Guides · Peeks

How to play Peeks.

Peeks is a tile puzzle: every combination of shape and colour appears on the board exactly once, and the little cards under the board, the peeks, show you fragments of where. Match the peeks, then finish with the one-of-each rule.

About 4 minutes · No experience needed

The board.

A 3 by 3 board with three shapes and three colours, so nine tiles in all. The board starts empty. Below it sit the peeks: small windows onto the finished board, showing some tiles fully, some as just a shape or just a colour, and some not at all.

The Pocketful Peeks screen with an empty 3 by 3 board, three peek cards below it, and a shape and colour palette
Starter level 1. An empty board, three peeks, and the brush below: a shape and a colour to paint with.

The rule.

Every shape and colour pair appears on the board exactly once. Every peek matches the finished board somewhere, in the position and orientation shown.

Pick a shape and a colour on the brush, then tap a square to paint it. Tap the selected shape or colour to switch it off and paint half a tile, a note for later.

Match the biggest peek first.

A peek the size of the whole board can only sit one way. Copy everything it shows outright, and treat its half-tiles as notes.

The empty 3 by 3 Peeks board
The Peeks board with seven tiles painted, the bottom-left square ringed and the middle-left square outlined
The Peeks board with eight tiles painted and the last empty square outlined
The completed Peeks board with nine different shape and colour tiles

Reading the smaller peeks.

Smaller peeks need placing: slide them around the board in your head until every tile they show lines up with what you already know. A peek that shows only a colour or only a shape is still a clue, because it rules out every square that disagrees.

The Pocketful Peeks screen with the board nearly finished and the peek cards below it
The peeks under the board. Each one greys out as the board comes to match it.

Common questions.

Can a peek be rotated?

No. A peek matches the board exactly as it is drawn: same orientation, same layout.

What if two peeks seem to fit the same place?

Then one of them fits somewhere else too, and the one-of-each rule decides. Paint what you are sure of first; the rest narrows itself.

Play this board.

This is Starter level 1 in Pocketful. Open the app and paint the nine tiles yourself.

Download on the App Store