Pic-a-Pix Going World-Wide

Pic-a-pix puzzles originated in Japan back in 1987, that’s only 25 years ago.  That’s pretty young for a puzzle if you think about it, but in that timeframe, it has been spreading throughout Europe and is now spreading throughout North America.  I recently met a lovely young lady from Israel who was promoting body products containing minerals from the Dead Sea.  She told me that she has been solving this kind of puzzle from a newspaper back home.  It made me realize the extent of the popularity of this puzzle; and as long as you understand the concept of the grid and what you do with the number clues, it really is language-independent.

Transcending Boundaries

A pic-a-pix fan of mine has been blogging about myself and my book.  She relates her experience with travel and how certain things abroad don’t necessarily have a language barrier.  See her article called  Transcending Boundaries .  The major appeal of Japanese logic puzzles is attributed to their simple rules and the use of logic without special knowledge of words or math.

And of course the benefits of doing brain teasers are numerous:  satisfaction with solving and completing something difficult, increased brain health (use or lose it), development of new logic skills, and last but not least, pure enjoyment.

To learn how to solve Pic-a-pix puzzles, visit my place.

Diane Baher

What even is Spatial Reasoning?

And what does Pic-a-Pix have to do with it?

It has always been my understanding that one of the logic skills used to solve pic-a-pix puzzles is called spatial reasoning, but a good portion of us don’t know what it means.  A person who has it is good at dealing with relationships between objects in both two and three dimensions. 

For example, parallel-parking – some of us purposely avoid it while others perform the maneuver every day and never hesitate to do it.  It has something to do with the space available and visual acuity or reasoning, but the good news is that it can be learned and developed with practice.

Pic-a-pix puzzles have number clues for the columns in a grid, and number clues for the rows of the same grid, or in other words, clues for vertical and clues for horizontal directions – two dimensions.  Your brain has to jump back and forth between these two. 

Another way that you will utilize spatial reasoning is if, for example, the number clue is 6 and the grid is 10 squares, you can safely deduct that the two middle squares of that row can be colored in, because regardless if that block of 6 is to occupy the space farthest to the left or farthest to the right, those two squares will be used in either case.

For more information on spatial reasoning see this article.

Diane Baher, creator of puzzle book:   Pic-a-Pix the Latest Puzzling Fix