Jigsaw Jeeves: Building a Puzzle Assistant using Computer Vision

An AI-powered puzzle assistant can overcome the frustration of getting stuck on a jigsaw by providing helpful nudges, such as suggesting the likely region for a specific piece. The system works by overlaying a grid on both a photo of the scrambled pieces and the reference image from the box, transforming the task into a visual matching problem between grid cells. To compare these cells, each one is converted into a numerical signature using a 3D color histogram, which captures its color distribution in a way that is robust to lighting differences. The assistant then finds the best overall one-to-one assignment between the scrambled tiles and the reference tiles, solving for where each piece belongs on a global scale. This approach frames the puzzle as a fragment-to-reference matching problem, a technique also useful in fields like forensic document reconstruction and satellite imagery.