Shikaku vs. Patches: What's the Difference?

If Patches feels like it might be based on an older puzzle, your instinct is right. It's a variant of Shikaku (also called Rectangles or Divide-by-Box), a Nikoli logic puzzle with decades of pencil-and-paper history. LinkedIn's version keeps Shikaku's core rule intact but adds one twist that meaningfully changes how you solve it.

The Shared Foundation

Both puzzles start the same way: a grid scattered with numbered clues, and your job is to partition the entire board into rectangles so every cell belongs to exactly one rectangle, every rectangle contains exactly one clue, and that clue's number equals the rectangle's area. No gaps, no overlaps, no rectangle left holding zero or two clues. That's the whole of classic Shikaku - area and coverage are the only constraints, and working out each rectangle's exact width and height is the entire puzzle.

Patches' Twist: Shape Badges

Patches adds a badge to every clue that constrains the rectangle's proportions on top of its area: Square (width equals height), Wide (wider than tall), Tall (taller than wide), or Any (no constraint, the same as plain Shikaku). In classic Shikaku, a clue of 6 could be 6x1, 3x2, 2x3, or 1x6 - you'd have to work out which from context. In Patches, if that same clue is badged Wide, you immediately know it's 6x1 or 3x2 and nothing else. The badge doesn't hand you the full answer, but it prunes the search space substantially.

How That Changes the Solving Process

• Shikaku solving is almost entirely about factor pairs - given an area, what dimension combinations are even possible, and which one fits the surrounding clues.
• Patches folds proportion into the clue itself, so a Square or Wide or Tall badge collapses the factor-pair search to a much smaller set (often just one option) before you even look at the neighbors.
• Any-badged clues in Patches behave exactly like a normal Shikaku clue - full ambiguity, solved by elimination against everything nearby.
• Because of this, a Patches board with mostly exact badges (like the easy difficulty) solves faster than an equivalent Shikaku grid, while a board thick with Any badges (like expert difficulty) plays almost identically to classic Shikaku.

Which One Should You Play?

If you want the purest, most classic version of the puzzle - or you're looking for larger grids like 10x10 or 20x20 - traditional Shikaku is the right choice. If you want a puzzle that eases you in with exact shape hints and gradually removes that scaffolding as the difficulty climbs, Patches is built for exactly that progression. You can play Patches free online with unlimited levels across four difficulties, unlike LinkedIn's original which offers just one puzzle per day with no archive - and our Patches strategy guide covers the elimination techniques that crack any board.