictures, some of which have poor image quality, and without the buttons to select the number of pieces.
DHTML Lab Jigsaw for Netscape - same as the IE version except that the 11 pictures are by Picasso. This is actually the cross-browser version with lab discussion of the Netscape features. The puzzle works in Internet Explorer, Netscape and AOL. In Netscape, there's a bug that causes the buttons to lose part of their image when the puzzle is dragged around the screen, but the button position still functions.
WinSite - Results of query for "jigsaw" gave me 54 puzzle programs to download. I haven't tried many of these yet. Try them for yourself.
World Winner - Competitive online jigsaw puzzles and other games. Membership is
required but free and is password protected. My id is Dottystorer. There's a free 20 piece puzzle with the picture changing as soon as 5 players are registered. Other puzzles/games cost $.50 to $5.00 to register and pay about 80% of the registration fees to the winner. New puzzle pictures are added when the maximum number of players (2, 4, 5, 10 or 25) for a puzzle is met. There's also a daily jigsaw with unlimited number of players.
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Jigsaws sometimes repeat prior pictures. Jigsaws have 20, 30, 48 or 56 pieces. All jigsaw puzzles use rotation and the picture always displays. Right click pieces to rotate. (Macintosh users, try holding down control, option or command while clicking.) There are 5 drawers for sorting pieces - pieces may be joined in the drawers. Press 'P' to pause the timer for interruptions. Ranked scores are displayed automatically when a puzzle is completed or ended. You may play the same puzzle multiple times and receive separate scores. Select Play Jigsaw under Links on the score page to do another World Winner jigsaw puzzle. See also the World Winner entryin my Jigsaw Comparison Chart and Jigsaws for Your Own Site. I've implemented World Winner games at JigCard Gallery Games.
WW - One online frame style puzzle to play The puzzle is no longer available at the developer's site but I have two examples at WW1 and WW2. Warning: this puzzle can crash Firefox and has some problems in Internet Explorer - perhaps because it has not been updated for recent versions of Java. Some pieces are not completely displayed while others are not displayed at all. Press Start to scramble the pieces and Reset to display the completed puzzle. Click pieces to swap their positions. The puzzle control does not recognize when the puzzle is complete and sometimes says it's complete when it's not. Don't waste your time on this one.
X-plosive JigSaw,
puzzle game - Download a free demo of X-plosive JigSaw to play for 60 minutes. $24.95 for a single license. The demo puzzle has all the functionality of the purchased puzzle, but not as many pictures or backgrounds and it has a limited play time. Both puzzles allow you to use your own pictures and picture packs that are available at their site.
This puzzle allows the player to control many features. This makes it more complicated than most puzzles and I do not recommend it for beginners. Easy puzzles can be created though, so an adult could create puzzles for a young child. Excellent documentation will help you learn to use the more complicated features.
To start using the puzzle, download and install it. (As part of any download to your computer, you should always do a virus scan.) When you begin the program, choose Puzzle from the menu at the right. Click one of the pictures to select it, then click Play at the bottom. Use the mouse to click a piece and drag it to a new position. Rotate a piece by clicking the right mouse button with the cursor over the piece. Pieces will automatically join when correctly placed near each other.
By default, scoring appears when the puzzle is 50% and 100% complete. It is confusing to have the scoring pop up half way through and it does not stay long enough to read. This can be controlled however (see changing options in the next paragraph) and the score can be seen when desired by clicking the rotating cube in the upper right hand corner of the screen.
To control how the puzzle works, select Options in the main menu or click the rightmost icon (picture of gear and wrench) in the menu bar (or press F11) when playing a puzzle. The Options screen is a bit overwhelming because it controls so much. Press F1 for excellent help.
More details about this puzzle coming soon.
Online X-Plosive Jigsaws are also available at:
BrainBashers - Select Easy, Medium or Hard beside the desired picture.
Yasunori Jigsaw - One frame style Flash jigsaw puzzle. Watch the picture move as you assemble the puzzle. A close look reveals that it is a static picture moving around the screen, not a true video. This puzzle was created by Harada Yasunori.
Yavsoft - A number of different jigsaw puzzle engines are available, all with classic jigsaw shape, joining and optional rotation and some control of piece shape. Some have optional timing/scoring. It is amazing to see animated pictures supported - few jigsaw puzzles can do this. See the Yavsoft entry in my Jigsaw Comparison Chart.
Play puzzles yourself or add jigsaw puzzles to your website with Yavsoft's products. Online sample puzzles and free trial downloads are available.
