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