How to get better at logic puzzles: seven habits that work
Getting better at logic puzzles is less about talent than about habits. Strong solvers do a few simple things every time, and every one of them can be learned. Here are seven that carry across the puzzles we make, with a place in our games to practise each one, followed by an honest look at what research says about puzzles and the mind.
1. Mark what is impossible
Most progress in a logic puzzle comes from ruling things out, not from finding things. Every cell you cross off makes the rest of the board easier to read, until only one option is left. In Crowns, tap a cell once to put an X in it, or drag across empty cells to mark many at once. The "Mark around new crowns" option goes further and marks the row, column, region and neighbours of each crown you place.
New solvers often skip marking because it feels slow. It is the opposite. An unmarked board makes you redo the same reasoning every time you look at it, and that is where mistakes creep in.
2. Start where the choices are fewest
Look for the most constrained place on the board: the row, region or cell with the fewest possibilities left. That might be a small Crowns region with only two open cells, a Sun & Moon row that already holds two of its three suns, or a corner of Pebble Path, where a cell has only two neighbours and the line must use both unless it starts or ends there. Tight spots are where a board gives information away.
The same instinct works in Pebble Blocks, even though it is not a pure logic puzzle. The pieces with the fewest places to go, the 3 by 3 square and the bars of five, deserve your attention before the small ones.
3. Learn patterns, not just rules
Experts do not simply see more. They see in bigger pieces. In a classic 1973 study, William Chase and Herbert Simon found that skilled chess players could recall much larger chunks of a real game position than novices after a brief look, but the difference was much smaller when the pieces were placed at random. What the experts had was a store of familiar patterns, not a better memory for everything.
Puzzles reward the same kind of learning. In Sun & Moon, two suns side by side mean a moon at each end, and sun, gap, sun means a moon in the middle. In Crowns, a region squeezed into one row closes the rest of that row. Once patterns like these are automatic, you stop working them out and start seeing them. For more of them, see our binary puzzle and queens puzzle technique guides.
4. Make your first solves slow
Speed comes from accuracy, not the other way round. On a new kind of puzzle, take every step slowly and say the reason to yourself: "this region fits only in row three, so nothing else can go in row three." A step you can explain is a step you can repeat on the next board. A guess teaches nothing, even when it works. None of our games has a timer that ends a game, so going slowly costs you nothing.
5. Take a break when you are stuck
Sometimes the best move is to stop. One reason is what psychologists call the Einstellung effect: a familiar idea blocks a better one. In a 2008 study, Merim Bilalić, Peter McLeod and Fernand Gobet found it even in chess experts: a familiar idea that came to mind first stopped many of them from finding a better solution, although the most skilled players were the least affected.
Stepping away can help. A 2009 review of incubation studies by Sio and Ormerod found that setting a problem aside had a positive effect on average, and a larger one after a longer first attempt. The effect varied with the kind of problem, so treat a break as a good bet rather than a guarantee. Our games save your progress in the browser, so you can close a board and come back to it with fresh eyes.
6. Use hints as lessons
A hint is most useful when you treat it as a lesson rather than a rescue. In Crowns and Sun & Moon, a hint shows the next logical step and explains it in one sentence, such as which region is squeezed into a single row. In Arrows Away, a hint lights up a free arrow, chosen as the one in the way of the most others, which is a strategy worth copying in its own right. In Pebble Path, a hint lights up the next three stones of the answer, and if your line has gone off course it also rings the last stone that was right, so you can see where the mistake began. In Wordfellows, a hint gives the name of one remaining group, not its words, so you still do the finding.
After any hint, pause and look for the same pattern somewhere else on the board. If you can find it once more on your own, the hint has done its job.
7. Keep a small daily habit
A short daily session is easy to keep up, and it keeps the patterns from yesterday fresh. A daily puzzle is a natural unit: one board, the same for everyone, and in several of our games a little harder as the week goes on.
| Game | Daily puzzle |
|---|---|
| Crowns | 7 by 7 on Monday and Tuesday, 8 by 8 midweek, 9 by 9 at the weekend |
| Sun & Moon | 6 by 6, easiest on Monday, hardest on Saturday |
| Arrows Away | Gentler early in the week, hardest at the weekend |
| Pebble Path | 7 by 7, easy on Monday and Tuesday, medium midweek, hard at the weekend |
| Pebble Blocks | The same pieces in the same order for everyone |
| Wordfellows | Four groups of four |
Streaks are there as a gentle nudge to come back, nothing more. Missing a day costs you nothing but the streak.
What research says about puzzles and the mind
It is tempting to promise that puzzles keep your brain young. The evidence is more modest. A 2016 review led by Daniel Simons in Psychological Science in the Public Interest found that people improve on the tasks they practise, but found little evidence that brain-training games make people better at unrelated tasks or in everyday life.
Studies of puzzle habits show a link without proving a cause. A 2019 University of Exeter study of more than 19,000 adults aged 50 and over found that people who did word and number puzzles more often performed better on tests of attention, reasoning and memory. One of the researchers, Anne Corbett, was careful to add: "We can't say that playing these puzzles necessarily reduces the risk of dementia in later life."
So play puzzles because you enjoy them, and expect to get better at puzzles. That part is well supported, and it is plenty.
Sources and further reading
- Chunking (psychology), Wikipedia
- Bilalić, McLeod and Gobet, Inflexibility of experts: quantifying the Einstellung effect in chess masters, Cognitive Psychology (2008)
- Sio and Ormerod, Does incubation enhance problem solving? A meta-analytic review, Psychological Bulletin (2009)
- Review finds little evidence that brain-training games yield real-world benefits, University of Illinois (2016)
- Regular crosswords and number puzzles linked to sharper brain in later life, University of Exeter (2019)