LinkedIn Patches: squares, tall and wide rectangles, and the counting that fills the grid

The three shapes, precisely

Square — equal width and height: 1×1, 2×2, 3×3. A square clue with the number 9 means a 3×3; with 4, a 2×2; with 1, a single cell.

Tall rectangle — taller than it is wide: 1×2, 1×3, 2×3, 2×4… A tall clue with 8 could be 2 wide by 4 tall (2×4) — but not 4×2, which is wide.

Wide rectangle — wider than tall. A wide clue with 5 is 5×1, the only wide shape of five cells; with 3, 3×1; with 6, 3×2 or 6×1.

Freeform — LinkedIn's Help page names a fourth icon, freeform, for a clue that does not fix the proportion; our stored data labels it 'any'. It is still sized by the number if one is given. Of the 361 clues in our 37 stored boards, 208 carry this icon, 74 are tall, 47 wide and 32 square.

The arithmetic is the whole game: a size number has a limited set of factor pairs, and the shape word eliminates half of them. A tall 8 is 2×4 or 1×8; on any board smaller than 8×8, 1×8 doesn't fit, so it's 2×4. Do this factoring for every clue before you draw anything.

The counting method

Add up the numbered clues and compare with the grid. Every cell belongs to exactly one patch and every patch holds exactly one clue, so the cells not claimed by numbered clues must all belong to the unnumbered ones. On Patches #188 (21 September 2026, 6×6) the numbered clues total 6 + 5 + 8 = 19, which leaves 17 of the 36 cells for the three clues without numbers. Only 9 of our 37 stored boards had a number on every clue; on the rest, this shortfall is the first thing worth knowing, because it bounds how big the unnumbered patches can be.

Then place the most constrained numbered shape first. A 3×3 square containing a clue on the edge of the board has only a few positions, and the other clue cells nearby — which it may not swallow — usually remove most of them. Fix those, and the remaining cells partition themselves.

Reading a board: a worked example

Here is a small illustrative 5×5 board, smaller than any live board in our archive but easier to follow in text. Four clues: a wide 5 at row 1 column 1, a tall 8 at row 2 column 1, a square 9 at row 4 column 5, and a wide 3 at row 5 column 5. Total 5 + 8 + 9 + 3 = 25: exactly the grid, so those four shapes are the whole partition.

Factor each. Wide 5 → 5×1 only. Tall 8 → 2 wide × 4 tall (1×8 doesn't fit). Square 9 → 3×3. Wide 3 → 3×1.

Place the most constrained. The wide 5 contains row 1 column 1 and is one cell tall: it's the entire top row. The square 9 contains row 4 column 5, the corner-adjacent cell on the right edge; a 3×3 there must be rows 3–5, columns 3–5 (it can't extend right, and it must include row 4). The wide 3 contains row 5 column 5 — but that cell is inside the square we just placed. Conflict: so the square is rows 2–4, columns 3–5 instead, and the wide 3 is row 5, columns 3–5.

Check what's left. Rows 2–5, columns 1–2: eight cells, two wide, four tall — exactly the tall 8, containing row 2 column 1. Every cell covered, every clue satisfied. The lesson is in step three: a placement that *seems* forced (the square in the corner) is tested by the other clues, and the tall/wide reading of the neighbouring clue decides it.

Factor tables for common sizes

Memorise these and most of the puzzle disappears.

Habits that speed it up

Corners first. A clue in a corner has the fewest possible placements.

Big before small. A large fixed area — a square 9, a wide 6, a tall 8 — has few legal positions, so placing it first locks the board; 2- and 3-cell patches fill what's left. The smallest patch in our stored boards covers 2 cells and the largest 16.

Draw with the drag. Per LinkedIn's Help page, you drag across cells to draw a shape that includes a clue cell, tap a shape to delete it, Undo reverts your last move and Reset clears the grid.

Don't ignore the unnumbered clues. A shape symbol without a number still constrains proportion. A tall rectangle without a number can't be a square.

What changes on bigger boards

LinkedIn's launch post says difficulty increases throughout the week, and in our archive (3 September–10 October 2026) the board size follows suit: Monday boards were all 6×6, Wednesday boards all 7×7, and eight of the ten weekend boards 8×8. Three things change as the boards grow:

• More clues. Monday boards carried 6–9 clues; Saturday boards 8–16.
• Fewer numbers. Unnumbered clues appear on every day of the week — 127 of 361 clues in our archive had none — and a shape icon alone constrains proportion, not size.
• Bigger patches. Areas of 10 to 16 cells appear (16-cell patches on 16 and 30 September), and on an 8×8 board a 1×8 strip becomes possible, so factor against the actual board width.

