Path Find
Start at the orange dot. Draw one unbroken line through the grid. The line must pass through every single cell — exactly once. No cell twice, no cell missed. The last game in the Founding Twenty-Five's first two issues.
What it is
Path Find is a Hamiltonian-path puzzle in disguise. You're given a grid with one cell marked as the start. Your job is to draw a single continuous path — moving only up, down, left, or right between adjacent cells — that visits every cell in the grid exactly once. You can't skip a cell, you can't revisit one, and the path can't break. When every cell is filled and your path is one unbroken line, the level is solved. Grids start at 4×4 and grow.
How to play
- The path starts at the orange dot.
- Tap a cell next to the end of your path (up, down, left, or right) to extend the path into it.
- Tap the previous cell to undo the last step and back up.
- Fill every cell. When the path covers all cells in one unbroken line, you advance.
- Grids grow: 4×4, then 5×5, then 6×6. Every level's grid is guaranteed to have at least one valid full path.
The trick
The killer mistake in Hamiltonian-path puzzles is creating an isolated pocket — a cell or group of cells that the path can no longer reach because you've walled them off. The trick is to think about corners and dead-ends first: a corner cell has only two neighbours, so the path is almost forced through it in a specific way. Solve the constrained cells (corners, edges, narrow gaps) early, and the open middle takes care of itself. Experienced players also use a parity check — colour the grid like a chessboard, and a valid path has to alternate colours, which rules out many tempting-but-doomed moves instantly.
What this scored well on
- Pure, clean rules. One line, every cell, once. There is no simpler way to state a puzzle, and the simplicity is the appeal — all the difficulty is in the solving, none in understanding what's being asked.
- Guaranteed solvable. We generate each level by first laying down a valid full path, then presenting its grid — so every puzzle has at least one solution, and you're never stuck on an impossible board.
- Back-up, not restart. Tapping the previous cell to step back means a wrong move costs one tap to fix, not a whole restart. That keeps the puzzle in "thinking" mode rather than "punishment" mode.
What it gets wrong
Path Find's difficulty scaling is a little uneven. The jump from 5×5 to 6×6 is larger than it looks — a 6×6 grid has 36 cells and the number of dead-ends you can accidentally create grows faster than the grid does. Some players will hit a wall there. We considered intermediate sizes (a 5×6 rectangle) and decided to keep it square for visual cleanliness, accepting the slightly steep step. If 6×6 frustrates you, the parity-check technique above is the thing to learn — it makes the larger grids tractable.
Who it's for
Path Find is for players who like pure spatial logic with no clock and no chance — the same audience as Tile Flip and Corner Flip, but with a continuous-path flavour instead of a toggle flavour. It's a calm, methodical puzzle, and the larger grids reward genuine planning over trial and error.
Where we'd point you next
If you liked the spatial planning, try Maze Spin (#08). If you liked the every-cell completeness, try Tic Sweep (#24). And that's the first twenty-five — thank you for playing through the catalogue with us.
Released · 13 May 2026 · Editor's score 3.5 / 5 · Reviewed by Bill