Nonogram

Nonogram: A Potted History

Nonogram is a picture-based logic puzzle that originated in Japan in the late 1980s. A graphics editor called Non Ishida came up with a prize-winning idea to brighten the night-time cityscape of Tokyo. By switching certain lights in skyscrapers on or off, he was able to create images on the buildings. He called it Window Art.

Around the same time, a professional Japanese puzzler named Tetsuya Nishio invented a puzzle that worked on a similar principle, called Oekaki-Logic. Puzzles filtered through to several Japanese titles. In 1990, 'The Sunday Telegraph' published Non Ishida's puzzles under the name Nonograms (so named by the UK supplier James Dalgety, with a nod to Non Ishida).

The enduring popularity of this puzzle outside Japan is largely due to the persistence and enthusiasm of one man, Dave Green. He came across the puzzle on a trip to Tokyo in 1994, began to create his own puzzles with the help of a friend, Igor Lerner, and set up a company to market them.

Puzzler Media began publishing Nonogram in 1999. The puzzles appear in two magazines with a devoted fan base, under the name Hanjie, an old Japanese word meaning 'judge picture'. ‘Hanjie’ magazine features smaller puzzles that take less time to solve than the sumo-sized puzzles in ‘Super Hanjie’ which produce pictures with a great level of detail.