Sitting down to begin work on a jigsaw puzzle is an exciting but daunting experience.
The difficulty of a jigsaw puzzle and how long it takes to put it together is directly related to the number of pieces there are in the puzzle.
Plus, there are two factors that account for the complexity of such puzzles: the formation of the pieces and the die you use, as well as the contrast of the puzzle image.
The formation of the pieces and the die you use depends on how the puzzle was created, whether by the developer of the app or manufacturer.
The contrast of the puzzle, on the other hand, is about the definition of the strokes and colors it has. The more defined the diversity, the faster and easier it is to assemble.
Besides how you solve the puzzle, another important factor is the platform on which you do the puzzle. These days, you can solve puzzles online unlike in the past, where puzzles were physically solved.
If you’re wondering how to solve jigsaw-type puzzles online, you can try jigsaw puzzle solver apps like Abto Software and UnPuzzled. Though the best jigsaw puzzle solver app is Asolver. The app is highly popular and has been downloaded more than 10 million times on Google Play.
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Best Jigsaw Puzzle Solver Apps
1. ASolver
ASolver is a mobile jigsaw puzzle solver app that uses your device’s camera to recognize and solve puzzles.
The app solves puzzles like Rubik’s cube, which have different patterns, Pocket Cube, Rubik’s Revenge, Professor’s Cube, V-Cube6, Megaminx, Skewb, Pyraminx, Tower, Domino, and more, which the developer adds as they’re created.
For Pyraminx and Skewb, ASolver finds a solution with just a few moves. For Rubik’s Cubes, ASolver offers solutions that are very close to optimal.
For instance, 4x4x4 Rubik’s Cube puzzles are solved in 50 moves, 5x5x5 are solved in 85 moves, 6x6x6 puzzles are solved in 140 moves, and Megaminx puzzles in 130 moves.
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2. UnPuzzled
This is a jigsaw puzzle solver that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to solve puzzles. The app has a web app based on one of the solvers.
It consists of creation and solving components, and a checking adjacency component for the puzzle pieces.
Once the app gets your jigsaw puzzle, it takes the image and cuts it up into a uniform square with the puzzle pieces, each of them being a specific dimension.
The app then rotates the squares counterclockwise and shuffles them up to create a puzzle. Plus, it uses non-machine learning and machine learning models that detect if two puzzle pieces are adjacent or they’re not.
The app also uses a puzzle pieces pair generator to create custom datasets for these models. It takes actual images to construct the puzzle from the CUB-200 dataset, splitting them into training, test, and validation portions to check the adjacency of the models.
Finally, it creates a search algorithm, which takes a puzzle board and looks for the best pieces to fit until it solves the puzzle completely.
It will create solvers that integrate the models and compare all the pieces to give you a completely solved puzzle.
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3. Jigsawlutioner
Jigsawlutioner on GitHub is an open-source jigsaw puzzle solving algorithm designed to reconstruct puzzles from piece images by analyzing the shape of their borders rather than colors or picture content.
The core idea is to extract the outline of each puzzle piece, detect its corners, and split it into four sides, then compare every side against all others and compute match probabilities for how well they fit together.
Using this side-matching information, the solver attempts to assemble the pieces into a complete puzzle, tolerating imperfect cuts and border irregularities.
It currently works best on standard rectangular puzzles and excels with distinctly shaped manufacturing like Ravensburger pieces, where each side’s unique profile makes matching more reliable.
Jigsawlutioner includes tools for border detection, side classification, probability ranking, and final solution placement.
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4. Zolver
Zolver is another jigsaw puzzle solver developed by 4 EPITA students and written in Python language. The app solves both real and computer-generated jigsaw puzzles.
The project was developed on a Linux distro, so it’s not guaranteed for use on computers running Windows operating system. To avoid compatibility issues, you can set up a virtual environment and use some commands to solve your jigsaw puzzle.
The app applies a binary threshold to the processed image that differs from the real puzzle and then uses mathematical morphologies to link edges.
Next, it finds the edges of each puzzle piece and computes the relative angle to get local extrema and adjacent points.
Once it splits the edges, it classifies them into three categories, including indent padding, frame, and outdent padding edges.
To match these edges, the app compares the size of the edges to find similar lengths, uses color to match the edges, and uses a Euclidean distance to compare the shapes along the edges.
The more edges the app checks, the more likely it can match the pieces and give you a solution without errors. Zolver always tries to fill the empty spaces with the highest number of already-filled edges to give you a completely solved puzzle.
5. Puzzle Solver
PuzzleSolver on GitHub is an open-source jigsaw puzzle solver that uses computer vision to piece together scanned puzzle pieces by analyzing their edge shapes.
It was forked from an earlier project and extended to help automatically solve puzzles or assist in finishing ones you’ve already started.
The software works best with fully interlocking pieces of similar size and requires you to scan each piece so it can identify contours and corners using OpenCV, a popular image processing library.
PuzzleSolver can run in both automatic mode for smaller puzzles and a guided mode where it suggests likely matches and you confirm them, displaying matches in a simple graphical window while logging results.
Running it involves some command-line usage and setup with OpenCV.
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Wrapping Up
Sitting down to work on a jigsaw puzzle online is challenging yet exhilarating. It improves hand-eye coordination, visual acuity, color and shape identification, and patience.
Your mind can wander while your hands and eyes are busy with construction, plus you get a satisfying reward each time you fit a piece, which becomes a continuous session of good feelings.
No doubt jigsaw puzzles are addictive and never age with time. If you do not have the time to solve one, you no longer have to worry about that.
If you’ve tried different strategies to solve jigsaw puzzles of all sizes, but you can’t find any, you probably need a jigsaw puzzle solver app.
The list above, has some promising tools. Try using them.
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