Where Patches sits among LinkedIn's games

Its rule closely resembles Shikaku, the Japanese logic puzzle in which a grid is divided into rectangles that each contain exactly one number equal to their area; LinkedIn's additions are the shape icons and clues that may carry no number at all. LinkedIn itself presented Patches at launch on 18 March 2026 as "inspired by the popularity of Zip" and Zip's "puzzle-loving sibling". Like Queens and Tango it is a logic puzzle with one published solution per day; the puzzle number runs one per day — #170 on 3 September 2026, #207 on 10 October.

Where the difficulty comes from

Patches looks like a counting exercise and on easy boards it is. Harder boards get their difficulty from three sources. First, clue cells placed *inside* their rectangles rather than at a corner, so that a 3×3 containing a central clue has nine candidate positions instead of one. Second, unnumbered clues, which constrain proportion but not size, so that a 'tall' clue could be 1×2 or 2×5. Third, freeform clues, which constrain neither proportion nor — without a number — size, and can only be placed once their neighbours are settled.

The counter to all three is the same: total the numbered clues first, place the corner-anchored numbered shapes, then use the remaining cell count to bound the unnumbered patches before touching the ambiguous clues.

Patches in the LinkedIn line-up

LinkedIn's newsroom dates each game's launch: Pinpoint, Queens and Crossclimb on 30 April 2024, Tango on 7 October 2024, Zip on 18 March 2025, Mini Sudoku on 12 August 2025, Patches on 18 March 2026 and Wend on 8 June 2026 — so Patches was the seventh, and the first with a shape-partition mechanic. It sits closest to Queens and Zip in feel: spatial, deductive, one solution. The answer pages draw every day's resolved grid, so the intended reading of an ambiguous clue is always visible.

Reader questions

"Can a rectangle contain two clue cells?" No — LinkedIn's rules say each shape must include one clue cell, and in all 37 boards we have stored the number of patches equals the number of clues.

"What does a clue with no number mean?" The shape is fixed, the size is not.

"Can a 1×1 be a 'square'?" Geometrically yes, but no 1-cell patch appears in our archive window (3 September–10 October 2026); the smallest patch is 2 cells.

Glossary

Terms as used on this site.

• Clue cell — a cell showing a shape symbol and, optionally, a size.
• Unnumbered clue — a clue cell with a shape icon but no size; its area is whatever the numbered clues leave over.
• Factoring — listing the width×height pairs a size allows, then filtering by shape.
• Anchor — a clue whose placement is forced by position (usually a corner).

A second worked board: 6×6 with unnumbered clues

This is a real board: Patches #188, 21 September 2026 (a Monday). Six by six, thirty-six cells. Clues: an any 6 at row 1 column 3; a tall (no number) at row 2 column 2; an any 5 at row 2 column 3; a tall (no number) at row 5 column 4; an any 8 at row 5 column 5; a wide (no number) at row 6 column 4. Numbered total: 6 + 5 + 8 = 19, so seventeen cells belong to the three unnumbered clues.

The 6 at row 1 column 3 cannot reach down into row 2 at columns 2 or 3, because both of those cells are other clues, and a vertical 6×1 down column 3 would hit the 5. On a six-wide board the only rectangle left is the whole top row, 1×6. The 5 at row 2 column 3 is prime, so it is a straight line; a horizontal five in row 2 would have to swallow the clue at column 2, so it runs down column 3, rows 2–6. That walls off columns 1–2, rows 2–6: ten cells containing a single clue, the tall at row 2 column 2 — so that patch is all ten cells, 5 tall by 2 wide, which is indeed taller than wide. The right-hand block (columns 4–6, rows 2–6) holds fifteen cells and three clues. The 8 at row 5 column 5 must be 4 tall × 2 wide in columns 5–6 (the block is only three wide and must not cover the clues in column 4). If it took rows 3–6, the wide clue at row 6 column 4 would be left a single cell, which is not wide — so the 8 is rows 2–5. Row 6, columns 4–6 becomes the wide patch (1×3), and rows 2–5 of column 4 the tall patch (4×1). Thirty-six cells accounted for, and it matches the published answer.

Reader questions, second round

"Do I have to cover every cell?" Yes — LinkedIn's rules say to fill the entire grid, with every cell in exactly one shape.

"Can a patch be a non-rectangle?" LinkedIn's launch post describes filling the grid with rectangles and squares, and every patch in our stored solutions is a rectangle — including the ones whose clue shows the freeform icon.

"Is there a hint?" Yes; per LinkedIn's Help page it highlights a cell or region and shows you the next step.

A weekly rhythm

In our archive (3 September–10 October 2026) the week runs small to large: Monday boards were all 6×6, Tuesday four of five 6×6, Wednesday all 7×7, Thursday and Friday mostly 7×7, and Saturday and Sunday four of five 8×8 each. Unnumbered clues appear every day, so the counting step matters all week: total the numbered clues first, and treat the shortfall as the space the unnumbered clues must share.

Frequently asked questions

Recent Patches answers

Every past puzzle is in the Patches archive. New here? Start with the Patches guide.