Solve a picture-logic grid faster than your AI opponent, whoever claims a correct cell first owns it.
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How to play
You and a rival solve the same nonogram at the same time, on one shared grid. Claiming a filled cell before the rival does locks it as yours and scores it, and once a cell is locked nobody can take it. So this is not a puzzle you finish, it is a picture you divide.
Every cell is unclaimed, yours or the rival's. Locked cells cannot be re-claimed by either side.
Marking a cell that should be empty is a mistake: it costs you and the cell is flagged so you do not repeat it.
The rival deduces rather than cheats — each tick it claims a few cells it can currently prove are filled.
Whoever ends up owning more of the picture's filled cells wins.
Every puzzle is generated to be solvable by deduction alone, so nothing here requires a guess.
Controls
Desktop: click to claim a cell; use the flag action to mark empties.
Phone & tablet: tap to claim cells and tap to flag.
Game modes
Daily seeded puzzle shared by all players.
Practice with easy, medium and hard AI rivals.
Tips & strategy
Go where the deductions are easy, not where they are interesting. The rival takes whatever it can prove each tick, so the obvious lines are the contested ones.
A cell the rival takes forces you to re-plan, because the picture you were reasoning about now has someone else's cells in it.
Never guess to go faster. A wrong mark is scored against you, and since the puzzle never requires a guess, every one you make is a self-inflicted penalty.
Long runs first. A clue that fixes several cells at once converts one deduction into several claims before the rival gets there.
Speed only matters where you are right. Racing into an ambiguous line hands the rival the cells you then have to un-mark.
Origins
Nonograms — picture logic puzzles solved from row and column counts — were invented twice in 1987, by Non Ishida, who arrived at the idea after winning a Tokyo competition with grid pictures made from skyscraper lights, and independently by the puzzler Tetsuya Nishio. The puzzles are named after Ishida.
The original element is a rival solving the same grid at the same time, with each cell locking to whoever claims it first.
That makes completion impossible and irrelevant. A nonogram is normally a solitary object you finish; shared, it becomes a race for the cells that are provable earliest, and a clever deduction is worth nothing if somebody reaches the square before you.
About Nonogram Nemesis
Nonogram Nemesis turns the solitary deduction of picture-logic puzzles into a head-to-head race. It's an original, free browser game built in-house at PlayPendium.
A free, original browser game on PlayPendium. No download, no install.
