Journalism of Courage
We’re assuming you’ve already seen ‘Glass Onion’, the star-studded whodunit that’s sitting pretty on Netflix India’s Top 10. A sequel to 2019’s ‘Knives Out’, ‘Glass Onion’ sees gentleman detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) return to solve a mystery surrounding tech billionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton). A tricky puzzle box lies at the heart of this story, and today we’ll share where you can play every game seen—or mentioned—in this thrilling tale.
If you’re yet to watch the film, then SPOILER ALERT: this is where you should stop reading.
What gets ‘Glass Onion’ rolling is the mysterious wooden box that arrives at the home of ‘The Disruptors’: a group of micro-celebrities who are friends with Bron. Nobody’s sure what’s inside, so they get on a group call to crack it open. As everyone interacts with the games inside, the scene acts as character exposition, offering a look behind the public personas of aging actress Birdie Jay (Kate Hudson), genius chemist Lionel Toussaint (Leslie Odom Jr), men’s rights streamer Duke Cody (Dave Bautista), and shrewd politician Claire Debella (Kathryn Hahn). The Disruptors delight in the box’s trickery, as they enjoy and benefit from artifice; by contrast, no-frills school teacher Helen Brand (Janelle Monae) has no patience for glamour, and hammers it open.
When fully solved, Bron’s puzzle box reveals the eponymous ‘glass onion’, which holds an invitation to his island as the ‘prize’. Since the whole film is about showmanship—and how you can’t walk the path to success alone—the puzzle box becomes a fitting metaphor for what lies ahead in the story.
The puzzle box, which resembles a mechanical puzzle called the Yoshimoto cube, has two layers inside with four games each. Here’s a deeper look:
The wood grain outside Bron’s box isn’t just pretty craftsmanship—it hides a stereogram, an optical illusion where you have to focus each of your eyes on a different 2D image. This tricks your brain into perceiving depth, forming a third 3D image. In the film, this image is an arrow that points to a button to open the box. Stereograms grew popular from the 1990s Magic Eye book series, and you can enjoy many on their official website.
It seems completely intentional that Claire, a politician, solves the first puzzle: a chess endgame that’s set to mate the opponent in one move. Many great websites exist for online chess, but the most popular have to be chess.com and lichess.org. They’re good for beginners who don’t want their motivation to be destroyed by the pros.
The second puzzle shows a finished game of tic tac toe, with a Morse Code tapper beside it. The Xs and Os represent dots and dashes, which spell out letters. This website is the standard choice for tic tac toe, but you can also try Tic Tac Toe Glow, which turns things up a notch with bigger puzzles, multiplayer options and a leaderboard. Another spinoff is on Khan Academy, where tic tac toe is remixed as a 9×9 sudoku grid, demanding deeper strategy.
As for Morse code, you can learn the language with a game like Morse Mania, or Google’s Morse Typing Trainer. Developers can get free code to build Morse code games here.
The third puzzle shows a set of blue tiles rearranged to form the letter ‘N’. The Disruptors realise it’s a compass, turning the ‘N’ towards Earth’s geographic north to unlock the fourth game. Sliding puzzles are a common brain teaser, and you can find many variations like the Polish Klotski. the Chinese Huarong Dao, this pinball-like spinoff, or this one with electrifying cats. This is just the tip of the iceberg—for more online spinoffs, tap here.
Cellist Yo-Yo Ma makes a cameo in ‘Glass Onion’ to solve the fourth game, which plays Bach’s Little Fugue in G Minor. Ma describes it as a ‘musical puzzle’, where a tune is layered on top of itself to create a new-sounding structure. This gives Lionel a hint on what to do next—pulling a central wheel on the first layer to reveal a hidden second. The closest match to this game is probably Fugue on Steam, where you make music, chimes and melodies to solve a math puzzle. Another hands-on wonderland is Google Experiments’ Music section, which is filled with unique sonic experiences.
The box’s second layer opens with a depiction of the golden ratio—a spiral pattern found in art and nature that’s linked to the Fibonacci sequence, a series of numbers where the next number is the sum of the two before it. The film isn’t clear on how this puzzle actually works, so we’ll recommend some easy and universal options: the 2048 Fibonacci game for PC and mobile, or one of these beautiful Fibonacci jigsaw puzzles.
The next puzzle uses an abacus, which, again, doesn’t get an explanation—the film’s game montage is moving pretty fast by now—so we’ll share broad recommendations: Simple Soroban, an easy Japanese abacus game, or the more lively Abacus on Steam: a retro 2D shooter game where you solve puzzles to uncover ancient secrets.
‘Glass Onion’s abacus also seems to have a philosophy easter egg: beside it is written Rene Descartes’ famous line, ‘Cogito, ergo sum’ (‘I think, therefore I am’). It’s written as Cogito + Ergo = Sum. Make of that what you will.
The third puzzle in this layer is a projection of the night sky, showing constellations like Draco, Cygnus, Lyra, and Big Dipper. All games in this layer connect to math, so we’re assuming the star map hinted at the coordinates of Bron’s island—perhaps a snapshot of the night sky above it?
As for games, there are numerous titles related to the stars. Here’s a brief list: Constellations by Xtronaut (award-winning board game); Qorbit (elegant arcade puzzler); Star Trek Timelines (strategy role-playing game); Hades’ Star (space colonisation game); and Stellarium and Star Walk 2 (real-time stargazing guides).
The final puzzle in the box is on chemistry, where a dial must be set to an element’s correct atomic number (in ‘Glass Onion’, it’s 47 for silver). Some chemistry games that riff on this idea are Atomas (an incremental puzzle on atomicity); Beaker (a virtual lab with 150+ chemicals) and Little Alchemy, where you “start with four basic items and (eventually) use them to find dinosaurs, unicorns and spaceships.”
This is where the puzzle box ends. But these aren’t the only games mentioned in ‘Glass Onion’. We also see detective Blanc (badly) play the viral hit Among Us with his friends, a cheeky choice by director Rian Johnson for a story full of impostors. Other games mentioned during Blanc’s bathtub session are:
‘Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery’ is currently streaming on Netflix. If you plan a rewatch, let us know if this list elevated the experience!
This story is part of Express Puzzles & Games, where we do daily puzzles and weekly quizzes. Sign up to start playing, and follow @iepuzzles for updates.
