Jigsaw Puzzle

Piece a real painting back together, 12 to 96 pieces.

Attention

Today’s picture "The Story of the Princess of the Blue Pavillion: The Youth of Rum Is Entertained in a Garden by a Fairy and her Maidens", Folio from a Khamsa (Quintet) of Amir Khusrau Dihlavi Amir Khusrau Dihlavi · 1597–98 Ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access (CC0)

How to play

Pick a piece up and drag it onto the board — when it is close to where it belongs, it clicks into place and stays.
Choose 12, 24, 48 or 96 pieces at the top. Fewer pieces is a couple of minutes; 96 is a proper sit-down.
The finished picture shows faintly under the board to guide you. Turn it off if you would rather work it out unaided.
Spread out re-scatters the loose pieces if the pile gets deep, and New picture brings up a different painting.

What it trains

Visual and spatial reasoning — matching shape, colour and orientation at the same time
Holds a piece in mind while your eyes go looking for its place
Absorbing without pressure: no timer, no ads, no account, and no way to lose

Play a free jigsaw puzzle online in your browser: choose 12, 24, 48 or 96 interlocking pieces and drag them into place — get one close to home and it clicks in. Every picture is a real painting from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s open collection, and finishing tells you which painting it was and who made it. Skip to another picture whenever you like. Nothing to download, no ads, no account, no timer unless you turn it on, and a half-built puzzle is saved if you close the tab.

The science behind it

Peer-reviewed studies this exercise draws on.

Jigsaw puzzling taps multiple cognitive abilities and is a potential protective factor for cognitive aging Fissler, Küster, Laptinskaya, Loy, von Arnim & Kolassa (2018). Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, 10, 299.

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