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The first time I opened Pell Puzzles I thought somebody had left a half-finished game of noughts and crosses on my screen. Eight X's, seven O's, a 6x6 grid and the numbers 1 to 8 down the side.
Nobody plays noughts and crosses on a 6x6 board, so clearly something else was going on.TLDR: Looks a bit like noughts and crosses, feels a bit like a labyrinth but plays like a proper logic puzzle.
Perfect for anyone who grew up on pencil puzzles, and anybody who wants a couple of quiet, ad-free minutes of thinking with their morning coffee.Pell Puzzles is made by Brandan, who writes the achromath Substack and calls himself a "serially obsessive analytic creative and general purpose games dork"[1]. In January 2024 he wrote about Pell Tiles: wrap strips of squares around each other in a spiral, each strip one square longer than the last, and every now and then they fill a perfect rectangle.[2] Strips of length 1 to 8 add up to 36, which happens to be a 6x6 square. A year later he asked the obvious next question, "Can we turn this spiral into a puzzle?",[3] hid the strips and left only their ends on the board as X's and O's. The daily version has been running since December 2025,[5] let's take a look how it stands against my DLE review framework. The article contains screenshots with spoilers of the 26 October 2026 puzzle.How to playOn the menu, tap Daily Puzzle.
The board opens and the timer starts straight away.Read the grid: a 6x6 board of X's, O's and empty cells.
You have to draw exactly 8 paths, one of each length from 1 to 8.
They add up to 36, so every cell ends up in a path.For lengths 2 to 8, drag from an X to an O (or the other way round) through empty cells, moving up, down, left or right. The path stops by itself when it reaches the other clue.For the length 1 path, just tap a lone X.A path can't touch itself side by side (corners are fine), and it can't fill a 2x2 block. If you try, the cell gives a little shake and the path won't go there.To fix a mistake, tap a path to cut it at that cell, drag an end backwards to shorten it, drag one loose end into another to join them, or hit Clear to wipe the board.Keep an eye on the 1 to 8 tracker next to the board (under it on a phone): a length you've used goes dim, and a length you've drawn twice lights up white.Fill the board with all eight lengths and a "Solved!"
card pops up with your time and the order you found the paths in.The first How to Play screen, an unsolved board next to its solution (desktop left) (mobile right)Concept 10/10This is a new puzzle, which is rarer than you'd think.
It kinda looks similar to the connect-the-dots games at the back of a logic magazine, but the twist is all its own: every path has to be a different length.
That one rule turns the numbers 1 to 8 into your sharpest tool. Once you've drawn the 3, no other pair on the board can be joined by three cells, and you lean on that all the way through.I love the main menu, that's completely atypical, text written in all kinds of directions but after a closer look, you realize it is a solved Pell board, every button is one of the strips, and the little empty square in the middle is standing in for the 1.
I love that kind of detail.The menu is itself a solved board (desktop left) (mobile right)Time to first guess 10/10The good news first.
There's no account wall, no welcome popup, and the game doesn't even throw a cookie pop-up at you, great! You land on the menu, tap Daily Puzzle, and the board is right there with the clock already running.Today's board, ready to go (desktop left) (mobile right)The rules are well made too. The How to Play walkthrough covers the whole game in four short screens, 85 words if you count the headings, which is about what Wordle needs for its whole rules box, and three of those screens have a little looping video showing exactly what a move looks like. A fifth screen covers the controls.The "No Pools" rule with its looping demo (desktop)Gameplay 26/30This is where Pell earns its keep. My whole solve was deduction, not a single guess, and the length rule did the heavy lifting the entire way.(I'm counting rows and columns from the top left, so R1C1 is the top-left corner.)Today's board had three empty corners, and an empty corner is a gift: the only way to fill it is with a path running through it between its two neighbours.
Brandan's own write-up says easy puzzles have "gimmes, especially in the corners",[4] and he's right.
The bottom-right corner handed me the 4 on move 1, from X(R4C6) down and round into O(R6C5).Move 1, the bottom-right corner gives away the 4 (desktop left) (mobile right)Move 2 was the bottom-left corner, and it had a nice little catch.
X(R5C1) has to go round the corner and along the bottom row, and I first eyed stopping at O(R5C3) for a 5.
But that would have left R6C4 with only one free neighbour, and an empty cell needs two, one for the path to come in and one to go out.
So the path runs one cell further and climbs into O(R5C4), a 6.Move 2, the 6 runs along the bottom row (desktop left) (mobile right)Then it went quickly.
X(R5C5) was now boxed in with nowhere to go, so it's the 1, one tap (move 3). O(R5C3) could only go straight up into X(R4C3), so that's the 2 (move 4).
And O(R5C2), squeezed on three sides, had to climb, which left O(R4C1) a single way out and gave me the 3 up the left wall (move 5).Move 6 is the one I enjoyed most.
The path out of O(R5C2) was heading up the second column, and at R3C2 it could either carry on up or turn right.
The answer came from a corner I hadn't touched yet. Up in the top left, O(R1C1) could have reached X(R1C3) in three cells, but the 3 was already spent, so it had to drop down into R2C2 instead. That took R2C2 away, pushed the long path right, and the empty R4C4, which only had two free neighbours left, finished it off into X(R4C5).
A 7, decided by a length I'd used up one move earlier.
That's the whole trick of this game, and it feels great every time it clicks.Move 6, the 7 snakes up and over (desktop left) (mobile right)Moves 7 and 8: the top-right corner gave me the 5 along the top row, and the last six empty cells made the 8.It's completely fair, with one solution and every step something you can reason out, and it's 100% skill, 0% luck.
The game also quietly refuses illegal moves.
Try to make a path touch itself and the cell shakes and won't take it, so you never lose a minute to a rule you forgot.Juice 5/10The basics are there. A path snaps from cell to cell as you drag, a used length dims on the tracker, and if you draw the same length twice that number lights up white and grows a little so you can't miss it.
Illegal moves get the little shake.Drawing two 2s lights the number up (desktop)It's minimalistic.
There's no sound, the paths stay the same flat grey from your first move to your last, and nothing builds up to the finish. The moment your eighth path lands, the board is swapped for a plain "Solved!"
card, so the thing you just built disappears and you have to tap "View Solved Puzzle" to look at it.I could imagine a little animation that would reproduce your solution would bring a bit more energy into the purist black and white look. Or even just a pulsing board when solved, combined with the results just underneath the board would increase the juice levels significantly.The win card replaces the board the instant you finish (desktop left) (mobile right)Visuals 8/10Black, white, grey, one monospace font and chunky white borders.
It's a strict look and it's applied everywhere, from the menu through the rules to the archive.
Nothing fights the board for attention, and there isn't a single ad anywhere.The finished board (desktop)The menu-as-puzzle is the best-looking screen, and a finished board has a nice graphic quality to it.
A couple of things cost points.
The small print (the puzzle code, "Hide Timer", "Report an issue") is dark grey on near-black and hard to read.