How to solve a Survivor jigsaw puzzle

In episode 3 of Survivor 51, Toka reached the anchor puzzle with a huge lead. Then their two puzzlers could not find the first piece to put in. Savu caught up, solved their anchor first, and won immunity.

The course got Toka there first. The puzzle decided who won.

We found 40 puzzles built from pieces in Survivor 41 through Survivor 51. Eight of those 11 seasons had one in the very first episode. This guide shows how the puzzle works, teaches a method you can drill, and looks at what the winners did. Every board on this page is live.

How a jigsaw puzzle works on the show

The puzzle usually waits at the end of a long course. A tribe swims, climbs and digs for keys or bags. Then two players unlock the pieces and build the picture while everyone else watches.

The picture is often an animal, like a turtle, a dolphin or a dragon, or the season’s logo. The show also mixes it up. In Survivor 42, players built one blindfolded while a caller talked them through it. Later that season, two teams of five raced to finish a puzzle with 75 pieces. In Survivor 43, tribes built a square, took it apart, and rebuilt the same pieces as a triangle.

How our game works

Our pieces are flat squares joined into shapes, cut from a picture we drew. The tangram boards add triangles. You can turn a piece, but you can’t flip it over. The picture you are making sits next to the tray, so you always know what to aim for.

Each time you set a piece down counts as one move. So the fewest moves is the number of pieces. Every move past that is a piece you put in the wrong place.

Step 1: Read the picture first

Before you touch a piece, look at the picture for a few seconds. Find the parts that stand out. On the anchor, that is the iron: the ring at the top, the bar across, and the curved bottom. On the turtle, it is the brown plates in the middle of the shell.

Then look at the tray for those same colors. Those pieces have the most to tell you.

Step 2: Place the pieces that show the most picture

A piece with two or three colors on it can only go one place. Find where its colors meet in the picture, and put it there.

This is faster than going by shape. Two pieces can share a shape, but the picture on them tells them apart.

Step 3: A fit is not a match

A piece can drop into a hole and still be wrong. In this board, C and E have the same shape. Each one fits either hole. Only the picture tells you which is which.

If a piece fits but the colors are off, take it out right away. A wrong piece fills a hole that another piece needs, and you won’t spot it until much later.

Step 4: Turn it until the picture lines up

A square piece fits its hole four ways. Only one way is right. Don’t trust the shape. Turn the piece until its colors line up with the ones around it.

Step 5: Save the plain pieces for last

Some pieces show only sea or sky. They have no picture to go by, so the only clue is their shape. That is a bad place to start. It is a great place to finish.

Put in every piece that shows part of the picture first. The holes left over will tell you where the plain pieces go. Here, two of the six pieces are plain sea.

On our full anchor board, 4 of the 18 pieces are plain sea. If you try them first, you are guessing. If you place them last, each one has just a hole or two it can fill.

Why not edges first?

“Start with the edges” is the usual jigsaw tip. It works on a big rectangle, where most pieces sit in the middle. Show puzzles are often cut in the shape of the picture. Then almost every piece touches the edge. On our sea turtle, 12 of the 13 pieces touch it. On our star, all 7 do. So the edge doesn’t narrow things down. The picture does.

What the winners did

Know where to start

Toka lost a big lead in Survivor 51 because nobody could find the first piece. Step 1 fixes that. Pick your first piece before you open the bag.

Keep your pieces together

In the first episode of Survivor 41, Ua reached the puzzle first. Then they lost time hunting for a piece that was still in one of their bags. Luvu caught up and won.

Talk to your partner

On the show, two players often build the puzzle together. In the blindfolded puzzle in Survivor 42, the caller’s words were all the builders had. Even with your eyes open, say out loud which piece you are on.

Learn the puzzle before it airs

A tangram is a set of flat shapes, mostly triangles, that fill a square. In the first episode of Worlds Apart (season 30), tribes could pick a five-piece square tangram as their puzzle. No tribe used it. Spencer took note and practiced that square before his return. In Cambodia (season 31), the same square came back at the end of an immunity challenge. Spencer solved it within seconds and won.

You can’t know which puzzle the show will use. But a shape you have built before takes seconds, not minutes. On a tangram, place the biggest pieces first. On the classic tangram’s empty square, a large triangle fits in just 12 places, and a small one fits in 48. Once the big ones are in, the small ones have only the gaps left.

A practice plan

1. Start in Practice on the Star. Use hints until the method feels natural. The hints follow this guide: picture pieces first, plain pieces last.
2. Move to the Sea turtle, then the Anchor. Try to finish with no extra moves.
3. Switch to Challenge mode for a real clock with no hints.
4. Play the Daily. Everyone on a level gets the same puzzle each day, from the Star on Easy to the Anchor on Hard.
5. Pick Spencer’s square and build it until it takes you seconds, the way Spencer did. Then try the Classic tangram’s seven pieces.

A puzzle built from pieces has turned up in every season from Survivor 41 to Survivor 51. Practice now, and you will know where to start when the next one airs.