Nonograms with words: the puzzle between picross and crossword

If you have ever wished a nonogram had words in it, or that a crossword had the clean logic of picross, this is the puzzle you were looking for. Nonograms and crosswords look alike from across a room: a grid, some filled squares, clues along the outside. They ask for different things, and a nonogram with words asks for both.

What a nonogram asks

Pure deduction. The numbers beside each line tell you how long its runs of filled squares are. You get nothing else, and you need nothing else. There is no vocabulary, no general knowledge, and no wordplay. A nonogram rewards patience and a tidy method, and when you finish, a picture appears. It's the same puzzle whether you know it as nonogram, picross, griddlers, or hanjie.

What a crossword asks

Recall and reading. Each clue points at a word, and the grid tells you how long the word is and which letters it shares with its neighbors. The logic is light. Most of the work is knowing the word, or working it out from a crossing letter and a hunch. A good crossword rewards a wide vocabulary and a feel for how clues are written, and you often solve it in company.

The puzzle in between

Nounogram takes the nonogram's number clues and the crossword's letter grid and makes each one a clue to the other. You read the numbers to find the solid squares. You spell a word into every run of open squares, across and down, with crossings shared as in a crossword. In the gentler styles you get the words as a list, so there is nothing to recall, only to place. Harder styles scramble the list, so you also unscramble each word, or put the letters along the edges instead, which gives you more to deduce and nothing to look up.

Every move from plain nonograms still works. The words add moves of their own, and they are the fun part. Here they are, easiest first, each on a few squares of a puzzle whose numbers count the solid squares.

1. Only one word fits

A run of letter squares spells exactly one word from the list, so a run whose length matches only one word is that word. Once the solids around a run are known, count it and look at the list.

Known 2 1
Placed 2 1 H O R S E
  • HORSE
  • CAT
  • ME
A line whose solids are known, leaving a run of five letter squares. HORSE is the only five-letter word in the list, so it goes there.

2. A letter picks the word

A crossing word gives you a letter in the run. Among the words of the run's length, keep only the ones with that letter in that spot.

Known A
Placed C A T
  • CAT
  • DOG
  • HEN
A run of three with an A known in its middle square. Of the three-letter words, only CAT has an A in the middle.

3. A placed word ends its run

A run spells one word, so a complete word fills its run exactly. The squares just past each end are solid, whatever the numbers say about the rest of the line.

Known C A T
Ends found C A T
CAT is placed. The squares before the C and after the T are solid, because the run is exactly the word.

4. No word that short

No word is one letter long, and the list may have no two-letter words either. A pocket of unknown squares between solids that is too short for any word can't hold letters, so it is solid too.

Known
Too short
  • HORSE
  • CAT
  • HEN
Two unknown squares between solids. The list has no one- or two-letter words, so both squares are solid.

5. No word that long

The longest word in the list caps every run. A stretch of letter squares longer than that must have a solid somewhere inside it, and often the crossings tell you where.

Known 2
Capped 2
  • HORN
  • CATS
A ten-square line with the clue 2 and a list whose longest word is four letters. The run of two solids must leave at most four letter squares on each side, so it sits in the middle, at squares five and six, and the clue says every other square is a letter square.

6. A rare letter pins a word

A letter that appears in only one word on the list is that word's letter, wherever it shows up. Once you know which way the word runs, its length and the letter's place in it fix the run.

Known X
  • FOX
  • CAT
  • HEN
An X is known, with solid squares above and below it.
Pinned F O X
The same three rows. FOX is the only word with an X, the solids above and below mean it runs across, and the X is its last letter, so F and O come before it and the squares beyond are solid.

7. A lone letter needs a word

No word is one letter long, so a letter square walled in on three sides belongs to a word leaving by the open side, and the next square that way is a letter square too.

Known
A letter square with solids above, below, and to its left, and an unknown square to its right.
One way out
The same three rows. The word must run to the right, so the square to the right of the letter is a letter square too.

8. Used up

Every word on the list is used exactly once, so once every word of a length is placed, no new run of that length can appear anywhere. Cross the words off as you place them, and the list starts ruling out shadings for you.

Known 1 1
Used up 1 1 R O S E
  • HEN (placed)
  • CAT (placed)
  • SUN (placed)
  • ROSE
A six-square row whose numbers are 1 and 1, with the first square solid and the rest unknown. HEN, CAT, and SUN are placed elsewhere. ROSE is not. The second solid goes in the last square, and the four squares between spell ROSE.

The second solid splits the rest of the row. Anywhere but the last square, it leaves a run of three, and the three-letter words are all placed, or a run of two, which no word fits. So the solid goes at the end, and the run of four is ROSE.

When the words come another way

Some game styles change the list. With a scrambled list you still know each word's length and letters, so moves 1, 4, 5, and 8 work unchanged, and a crossing letter unscrambles the rest. With letters along the edges instead of a list, each line's letters are its own word list, and the crossings sort them. And when the numbers count the letter squares instead of the solids, a number is a word's length straight off, and a 1 is never a word, only one square of a word crossing the line.

Never a guess

Every Nounogram has exactly one answer, and you can reach it by deduction alone, with these moves and the nonogram moves doing most of the work. When you ask for a hint, it first tells you what kind of move to look for, then which line, and gives you the answer only if you ask for it.

If you like nonograms, start with the rules and today's easy puzzle. If you like crosswords, start with the same puzzle: it is small, every word is on the list, and the crossings do most of the work, so you can lean on the words and pick up the numbers as you go. Once the numbers feel natural, the Crossword style counts the letter squares instead of the solids, the closest thing to a crossword with nonogram clues. And if what you wanted was a nonogram with a daily Wordle habit, there are three fresh puzzles every morning, free.