About pUZles

pUZles is a small hub of puzzle games, made to be opened for a few quiet minutes and closed again.

Each game in the hub is a complete puzzle game in its own right, sharing one home screen so you are never more than a tap from a different kind of thinking. There is no lobby, no daily streak to protect and no reason to hurry.

The hub is free to open, and each game gives you its first 20 levels straight away. A one-time purchase removes the advertising and unlocks every level in every game. Either way there is no account to create and nothing you play is tied to an identity.

Your progress lives in your phone’s own storage. That means it stays private, and it also means it disappears if you uninstall the app.

Do puzzles actually do anything?

We make these because they are good company for a quiet ten minutes. Researchers have asked whether they do more than that, and the honest answer is: some evidence, carefully stated.

• A randomised trial favoured crosswords over brain-training games

  In a 78-week trial run by Columbia and Duke, older adults with mild cognitive impairment who did web-based crossword puzzles showed better memory outcomes than those given computerised cognitive games.

  • Devanand et al., NEJM Evidence, 2022 opens in a new tab

• Regular puzzlers score better on cognitive tests

  Across 19,078 healthy adults aged 50 to 93 in the PROTECT study, the more often people did word puzzles — and, in a companion paper on the same group, number puzzles — the better they scored on tests of reasoning and memory.

  • Brooker et al., word puzzles, Int. J. Geriatric Psychiatry, 2019 opens in a new tab
  • Brooker et al., number puzzles, Int. J. Geriatric Psychiatry, 2019 opens in a new tab

Worth saying plainly: the second finding is an association, not proof that the puzzles caused it — people who reason well may simply enjoy more puzzles. And no puzzle game, ours included, has been shown to prevent dementia. We would rather tell you that than imply otherwise.

Credits & licences

Photographs used in the pUZsaw jigsaws come from two sources:

• Wikimedia Commons images released under CC0 1.0 (public domain dedication).
• Photographs from Unsplash, used under the Unsplash License.

Who makes it

pUZles is made by Softiviti Inc., an independent software company in Canada.

Get in touch

Questions, bugs and ideas are all welcome through the support form. Open the support form

pUZles — Game Hub