🛤️ Number Path
22 playsNumber Path
One continuous chain of numbers, threaded through the whole grid from a handful of clues.
About Number Path
Number Path — known to newspaper solvers as Numbrix — asks for a single unbroken chain: the numbers from 1 up to the grid's last square, placed so that every consecutive pair sits side by side, horizontally or vertically, and every square is used exactly once. A scattering of clues is given, always including the first number and the last, and the rest is deduction: a corner has only two neighbours, two clues close in value and close on the board leave the path no room to wander, and each placement makes the next more certain. Grids run from a gentle five-by-five to an expert eight-by-eight, every one generated fresh with exactly one solution, so logic alone always carries the day. Type numbers into squares one at a time, or drag outward from any placed number to lay a whole run.
How to Play
Fill the grid so the numbers from 1 to the last square form one connected path — consecutive numbers must touch horizontally or vertically, never diagonally. Tap a square and type a number, or press a placed number and drag through empty squares to lay a run. Four sizes, from Easy 5×5 to Expert 8×8, each with a single solution. A hint fills one square when you are stuck.
💡 Tips & Strategy
Work outward from the clues, and start where the grid leaves no choice. A clue in a corner has only two neighbours, so its predecessor and successor are confined at once; a clue on an edge has three. Whenever a number has exactly one empty square that could hold its neighbour, fill it immediately — every forced square you place turns some other part of the grid into a new forced square, and gentle boards fall entirely to this chain of certainties.
Between two clues, measure before you draw. The difference between their values is the exact number of steps the path takes from one to the other, so it can never be smaller than the number of rows plus columns separating them — and it must leave room to come back if it wanders. Two clues that differ by four but sit four squares apart are joined by a dead-straight corridor; a bigger difference over the same distance means the path must bulge, and the empty pocket beside it tells you where. This one habit of counting resolves most of what the forced moves leave behind.
Remember that the chain must visit every square, which makes empty regions as telling as numbers. If a run you are about to lay would wall off a pocket of empty cells with no way in and out, it is wrong, however legal each step looks. Lay long stretches by dragging from a placed number, work in from both ends of a gap rather than committing one whole guess, and if the board stalls completely, a hint fills a single square — often enough to restart the chain of forced moves, at a modest cost to the score.