Knack puzzles

The four puzzles

Letter Wheel

You get a wheel of letters and a small crossword grid. Slide through the letters to spell a word, and it drops into its place in the grid. Some words are not in the grid at all: spot those and they count as bonus words.

The wheel starts at three letters and grows to seven. A three-letter wheel is a warm-up. A seven-letter wheel with a dozen words hiding in it takes real searching. If you want word games with nothing in the way, read how to tell if a word game is really ad-free.

Number Series

A row of numbers has a rule, and one number is missing. You work out the rule and pick the answer.

The rules start simple: add the same amount each time, double, halve. Later ones are subtler. Squares and cubes, a Fibonacci-style sequence where each term is built from the two before, a pattern that alternates between two steps, or two sequences woven together.

A worked example: 5, 8, 13, 20, 29, ?

The gaps are 3, 5, 7 and 9. The gap itself grows by 2 each time, so the next gap is 11, and the answer is 29 + 11 = 40. When a sequence will not behave, look at the gaps between its terms first, and then at the gaps between the gaps.

Crowns

Place one crown in every row, every column and every coloured region, with no two crowns touching, not even at a corner. Grids run from 4 by 4 up to 8 by 8, and every puzzle has exactly one solution.

This is the same puzzle type as LinkedIn’s Queens and the one-star version of Star Battle. We wrote a full guide to solving it with a worked example.

Balance

Each puzzle shows scales that balance, with shapes on both pans. The shapes have hidden weights. You use the scales to work out what one shape weighs against another, then answer a question such as how many of one shape would balance a group of others. It joins the game in the second world.

Every day

The Daily Trio is three puzzles, the same for every player, refreshed each day. Finish it, or win three story levels, to keep your streak. You can share your result with friends.

When you want more, Play is an endless run of puzzles matched to your level. It has a rating, tiers from Bronze to Grandmaster and a weekly leaderboard. The rating is for fun: it is not an IQ score, and Knack does not claim to make you smarter.

The story around them

The puzzles are the way you travel. Pip is following a friend, Dot, along the Night Train, and every solved level moves the train one stop on. There is a clue at every stop and a riddle at every station, 200 levels across ten worlds in all. If you would rather meet the puzzles one at a time, start with the story: the early levels are gentle.