Today's grid

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How to play Pathly

Pathly is a free daily join-the-dots path puzzle. Everyone gets the same grid each day, with pairs of matching dots. Each pair has the same colour and the same number. Your job is to join every pair with a path.

How the puzzle works

Paths run from cell to cell across or down, never diagonally. Paths can't cross each other, and two paths can't share a cell. When you're done, every cell in the grid must be part of a path. To draw, press on a dot and drag. Drag back over your path to shorten it, or press anywhere on a path to pick it up from there. If you draw through another path, that path is cut back to make room. Tap a dot to clear its path. A dot gets a tick once its pair is joined. When the grid is full, press Check: Pathly tells you how many cells are on the wrong path and outlines them in red. Grids are 5×5 from Monday to Wednesday, 6×6 on Thursday, and 7×7 and a step harder from Friday to Sunday. Every grid has exactly one answer, and you can reach it by logic alone, without guessing.

Scoring and the helper

Solve it on your first check and you earn 12 points; later checks earn 10, 8, 6, 4 and then 2. If your sixth check isn't right, the day is over. Pressing Check before you've drawn a path, or with nothing changed since your last check, never uses up a try. Stuck? The helper draws one complete path for you and locks it in place, but it halves the day's score and is only available until your third check.

Streaks and badges

Your play streak counts the days in a row you've played, and your solved streak counts the days in a row you've solved the puzzle. Play seven days running and you earn a 7-point bonus, or 14 points if you solved all seven. Miss a day and the streaks start again. A new puzzle arrives every day at midnight UTC.

Tips

Dots on the edge often hug the wall: a path along the edge rarely leaves room for another path beside it.

Look at corners and dead ends. A cell with only two free neighbours must have a path running straight through both.

Paths never wander back next to themselves, so a path that doubles back on itself is a sign something's wrong.

What Pathly trains

Spatial planning. Routing paths so they never cross and every cell is used.

Thinking ahead. Committing to a path early can block another pair later.

Problem solving. Edges and corners often force the first moves.

Did you know?

Puzzles where matching pairs are joined without crossing appeared in print as early as 1897, in a newspaper puzzle by Sam Loyd.

Engineers solve similar problems when designing circuit boards, where wires must connect without crossing.

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