Thimbly

Thimbly is a free daily nonogram with a needlework twist: a picture logic puzzle in cross-stitch, where the numbers along each row and column tell you how many squares to fill, and the filled squares draw a hidden motif. Every day brings three hoops, the same for everyone: a gentle 5×5, an 8×8 and a 10×10, printed like a cross-stitch chart with its thread counts in the margins. Stitch every cross the counts call for and the pattern comes to life: the red working stitches re-stitch themselves in a colorway of thread into a little embroidered motif, outlined, filled and finished with French knots, set in a wooden hoop. New hoops open every day at midnight New York time, you get one try a day, and a set takes about five minutes in your browser with no download. It is one of our daily games, alongside the games like Wordle.

If you have never solved a picture cross puzzle (people also call them nonograms, griddlers, Picross-style puzzles or paint by numbers logic puzzles), the first hoop teaches you in fifteen seconds. Each number is a run of stitches in that row or column, in order: a row counted 3 1 has three stitched squares in a row, then at least one bare square, then one more. Look for lines where the runs can only fit one way, stitch the squares that every possible placement agrees on, and mark the squares that must stay bare. Every answer in a row helps the columns it crosses, and the motif builds up square by square. No guessing is ever needed: before a pattern reaches you, a solver proves that it has exactly one solution that pure line logic finds. Like a traditional sampler motif, every pattern is mirror-symmetric, which is a fair hint once you spot it.

Every pattern is graded before it is dealt, by how full it is, how many counts it prints, how many rounds of line-by-line reasoning it takes and how many strokes a careful stitcher needs, and only patterns inside the same band for their size are used, so no day is luckier than another. No hoop comes back on another day for years. Mistakes are forgiving too. Nothing tells you right away, just as on a real chart, so you can fix a stray stitch yourself; a row whose stitches already match its counts fades its numbers. When you are stuck, CHECK unpicks every wrong square of the hoop for a 15-second penalty.

Your score is the number of hoops you finish and your time, and your set goes on the day's leaderboard of our competitive games: hoops first, then time, with top scores verified by replaying them on our servers. The clock on the paper tag runs from your first stitch and never stops, even if you step away, so play your set in one go. The end card frames your three motifs as a cross-stitch sampler with the date, and the share line is your three hoops as squares and your score, never the pictures, ready to paste into a group chat. Thimbly is also one of the games The Daily can deal you, with three hoops of its own, never that day's.

Thimbly plays the same on a phone or a computer. On a phone, tap a square to stitch it, hold it to mark it bare, and drag along a row or column to stitch a whole run; the squares stay big enough to tap even on the 10×10. With a mouse, click, hold and drag the same way; on a keyboard, the arrow keys move a cursor, Space stitches (hold it to stitch a run), X marks a square bare and C checks. It belongs with our puzzle games, logic puzzles, brain games, relaxing games, mobile games, PC games and casual games for adults, and it is a calm free game to play at work on a coffee break.