Shape Fit
A free shape-fitting puzzle that runs in your browser. Three shapes wait in a tray. Tap one, tap a square, and it lands there. A full row clears, and so does a full column, and nothing on the board moves until you touch it.
- Free
- No ads
- No account
- No download
- Works offline
- Single player
How do you play?
- Pick a level - Easy is six by six, medium and hard are eight by eight. Switching starts a fresh run.
- Tap a shape - One of the three in the tray. One is always held, so you can never end up holding nothing.
- Follow the dots - Faint white dots mark every square the held shape's top left corner can legally land on.
- Tap the board - A tap that does not fit answers with a dashed ring. The shape stays in your hand.
- Close a line - A full row or a full column clears. Both at once are worth three times one.
About this game
Nothing falls. Nothing is timed. You tap a shape, you tap a square, and it stays exactly where you put it until a line takes it away.
The shapes cannot be turned, and that one rule is what makes this a planning game instead of a reaction game. A bar you cannot rotate has to be planned for before it arrives rather than fixed once it is in your hand.
So the skill here is looking ahead, and that is a claim you can put a number on. We ran 3,000 runs per level with two bots. One drops a shape on a random legal square. The other checks every legal placement of all three offered shapes and keeps the board that clears the most lines. On easy the looking-ahead bot survived 112.7 placements against 21.8 for the random tapper, which is 5.17 times as long. On hard the same bot manages only 19.3 against 12.5, a gain of 1.54. What separates the levels is the shape pool rather than speed: easy deals from ten short shapes onto a six by six board, hard from all nineteen, including five-long bars and a three by three block that want room reserved several placements ahead.
A run ends one way only. Not one of the three shapes in the tray fits anywhere. We measured how full the board was at that moment, and on hard the answer is 50.2%. Half of it empty. In 45.3% of hard runs more than half the board was still free when the last shape refused. You do not run out of room here. You run out of the right shape.
The admission. Easy tries to deal you a shape that fits, and it judges that against the board as it stands, while the other two shapes in the tray are about to change that board. It is an approximation and meant to be one. Easy runs still end. There is no undo anywhere in this game either, so a placement is permanent and restart is the only way back to a clean board.
What does it teach?
Planning ahead
Every placement changes what can follow it. Three shapes at once is about as much choice as fits in a head.
Spatial reasoning
Shapes never rotate, so you have to see where each one belongs as it is. That is looking, not trial and error.
Thinking before acting
Nothing here is in a hurry. A child who learns to pause before tapping improves immediately.
Accepting an ending
When the placements run out nobody is punished. Press restart and a new run begins.
Tips
Long bars first
A five-square bar only fits while a row or a column is nearly empty. Place it while it still has somewhere to go, not once it has nowhere.
Never strand a single square
A hole with filled squares on every side can only be closed by the single dot, and the dot does not always come. One big open area beats three small ones.
Read all three
The right home for the first shape sometimes locks out the third. Before you place anything, check where the other two would have sat.
Hunt the crossing square
A square sitting in both a nearly full row and a nearly full column beats every other square on the board, because one placement drops two lines there.
What age is it for?
4 to 5
Easy only. The board is small and the shapes are short, so nearly every tap works.
6 to 7
Medium. Eight by eight, with four and five-square shapes, and now the whole tray is worth reading.
8 and up
Hard. The big square and the long bars want a plan rather than a quick eye.
Grown-ups
More than 20 placements on hard is a good run. Our looking-ahead bot averages 19.3.
Accessibility
One tap per action, with no dragging and no press-and-hold, so it works with alternative input devices and with a small hand that does not aim well yet. The three tray slots are 96 pixels tall, comfortably over two centimetres on any screen. There is no clock and no countdown, so you can stop and think for as long as you like. A placement that is not allowed answers with a dashed outline rather than an error sound, because a refusal is not a telling-off. Every square on the board carries its own column and row in its label, so a screen reader can tell sixty-four of them apart. The whole thing plays in silence without losing any information.
Playing together
One shape each
Take turns, three placements to a tray. Suddenly you each care what the other left behind.
Say where and why
Before the tap, ask which line that placement brings closer. A child who can answer is playing the game rather than touching the screen.
Who lasted longer
Same level, two devices, count the placements. No clock, so nobody is rushing.
Bars first, always
Try a run where the long bars go down before anything else. It plays like a different game.
Common questions
Can I rotate the shapes?
No, and that is the design. A bar you cannot turn has to be planned for before it arrives instead of fixed once it is in your hand, which is why every orientation is its own shape in the set.
Why did the game end when there was still space?
Because the space left was the wrong shape. On hard the board is 50.2% full on average when the placements run out, and in 45.3% of runs more than half of it is still empty.
Is there an undo button?
There is not. A placement is permanent, which is why reading all three shapes before the first one pays. Restart opens a clean board whenever you want one.
What happens when I tap somewhere it does not fit?
A dashed ring appears and the shape stays in your hand. Nothing is deducted, because a refusal is not a mistake.
How many placements is a good run?
A bot checking every legal placement reaches 112.7 on easy and 19.3 on hard. Above those numbers you are playing well.
Should I clear a line as soon as I can?
Not always. A row and a column falling together are worth three times a single row, so it is often worth holding a nearly full line one more placement.
Is it free?
Completely. No payment, no in-game purchases, and no larger paid edition.
Are there ads?
None at all. No banners, and nothing playing between runs.
Do I need to download or sign up?
No. It runs in the browser, and after one visit it is stored on the device and works with no signal.
How is the record measured?
In points, where more is better, and separately per level. A six by six board and an eight by eight board are not the same achievement.