Reduced motion: why some players switch animations off
Screen motion can cause dizziness and nausea for some people. What reduced-motion settings are, what WCAG says about animation, and what a calmer design swaps.
Tap to place: playing a block puzzle without dragging
Dragging a piece across a 9x9 board hides the target under your finger. Why tap-to-place helps, what WCAG 2.2 says, and how many placements a piece has.
Westminster to Piccadilly: the places behind the levels
Big Ben Blocks runs its Adventure levels from Westminster to Piccadilly. Here is what stands at each end, with the dates that are well established.
Inside the Great Clock: how pennies keep Big Ben on time
A pendulum with a 4-second period is 3.97 m long, and one old penny on its tray makes the Great Clock gain 0.4 seconds a day. The physics, worked through.
Midnight UK time: GMT, BST and when the clocks change
UK midnight is 00:00 GMT (UTC+0) in winter and 00:00 BST (UTC+1) in summer. The clocks go back on 25 October 2026. See what it means in other time zones.
Undo, hints, rotate and bomb: when a puzzle aid is worth it
Block puzzle aids cost coins, so use them where the grid says they pay. On a 9x9 board, one hole blocks 3 of 27 groups and turning an L adds 192 places.
Edges first: where to place pieces on a 9x9 grid
A straight five has 90 places on a 9x9 grid, but only 2 cover a corner and 10 cover the centre. Count them to see why edges are the place to park pieces.
Keeping a 3x3 box empty: room for the awkward piece
A 3x3 square has 49 places on an empty 9x9 grid, and nine well-spread blocks can remove every one. Count which cells cost the most room.
Playing Time Attack: block puzzle choices against a clock
Big Ben Blocks has a three-minute Time Attack with no aids. Use line counts and fixed placements on the 9x9 grid to decide fast and avoid holes.
Big Ben is a bell: the facts behind the name
Big Ben is the Great Bell, not the clock or the tower: cast in 1858, about 13.7 tonnes, cracked and rehung. The tower, the dials and the chimes in numbers.
Shapes as well as colours: block puzzles for colour-blind players
In a 9x9 block puzzle a line clears by being full, not by matching colour. About 8% of men and 0.5% of women are colour-blind; here is how to read the board.
From Tetris to Sudoku: where the 9x9 block puzzle comes from
The 9x9 block puzzle takes its pieces from Tetris and polyominoes and its board from Sudoku. The counts of shapes, cells and lines show how they differ.
Holes and islands: why a fragmented board ends a block puzzle
An empty cell with no empty neighbour only takes a one-cell piece. Count placements and pocket sizes on a 9x9 grid to see why fragments end block puzzles.
Setting up double clears on a 9x9 block grid
A double clear is two gaps filled by one piece. Count the gaps, subtract any shared cell, and you know the exact shape you need and how full the board must be.
Why every cell on a 9x9 block grid belongs to three lines
A 9x9 block grid has 27 clearable groups: 9 rows, 9 columns and 9 boxes. Every cell sits in exactly one of each, so every block you place feeds three.