In the frame
A young sea lion twists head-down through the water, trailing a loop of silver bubbles. Sunbeams fall from the surface at the top, and a band of kelp grows along the bottom.
This dive turns the picture into a 4 × 4 slide puzzle: 15 tiles and one empty space. The shuffle is fixed, so everyone starts from the same board, and it is always solvable.
Dive plan
- Start with the easy part: the sea lion and its ring of bubbles.
- Save for last: the blue water above the kelp. About 38% of the frame has little detail, mostly on the left side, and those pieces look alike.
- Finish the top row first, then the left column; the puzzle shrinks to a smaller board each time.
- Switch on the numbers if two tiles look alike — they show where each tile belongs.
- Look-alike tiles are where the numbers help most: plain water or sand gives few clues about order.
- For the last two rows, work column by column, two tiles at a time.
Colours of the picture
Main colours, measured from the picture's pixels: teal (38%), sky blue (15%), slate grey (13%) and white (12%).
- teal38%
- sky blue15%
- slate grey13%
- white12%
- charcoal12%
- grey10%
How deep it goes
Depth 3 of 5 — a steady dive.
Wall dives drop off into bigger boards, where the plain parts of a picture start to slow you down.