How to Play Patches

Patches is a logic puzzle about carving a grid into blocks. Every marker on the board belongs to exactly one rectangular block, and when you are done, every square must sit inside one block — no gaps, no overlaps.

Drag from one corner to the other to claim a block around a marker. Two rules decide whether it holds:

• The number is the size. A marker showing 8 must end up in a block covering exactly eight squares.
• The shape is fixed. The marker itself tells you the shape: a square, a tall block, a wide block, or the layered marker, which allows any of the three.

Some markers carry no number at all. Those fix only the shape — their size is settled by everything around them, because the finished grid has to come out exactly.

A block that breaks a rule is not thrown away: it stays on the board in red, with the reason underneath, until you draw again or tap it. Undo steps back one move, and Hint is there when a board stops making sense.

Tips for Harder Boards

• Start where there is no choice. A marker in a corner, or one whose number only fits one way, is where the board opens up. Claim those first and the rest narrows.
• Let the shape do the work. A tall marker showing 6 can only be 6×1 or 3×2 — and only one of those may fit the space you have.
• Watch the leftovers. A single stranded square with no marker beside it means a block nearby is wrong, even if every block you have placed looks legal.
• Numberless markers come last. Place everything with a number first; the blank ones are usually decided by the space that is left.
• Keep the run alive. Clearing a stage without a hint builds your run. One hint resets it to zero, so it is worth staring a little longer before asking.

Why Play Patches Here?

One hundred stages, and none of them are the same twice: every stage builds a fresh board the moment you start it, so replaying a stage gives you a new puzzle at the same size and difficulty rather than the one you already solved. Boards run from a gentle 5×5 up to a 12×12 that will take some sitting with.

Every board is checked before you see it — each one has exactly one solution, so a puzzle can always be reasoned out and never needs a guess. Your cleared stages, best times, run and badges are kept in your own browser, with no account to make and nothing collected.