Daily Brains · seven pieces, one silhouette a day. Fill it exactly, then find out what it is.
Tangram is the seven-piece dissection puzzle in Daily Brains (/daily). Everybody gets the same dark silhouette each day and the same seven pieces: two large triangles, a medium triangle, two small triangles, a square and a parallelogram. Drag them out of the tray and fit them together until the silhouette is covered exactly, with no gaps, no overlaps and nothing sticking out. The only clue is the kind of thing it is (an animal, a person, a boat...); the figure's name is revealed when you finish. The board is a sheet of rice paper in a cinnabar lacquer frame with the silhouette brushed in sumi ink; the pieces are polished jade, cinnabar, gold, lapis, celadon, persimmon and plum and wait on a black lacquer tray.
STORY & LORE
A week of figures
Difficulty follows the weekday. Monday is gentle: convex shapes and simple objects, with optional guide lines that show where every piece goes. Tuesday and Wednesday share an easy pool, Thursday and Friday a trickier one, Saturday is devious and Sunday is fiendish: people and animals in awkward poses where the pieces hide in big solid areas or turn up at 45° to everything else.
Every figure is a stored solution
The library holds 158 figures (animals, people in poses, boats, buildings, letters, objects and the convex shapes). Each one is stored as the seven pieces in their solved positions, on the tangram lattice (unit = the small triangle's leg, angles in 45° steps). The silhouette you fill is simply the union of those pieces, so every day is solvable. The figures are drawn on a grid and solved by an exact-cover search when the library is built; a test re-checks every one: exactly the seven tans, every corner on the lattice, every piece at a 45° step, no overlaps, total area 8, one connected figure.
The schedule
The weekday picks a tier, and each tier's figures are dealt in a fixed shuffled order from puzzle #1, a fresh shuffle each pass, with the figures that closed one pass moved to the back half of the next. No figure comes back within about 76 days (98 for Monday shapes).
HOW IT PLAYS
Moving pieces
Drag a piece from the tray onto the board; on a phone it rides just above your finger so you can see where it lands. Tap a piece to turn it 45° clockwise, or put a second finger down while dragging and twist. Flip mirrors the parallelogram (the only piece that needs it). Drop a piece below the board or off its edge and it goes back to the tray; Clear sends every piece home. On a keyboard: 1 to 7 pick a piece, arrows nudge it, R or Space turns it (Shift+R turns back), F flips, H asks for a hint, Delete sends it home.
Magnetic snapping
When you let go, the piece slides the short way onto the nearest fit: one of its corners lands on a corner of the silhouette, a corner of another piece or a point of the lattice (shown as faint dots), preferring the move that seats the most corners at once. A dashed gold ghost shows where it will land while you drag. When a piece lands wholly inside the silhouette and on top of nothing, it flashes, a ring and a burst of gold flecks and plum petals spring from it, and a woodblock clack rings out with a chime; each chime climbs a pentatonic scale as more pieces sit inside the figure, and quick placements in a row burst bigger. A gold rule in the bottom rail of the frame fills as the silhouette is covered.
Winning
The figure is filled when the pieces cover the silhouette with no gap, no overlap and nothing outside it, measured on a fine sample grid with a small tolerance so a piece a hair off still counts. Any arrangement that fills the shape wins, not only the stored one.
Hints, guide lines and scoring
A hint draws the dashed outline of one piece that is not yet in place, in that piece's colour, for 120 points. On Mondays the Lines button shows every piece's outline faintly for 50 points. A solve scores 1000, minus hints and lines, minus 1 point for every 2 seconds over the day's par time (at most 400), never below 100. A perfect day is inside par with no hints and no lines. Give up shows the solution and ends the day as a loss.
Results and sharing
Finishing stamps a cinnabar seal bearing the figure's name into a free corner of the paper, with a gong. The results reveal fills the silhouette piece by piece in colour and names the figure. The share text gives the puzzle number, weekday, time, hints and score with a ten-square bar, never the figure or its name.
