About Colour by Number

A picture made of little squares, every one with a number, and a key of colours numbered to match. Pick a colour and paint its squares — tap them one at a time, or drag across the picture and only the squares with that number take the paint. Colour by colour the numbers turn into a hot-air balloon, a ginger cat, a lighthouse or a rocket among the stars.

The squares waiting for the colour in hand are shaded, so you can find them even where the numbers are too small to read, and each colour in the key counts down the squares it has left. Finish a colour and the next one is picked for you. Tap a square of the wrong number and it flashes red, which costs five seconds; the hint lights up the bit of the colour you are most likely to have missed, for ten.

Every picture comes in three sizes — twenty, twenty-eight and thirty-six squares across — and the ones you finish go into your collection in full colour; the rest wait in grey. The daily picture is the same for everyone, at twenty-eight squares, and ranks the day by time. All thirty pictures are our own, drawn for the game.

Tips to win

• Start with the background: long strokes fill it fast
• Scribble freely — a stroke only paints the right squares, so there is no need to be careful at the edges
• The last few squares of a colour are the hardest to find; look for the shading rather than the numbers
• A tap on the wrong number costs time, a drag never does