How to Do a Jigsaw Puzzle Online Together (Up to 8 People)

Almost every game you can play with someone online puts you on opposite sides. Which is fine, until it is a weeknight, one of you has had a long day, and being beaten at something is not what either of you needs.

A shared jigsaw is the opposite of that. Up to eight people work on the same picture at the same time, the progress bar belongs to all of you, and there is no winner.

Starting a puzzle

• Open the games page and pick Jigsaw
• Choose a difficulty and a picture
• Share the room link
• Everyone drags pieces on the same board, live

You do not have to wait for anyone before you start. One person is enough to open a puzzle, so you can be picking a picture while the room is still filling up.

Picking a difficulty

There are four, and the piece count is not the important part:

• Easy — around 12 pieces, outlines shown
• Medium — around 24 pieces, outlines shown
• Hard — around 48 pieces, outlines hidden
• Expert — around 88 pieces, outlines hidden

On easy and medium, the board shows a faint outline of every piece in its slot, so the job is matching shapes. On hard and expert those outlines are gone, and you have to read the picture instead. That is a much bigger jump than doubling the piece count — a 48-piece puzzle with no outlines is harder than an 88-piece one with them.

Piece counts are approximate on purpose: the grid is fitted to the shape of the picture so the pieces stay roughly square rather than becoming thin slivers.

The pictures

There is a library of photographs to choose from — Tokyo streets, a Venice canal, alpine villages at dusk, New York at night, an autumn path, animal portraits. Whoever is setting up picks one, and everyone sees the same puzzle.

Two tools help while you are solving:

• Preview — hold it to see the finished picture, then let go
• Shuffle — re-scatters the loose pieces when the tray becomes a pile
• Change puzzle — start a different one, once everyone agrees to abandon this one

How to solve it faster as a group

Two people on one puzzle are not automatically twice as fast. Without a bit of coordination you mostly get in each other’s way.

Divide the picture, not the pile

The most common mistake is everyone rummaging through the same loose pieces. Take a region each — one person on the sky, one on the buildings — and it stops being a scramble.

Edges first still works

It is the oldest jigsaw advice and it is still correct. The frame turns an open problem into a bounded one, and it is easy to hand to one person while everyone else sorts.

Sort before you place

On the harder levels especially, five minutes of grouping pieces by colour beats five minutes of trying them in slots. Sorting is also the part that parallelises best across a group.

Say what you are working on

You can see when someone is holding a piece, but not what they are hunting for. One sentence — "I’ve got the top left" — prevents most of the duplicated effort.

Why it is the best one for a long-distance night

Because it does not need you to be entertaining. A competitive game needs both people switched on. A puzzle sits happily underneath a conversation — you can talk about your day, go quiet for ten minutes, and neither is awkward because you are both still doing something.

It is also the only one of the three that scales past two people, so it works for a friend group as well as a couple. Eight people on one picture, everyone seeing every piece move, and a counter showing how many each person has placed.

Start a puzzle

Open the games page, pick Jigsaw, and send the link.

If you would rather compete, Connect 4 and Tic-Tac-Toe are both two-player and quick. There is an overview of all three games here, and the long-distance date night guide covers what to do with the rest of the evening.