Yavsoft offers 4 jigsaw puzzle products. Alive! Jigsaw is for players. Alive! Jigsaw Producer is for those who want to share stand alone puzzles. Flash Jigsaw Producer is for those who want to be able to offer online jigsaws to their website visitors. Online Puzzles Maker is for websites with a gallery of pictures. All support moving pictures in the puzzles. I reccommend all but Online Puzzles Maker, which has great potential for the future. Continue reading for details of each product.
Yavsoft jigsaw products:
Alive! Jigsaw - Can increase/decrease puzzle and window size and save partially completed puzzle. List of best scores (times). Trial allows creation of puzzles but only allows playing a few pieces of each puzzle, before it asks for registration with each piece moved. Supported input file formats are avi, htm, swl (swf?), jpg, gif, whf, bmp, vob, asf, wmv, mpg - the greatest variety I've seen in a jigsaw creator. Alive! Jigsaw is available for Windows and Linux. The Linux download link is at the bottom of the free downloads page and is not currently on the Alive! Jigsaw page.
Alive! Jigsaw Producer - Similiar to Alive! Jigsaw except that it allows sharing puzzles with friends or on websites. It creates an exe file that can be run without the Alive! Jigsaw software. The unregistered version displays "Made in Unregistered Jigsaw Producer" at the top of finished puzzles.
Partially completed saved jigsaws create a file with a6m and can only be opened with Alive! Jigsaw Producer (not Alive! Jigsaw) and when opening the file for the first time, the user must browse to the location of the Alive! Jigsaw Producer program. Supported input file formats are avi, yav, jpg and wmf format.
Flash Jigsaw Producer - Creates a 2 sided puzzle in 2 swf files and an html file to upload to your website. Controls for creating puzzles are a little different from the other jigsaw products by Yavsoft and the resulting puzzle has no control buttons. Help in the Flash Jigsaw Producer is more detailed than in the above Yavsoft products.
Instructions for rotation (hold key "R" and click left mouse button) and flipping pieces (hold key "T" and click left mouse button) is included in the html file. (Lower case "r" and "t" work too.) Holding done the "R" key makes continous rotation and releasing it stops the rotation.
Input files can be avi, yav, jpg or wmf format. Created puzzles are not timed. There is no indication in the created puzzle that it was created by an unregistered version, but one side of the puzzle pieces contain a rooster and "Yavsoft 2005" in the unregistered version and registered users can select the picture for the reverse side of the puzzle.
Online Puzzles Maker (Web Jigsaw Promotion) - The resulting Flash puzzle contains control buttons for help, viewing the picture (faded), rotating pieces ("r" works too and is easier) and turning the pieces over ("t" works too and is easier). The button controls for rotating and turning pieces make controling pieces difficult.
Input files can be jpg, gif or swf format (maybe others too). Created puzzles are not timed. There is no indication in the created puzzle that it was created by an unregistered version, but one side of the puzzle pieces contain a rooster and "Yavsoft 2005" in the unregistered version and registered users can select the picture for the reverse side of the puzzle.
This version of the maker has problems - one puzzle I created was impossible to play because the response time was too slow and another didn't include the input file specified (both input files were swf format, the first had sound). Making the puzzle with a simple jpg worked fine. Rotating a piece immediately after moving it and not releasing the mouse button can result in the piece rotating off the playing area and becoming lost.
One feature I do like is the Info button, used when creating a puzzle to display all the settings for that puzzle. The image source and size are specified in the resulting html, so this has great potential for being used with a gallery of pictures and a database. I was able to successfully change the input file name and picture size in the html and play a different picture, even switching between swf and jpg. Instructions for changing the html are not included in the Help file. (These parameters need to be changed in 2 places in the html.)
This is the only Flash jigsaw puzzle, that I am aware of, that supports database input for the picture information and has a free trial. However I cannot reccommend Online Puzzles Maker at this time (June 29, 2007) due to the problems I encountered. I couldn't find a version number for the software, so if you're interested, download the free trial and see if the current version meets your needs.
Alive! Jigsaw Producer is also used at:
Mr Jigs Jigsaw Gallery Games Room - Large collection of downloadable puzzles organized by category and number of pieces. Every one of their real jigsaw puzzles is available as a virtual puzzle.
JigsawADay - Two animated jigsaws. (The pictures aren't changed daily - or at all.)
ZDNet - List of freeware and shareware jigsaw programs to download and play offline or use on your website. Each jigsaw program is reviewed, rated by visitors and often includes visitor reviews. Many of their jigsaws are reviewed here at Dotty's Virtual Jigsaws.
Visual Encounters Greeting Cards™