If you lost an afternoon to Tetravex on an old Windows PC, you already know how to play Seams. Square tiles, a number on every edge, and a grid where touching edges have to agree. Seams keeps that, adds a little, and gives you a new board every day.
What is an edge-matching puzzle?
You have a set of square tiles and a grid to fill. Each tile's four edges carry a mark. Wherever two tiles touch, the marks on the facing edges have to match. The outside edges of the grid don't matter.
Tetravex is the version most people met first. It shipped in Windows Entertainment Pack 3 around 1990: a 3 by 3 grid by default, a digit on each edge, and tiles that never rotate. Board games and jigsaw-style puzzles have used the same idea with colors and pictures.
How does Seams change the rule?
Each side of a Seams tile is a colored triangle with a number from 1 to 9. Two facing sides match if they pass any one of three tests:
- Same color. A blue 3 matches a blue 8.
- Same number. A blue 3 matches a green 3.
- Adding to 10. A blue 3 matches a green 7.
A blue 3 next to a green 6 fails all three, and a red line marks the seam.
Three ways to match sounds easier than one. It isn't, quite. A tile has more possible neighbors, so you can't just look for the one tile with the right digit. You have to count how many tiles fit a square, and find the square where only one does. The sum-of-10 rule is the one people forget when they're stuck.
Like Tetravex, tiles don't rotate. Unlike Tetravex, a few tiles start pinned in place, and every puzzle is checked to have one solution you can reach by reasoning, with no guessing.
Where do you start?
Look for two pinned tiles with one empty square between them, or two set kitty-corner. Either way, there's a square that touches two fixed tiles, so whatever goes there has to match on two sides at once. Two rules usually leave a single tile in the tray. Place it and you've got a new pair to work from. Leave the corners for last: a corner tile only touches two others, so it tells you the least.
What's a day of Seams like?
- Monday to Wednesday: 3 by 3, with 3, then 2, then 1 tile pinned.
- Thursday: 3 wide and 4 tall, with 3 pinned.
- Friday to Sunday: 3 by 4, with 2 pinned. Sunday needs the most looking ahead.
A timer runs while you solve, and your time is your score. Signed-in players get a daily leaderboard, with fewer hints breaking ties. Missed a day? The results screen lets you play the last seven. Read how to play Seams or play today's Seams.
More puzzles like it
- Masonry: lay dominoes so no row or column repeats a number. Also one solution, also no guessing. See games like Pips.
- Theorem: swap tiles on a grid to match three daily rules and chase a high score.
- Glide: slide a ball across three icy boards in as few moves as par.
More on logic puzzles, or browse every game by type.
Seams isn't affiliated with Microsoft or any version of Tetravex.