Play Hanjie Online, Free
A new hanjie puzzle every day — no download, no login, solvable by pure logic.
Hanjie is the puzzle's Japanese-magazine name
Hanjie, nonogram, picross, griddlers: one puzzle, four traditions. If you met it in a puzzle magazine — especially a British one — you probably know it as hanjie, the name Puzzler Media chose when it began publishing the puzzles in 1999. The word is usually traced to hanji-e, an old Japanese term for a “judge picture” or picture riddle — a fitting label for a grid you interrogate, cell by cell, until it confesses its image.
Born twice in 1980s Japan
The puzzle itself has an unusually charming origin story — and two independent inventors. In 1987, Non Ishida, a Japanese graphics editor, won a Tokyo competition by turning skyscrapers into art: pictures drawn by switching the windows' lights on and off. A lit-or-dark grid of windows is, in essence, a pixel image — and in 1988 she published three puzzles built on the idea, calling them “Window Art Puzzles.”
At almost the same moment, the professional puzzle designer Tetsuya Nishio arrived at the same concept independently and published his version in a different Japanese magazine. Two inventors, one idea, no contact between them — which is why historians credit the puzzle as having emerged in late-1980s Japan rather than naming a single creator. From those magazine pages it spread to the UK press in 1990, to Nintendo's Game Boy as Mario's Picross in 1995, and eventually to browsers like the one you are reading this in. The full history traces every step.
How hanjie is played
The numbers beside each row and above each column give the lengths of that line's runs of filled cells, in order, with at least one empty cell between runs. Cross-reference rows against columns, fill what must be filled, mark what must be empty, and a picture appears. A well-made hanjie never requires guessing — and every puzzle generated on this site is verified to have exactly one solution reachable by logic alone.
Hanjie on this site
- A fresh daily hanjie — one shared board, with streaks and a global leaderboard.
- Unlimited free play from gentle 5x5 grids up to marathon 25x25 boards.
- Guaranteed unique, logic-only solutions — the standard the Japanese magazines set.
- No account, no download, no paywall — play in the browser on any device.
New to hanjie?
The beginner's guide takes you from a blank grid to your first finished picture, and the technique guides teach the classic deductions — simple boxes, glue, splitting — that Japanese magazine solvers have been using since the puzzles first appeared.