Tint

Puzzle · plays in your browser, no download

Pick a colour and fill in every piece that carries its number. Nothing to win, no clock, nothing to lose: the sheet is done when it is full. Mandalas, stained glass, flowers and butterflies, a different one every time.

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Where it comes from

The colouring book, which is older than it looks: printed outline books for children go back to the 1880s, and the version for grown-ups became a publishing phenomenon around 2013, when mandalas and botanical patterns started outselling novels. Colour-by-number came later and from a different place — a 1950s American craft kit that promised anyone could paint a picture if the picture told them where each colour went.

How to play

Pick a colour at the bottom, then tap every piece that carries its number.
The wrong colour does nothing. A piece only takes the colour of its own number, so you cannot finish the sheet by tapping at random.
When a colour has no pieces left, the game hands you the next one by itself.

What makes this one different

There is nothing to win here, and that is the point. Pick a colour, tap every piece that carries its number, and the sheet fills up. No clock, no opponent, no score to beat — the only thing that happens is that a drawing you could not see arrives one piece at a time. The wrong colour does nothing at all, so you cannot finish by tapping at random: you have to look.

Every sheet is built on the spot, so no two are the same: a mandala of rings and petals, a stained-glass window of squares and diagonals, a flower with its petals in layers, or a butterfly drawn the same on both sides. More stars means more colours to hold in mind, not smaller pieces — the pieces stay the same size, because squinting is not difficulty.

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