Christmas Games Online: Free Puzzles to Play Now

Christmas puzzle games you can start in a tab

Reindeer Route, Ornament Match and Snowglobe Sort are the three games made for Christmas. Each sets a puzzle in a different Christmas scene, and each has a Tonight puzzle that changes with the date as well as a ladder of puzzles that open one after another.

In Reindeer Route you draw one unbroken route. Figgy starts on house 1, flies one square at a time up, down, left or right, never onto a rooftop she has already passed and never across a pine row. The route has to cover every square exactly once, meet the houses in number order and end on the highest number. The 36 ladder routes run from 4 by 4 teaching towns to 8 by 8 big towns, and Tonight’s route is a new town every day, picked by the date from a pool of 365. Every puzzle has exactly one solution, and the game’s own tips say to start with corners and with squares boxed in by pines. Hints cost a bell, never below one, and nothing on screen counts down.

Ornament Match is a triple tile match. Dottie the polar bear cub holds a branch over a box of ornaments packed in tissue paper: baubles, stars, candy canes, gingerbread figures, glass icicles and more, in a heap. Only an ornament with nothing lying on it can be picked up. It hangs on the branch beside its own kind, and when three alike hang there they sparkle off to the tree. The branch has seven hooks, so if all seven fill with no three alike, the branch is too tangled. You can take the last ornament back, add a spare hook or start the box over. Thirty boxes fill three evenings, with the lights, garland and star going on the tree as each night ends. Every box is dealt so it can be cleared, and there is no timer.

Snowglobe Sort is a color puzzle. The globes in a toy shop window have been shuffled, and you swap any two loose globes until the colors blend evenly between the four corner globes, so every globe has exactly one right spot. Globes on gold bases with a star are fixed and act as guides. Forty ladder shelves and Tonight’s window are open to play, hints place one globe for the cost of a ribbon, and nothing counts down. The game’s tips suggest sorting by lightness first, then working outward from the fixed globes. Its page notes that the puzzle relies on telling colors apart and that hints place a globe for you.

Christmas word search online

Cottage Word Search has no puzzle named Christmas, so it helps to say what it does have. The Winter Hearth book holds twelve winter puzzles in grids up to 12 by 12, and words read in all eight directions, backwards and diagonally. The four that fit the season best are Snow Day (sledding, snowmen, mittens and earmuffs), Hot Cocoa, Cookie Swap (gingerbread, icing, shortbread and a rolling pin) and Winter Woods (evergreens, snowshoes and a snowy owl). To reach one, press Start the first puzzle or open the puzzle books, then choose the puzzle in Winter Hearth.

Each puzzle is a drag or a tap-tap along a straight line, found words are circled and crossed off, and when the last word is found the leftover letters spell a saying. A hint circles the first letter of the first word you have not found. The timer and hints are only records, with no penalties and no lives, and your puzzles save on the device.

If you want a word search to print for the kitchen table, CozyWorld also has a free large print Christmas word search and a winter word search on its printable puzzles pages, linked under Related reading. Those are pages to print, not the game.

Christmas jigsaw puzzles online

Rainy Day Jigsaw has twelve pictures, and one of them is wintry: Snowy Street, a row of snowy houses with lit windows and colored doors, a snowman, a sled and a little Christmas tree under a full moon. The other eleven are not winter pictures, so this is one Christmas-feeling jigsaw rather than a holiday collection.

To start it, open the puzzle shelf under Play and pick Snowy Street from the bookcase, then choose 12, 24, 48 or 96 pieces. On small screens the game turns off sizes whose pieces would be too small, so a phone offers fewer sizes than a computer. Drag a piece to the board and it snaps in when it lands close to its spot. The Edges filter shows only the border pieces, Peek shows the whole picture, and there is no score and no countdown. A quiet clock keeps your best time. Every puzzle you start saves on the device, so you can leave a big one and come back.

Spot the difference, with a snowman and a hearth

Magpie Green Spot the Difference shows two pictures side by side. Margot the magpie has changed a few things in one of them, and you tap each change in either picture. Two scenes are winter ones, and both are in the Four Seasons pack: Snowy Morning has a snowman, a sled, a wreath on the cottage and presents in the snow, and Holiday Hearth has three stockings over the fire, a wreath, presents under the tree and a cat on the rug.

Press Choose a scene on the title card, open Four Seasons and pick one. Gentle finds 5 differences, Steady 7 and Sharp 10, a wrong tap never ends the game, and the clock is off by default. Hints circle one difference you have not found.

Solitaire by the fire

Snowberry Cabin Solitaire is FreeCell, dealt face up on a plaid blanket in a snowy log cabin with Maple the red panda and her cocoa for company. It is a winter setting, not a Christmas one. Build eight columns down in alternating colors, park cards in four free cells and send all 52 cards home. Deals are numbered 1 to 32,000, so you can replay one you know, and Today’s deal is the same numbered deal for everyone. Undo is unlimited, the timer is optional, and a hint comes from a solver that looks for a whole way to win. Your deal in progress saves on the device.

The Cozy Advent calendar

The Cozy Advent calendar has 24 doors, one for each day from December 1 to Christmas Eve. Each door opens a game that is already on CozyWorld: Ornament Match, Snowglobe Sort, Reindeer Route, the four winter word searches above, Snowy Street, the two winter spot the difference scenes, Snowberry Cabin Solitaire, and the Daily puzzles from Sprout Sudoku, Little Stitches and Buttercup Links Golf Solitaire.

The doors open by your own device’s date. Before December 1 the page shows every door shut and a short teaser, and it points to the Christmas games, which you can play right away. From December 1, doors 1 to the day’s date can be opened, and a missed day is never lost: any door up to today opens whenever you like. After Christmas Eve all 24 doors stay open until January 3. The doors you have opened are remembered in your browser, with no account, and a private window or cleared site data closes them again.

Playing with family or friends far away

The Christmas puzzles above are for one player. If you want a game for two over a video call or across the country, CozyWorld has a separate page, Two-Player Games Online, linked under Related reading. Eight classic games can be played with a friend by invite link: checkers, Chinese checkers, reversi, four in a row, dots and boxes, backgammon, gin rummy and cribbage. One person sets a table and sends the link, and there is no account to make. They are not Christmas-themed.