THE WEEK
| Day | Mood | Tier | Par time | Extras |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | Gentle | 1 (27 figures) | 1:30 | guide lines available |
| Tuesday | Easy | 2 (38) | 2:30 | — |
| Wednesday | Steady | 2 (38) | 2:30 | — |
| Thursday | Tricky | 3 (39) | 3:30 | — |
| Friday | Tough | 3 (39) | 4:00 | — |
| Saturday | Devious | 4 (33) | 5:00 | — |
| Sunday | Fiendish | 5 (21) | 7:00 | — |
THE LIBRARY
| Kind | Figures | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| People | 52 | Monk, Runner, Kneeling Archer, Pole Vault, Pianist, Mermaid |
| Animals | 39 | Cat, Swan, Seahorse, Loch Ness Monster, Mammoth, Kangaroo |
| Objects | 28 | Candle, Teapot, Trophy, Cocktail Glass, Candy Cane, Anvil |
| Shapes | 16 | Square, Triangle, Hexagon, Crystal, Star |
| Buildings | 11 | House, Castle, Bridge, Chapel, Igloo |
| Letters | 7 | E, F, L, M, T, U, Y |
| Boats | 5 | Sailboat, Junk, Steamboat, Yacht, Dinghy |
REWARDS
| Event | Reward |
|---|---|
| Fill the figure | 15 Tickets |
| Perfect day (inside par, no hints, no lines) | +25 Tickets |
| First Fold (first solve) | Bronze · 10 Tickets |
| Clean Cut (a perfect day) | Silver · 20 Tickets |
| Quick Fold (under a minute, no hint) | Silver · 20 Tickets |
| Sunday Best (a Sunday with no hint) | Gold · 40 Tickets |
| Three Folds (3-day streak) | Bronze · 15 Tickets |
| Seven Pieces, Seven Days (7-day streak) | Gold · 40 Tickets |
| Paper Master (30-day streak) | Legendary · 100 Tickets |
| Ten Figures (10 solves) | Silver · 20 Tickets |
| Secret: 50 solves | Gold · 60 Tickets |
VERSION HISTORY
- A traditional look: the board is rice paper (mulberry fibres) in a cinnabar lacquer frame with a gold line, the silhouette is brushed sumi ink with a soft bleed and dry-brush streaks, and the tray is black lacquer with a gold rim. The seven pieces are now polished stone and lacquer colours: cinnabar, jade, imperial gold, lapis, celadon, persimmon and plum, each with a gloss and a bevel.
- Livelier feedback: a piece that lands inside the silhouette flashes, throws a gold ring with flecks and plum petals, and rings a woodblock clack plus a chime that climbs a pentatonic scale as the figure fills; fast placements in a row burst bigger. A gold progress rule in the frame shows how much of the figure is covered.
- The solve stamps a cinnabar seal with the figure's name into a free corner of the paper (with a gong and a thump), and the seal stays on the board afterwards.
- Sound has its own button in the header (it was a link at the bottom of the statistics sheet).
- Less clutter: the puzzle number line, the boxed Time/Hints chips and the instruction line under the buttons are gone. One slim line shows the day's mood, the clue in a Shippori Mincho serif, and the clock; the hint count sits on the Hint button; the few messages that matter appear as short toasts.
- New thumbnail and wiki screenshot.
- Launch version in Daily Brains.
- 158 figures in five weekday tiers, each stored as a verified solution on the tangram lattice and re-proved by scripts/test-tangram.mjs (pieces, lattice, 45° steps, no overlap, area, connectivity, outline, win check, snapping, 400-day schedule).
- Touch-first controls: drag with the piece riding above the finger, tap to turn 45°, two-finger twist, Flip for the parallelogram, magnetic snapping with a landing ghost, drop off the board to return a piece to the tray. Keyboard and mouse supported.
- Timer, hints (120 points), Monday guide lines (50 points), auto-save and restore, give up with the solution shown, a results reveal that fills the silhouette in colour and names the figure, spoiler-free share text, streaks and nine achievements.
- Rules: a three-step drawn deck that opens only from How to play.
- New thumbnail art
- Thumbnail now captured from the game.
- Square thumbnail
- New thumbnail: a straight, full-bleed square crop of the game in play.