Nothing About Her Is Royalty-Free

I wanted a nice photo of Diana, Princess of Wales, to use as a demo for our new 15-Puzzle Generator. Naturally. This is Lady Di's Mines, after all.

It turns out that's harder than it sounds. Most Diana photos cost money to license — agencies, wire services, estate rights. A useful tool for cutting through the noise is Google Image Search with the Creative Commons filter (Tools → Creative Commons licenses), but even then, you have to read the fine print on each result.

I eventually found one on Wikipedia that is genuinely free — no cost, no restrictions. Royalty-free, in the licensing sense of the word.

And yet.

It's still a photo of royalty. You can have a royalty-free picture of Diana. You cannot have a royalty-free Diana.

The feature that caused all this trouble

We just launched the 15-Puzzle Generator. Upload any photo, scramble it into a sliding tile puzzle, and share the link with anyone. No login required to play — just to save.

The puzzle works in two modes:

• Tiles — your photo is sliced across the 15 tiles and scrambled with them. Solving the puzzle reassembles the image.
• Reveal on win — tiles show numbers as usual, but solving the puzzle reveals your photo underneath as a reward.

You can see an example of the tiles mode here: minesweeper.org/other/15puzzle/photo/BAQLAAIFBAwGDwMJDgEHDQoI?mode=tiles

What you should upload

The best photos for this puzzle are personal ones — photos you took yourself. Family trips, pets, a favourite view from your window. You own the copyright on everything you shoot, so there's no ambiguity, no fine print, no princesses.

You can save up to 32 puzzles. Your saved list lives on your profile page as well as the generator itself.

Because this is user-generated content, we have an admin review page where we can remove anything problematic. Keep it friendly — puzzles are publicly accessible the moment you save them.

Give it a try at minesweeper.org/other/15puzzle/generator.

— Richard Cross