Rainbow Jigsaw Puzzles

Why do rainbow puzzles feel easy at first?

Because color sorting does half the work for you. Red pieces go in one pile and blue in another, and the picture starts to appear before you have joined much at all. The catch comes later, when you reach a large patch of one color and every piece in it looks alike.

That is why pictures with clear objects are the friendliest. In Rainbow Row of Painted Houses every house is its own color with a firm rectangular outline, so the lane falls into sections on its own. With Rainbow Umbrellas over a Street sort each canopy by its folds, then use the colored shadows on the paving to drop it into place.

How do the rainbow puzzles compare?

They fall into three rough levels. Scenes built from objects are the gentlest, a real rainbow over open country sits in the middle and the pure spectrum is the toughest. The table gives a starting point and a piece count to try for a few of them.

When should you place the rainbow itself?

Usually after the ground beneath it. A rainbow in the sky is a soft wide arc with no hard edges, and it gets much easier once the land, water or buildings below have given you a firm lower border to build up from.

In Rainbow over Tulip Fields keep the red, yellow, purple and pink tulips in separate piles until the rows start pointing toward the horizon. For the farm after rain, put the red barn down first. Its puddles repeat the sky in small shapes, so they only make sense once the rainbow is in. The waterfall spray picture works the same way, with dark wet rocks and ferns giving you edges that the white mist never will.

Which rainbow puzzle is the hardest?

Rainbow Spectrum Gradient is the hardest by a long way. There are no objects in it, only a smooth blend from red through orange, yellow, green and blue to violet. Brightness changes along with color, so you have to judge how light or dark a piece is as well as its hue.

Lay out short runs in a straight line on the board before you try to join them into the full sweep. If that kind of slow color work appeals, the gradient puzzles take the idea further.

Are rainbow puzzles good for teaching kids colors?

Yes, and they are one of the easiest ways to show a child how sorting helps. A young player makes a pile for each color and then watches the piles turn into stripes. Rainbow Colored Pencils at 16 or 24 pieces is a good first try, since the pencils fan out in order across a plain surface.

Kids who are mad about unicorns can try the one drinking from a pool beneath a rainbow waterfall, with flowers and smooth stones close by. There are more like it on the unicorn puzzles page.