Nonograms was invented in 1987 by Non Ishida, who was inspired to create the
puzzle after winning a competition that involved lighting up windows in a
skyscraper to create a picture. She originally called the puzzles, "Window Art
Puzzles". James Dalgety invented the name Nonograms and helped
The Sunday
Telegraph start producing the puzzles. Since then, it has been spread
rapidly in the form of newspapers, books, and video games.
Nonograms is a very basic logic puzzles. Initially, you are given a blank grid
with number clues at the side. The goal is to fill in the grid according to the
number clues at the top. The clues indicate how many connected filled-in squares
there are in that row or column. For example, a clue of "1" would mean that
there is only one filled in square in that entire row or column. A clue of "2 4
1" would indicate that there are groups of 2, 4, and 1 consecutive filled-in
squares in that order with gaps between each group.
Here is an example of a Nonograms puzzle with its solution:
A regular Nonograms puzzle |
The solution to the puzzle |
There is an applet that lets you play an interactive version of Nonograms. In the
applet, you can play different sized nonograms puzzles. There are 50,000 puzzles implemented so far. Click
here to play the Nonograms applet
online.