Fold strategy: how to read the reflection and solve every level

Fold looks like simple paper folding, and the first levels are. A picture has been cut into pieces and scattered across the sheet, and folding brings them back together. What separates a quick solve from a stuck one is learning to see where a piece will land, and which way round it will be facing, before you fold rather than after.

What a fold really does

Every crease splits the sheet into two sides. Tap a crease and the smaller side folds over onto the larger side, exactly like folding real paper. Anything sitting on that moving flap, paper and picture alike, comes along for the ride and ends up mirrored across the crease. A piece two squares to the right of the fold line lands two squares to the left of it, facing the other way. That mirror is the single most important idea in the game: a fold does not slide a piece straight across, it flips it.

Read the reflection before you tap

Because folding mirrors the flap, the piece that is furthest from a crease travels the furthest, and the one sitting right beside the crease barely moves. Before committing, pick the piece you care about and picture the crease as a mirror: wherever it is now, imagine its reflection on the other side. If that reflection lands on the square you want, fold. If it overshoots, you probably want a crease closer to the piece, not further away.

A mirrored piece is a wrong piece

This is the rule that catches everyone. A piece only counts when it is in the right square and the right way round. Fold an odd number of times and it arrives back to front; fold an even number and it arrives correct. The pieces are laid out on the flat sheet already mirrored by exactly the amount their journey will undo, which is why the starting board looks scrambled on purpose.

So when a piece lands in the right square but facing the wrong way, do not look for a fix later in the sequence. Look earlier: it needs one more reflection somewhere on its way, or one fewer.

Mind the other pieces

The catch is that a fold moves everything on the flap, not just the piece you were aiming at. A fold that brings one piece home can just as easily carry another one out of place, or stack two pieces into the same square. This is why Fold is a puzzle and not a chore: you are looking for an order of folds where each one helps without wrecking what you already fixed. When two pieces fight each other, ask which should be resolved last, once the other is safely tucked under a fold.

Think in layers

As you fold, the paper stacks into layers, and later folds carry those whole stacks together. A piece that is already home stays home as long as the folds that follow keep it in place and do not flip it again. Often the winning plan is to bring the outer pieces in first and close the middle last, so the final fold completes the picture without disturbing anything underneath.

Undo is free, so experiment

You are not punished for trying. The Undo button steps back one fold at a time, and Restart unfolds the whole sheet to the beginning. Fold rewards experimentation: make a fold, see how the pieces move, and step back if it went the wrong way. Over a few levels you build an instinct for the mirror, and you will start seeing two and three folds ahead without needing to test them.

The difficulty climbs gently

Early levels cut the picture into nine pieces on a small sheet, so almost any sensible fold makes progress. As you climb, the picture is cut into sixteen and the sheet takes more folds to resolve, which means more reflections to keep track of and more folds that interfere with each other. The curve is deliberately gentle: every level is built by folding a real sheet, so there is always a solution, and the new wrinkle each stage adds is small enough to reason through. Your progress saves automatically, so you can always pick up where you left off.

Quick checklist

• A fold mirrors the flap. The piece furthest from the crease moves furthest.
• Picture the crease as a mirror before you tap, and check where your piece reflects to.
• Check the small picture in the corner. Knowing the target tells you which piece belongs where.
• A piece facing the wrong way is wrong, not nearly right. Fix it earlier in the sequence.
• Every fold moves all the pieces on the flap, not just your target.
• Bring the outer pieces in first and close the middle last.
• Use Undo freely. Experimenting costs you nothing.

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