How to solve arrow puzzles: a method for every board
An arrow escape puzzle asks one question over and over: can this arrow leave right now? In Arrows Away, a tapped arrow slides off the board head first, but only when every cell on the straight line ahead of its head is empty. If anything sits in that line, the arrow bumps into it, slides back and costs one of your three hearts. There is no timer and no move limit, and every board can be cleared, so the whole game comes down to reading the board well. This guide gives you a routine that works on any board, then walks through a small one arrow by arrow.
Read from the head, never the tail
Only the line in front of the arrowhead matters. The body can bend around half the board, but when the arrow leaves, the body follows the head out along the same track, like a snake. So a body never blocks its own arrow, and it never needs space of its own.
To test an arrow, put your eye on its point and travel the way it points, one cell at a time. If you reach the edge of the board, the arrow is free. If you meet any part of another arrow first, it is blocked, and that arrow is its blocker. Tails and bends beside the line, or behind the head, change nothing.
One quick sanity check: two arrows can never point straight at each other along the same line, because then neither could ever leave, and every board can be cleared. If you think you see that, you have misread one of them.
There is no wrong order
Every board is built in the order it will be cleared, and each arrow gets a clear way out through space that earlier arrows leave behind. Sending an arrow away only ever frees space. It can never block anything.
That has two happy consequences. You can never trap yourself, and an arrow that is free stays free until you send it. You don't need to plan a sequence. You only need to find free arrows, and you can send them in any order you like.
Start at the rim
Arrows on the outside of the shape that point outwards usually have nothing but empty space ahead, so they are the safest first taps. Clearing them also opens lanes into the middle of the board.
Watch for shapes that curl back into the line. An arrow on the side of one mountain peak may point straight at the next peak, and an arrow in the dip at the top of a heart can aim across at the other half. Read the whole line, even at the rim.
Work in waves
A wave is a round in which every arrow that is free right now leaves. Early boards clear in a couple of waves: level 3 takes two. Late boards, up to 15 by 19 cells, need far more: level 380 takes seventeen.
Use that rhythm. Scan the whole board once and note every free arrow. Send them all, without checking them again, because they stay free. Then scan a second time, since each departure opens new lanes. Working in waves stops you from tapping the first arrow that looks promising, which is the quickest way to lose a heart. Every fifth level is a smaller breather board, a good place to practise the routine.
Chase the blocker
When the arrow you care about is stuck, follow its line to the first arrow in the way and ask the same question about that one. Keep going. The chain always ends at a free arrow, because a loop of arrows each waiting on the next could never be cleared.
Remember that one line can cross several arrows. Freeing the first blocker may only bring the arrow one step closer, so read the full line again before you tap.
Long snakes and holes
Long, winding arrows cross many lines, so one long snake can be in the way of several arrows at once. Getting it out early often opens a whole side of the board. The game's hint works on the same idea: it lights up the free arrow that is in the way of the most others.
Holes in a silhouette, like the eyes of an owl or the window of a cottage, are empty space. An arrow pointing into a hole is only free if its line runs clear through the hole and on to the edge. The empty cell right in front of the head proves nothing; the cells beyond it decide.
A worked board
This board has seven arrows, A to G. Here is how the routine clears it.
- Find the first wave. A runs along the second row, turns up and points right along the top row into empty corner space. E points left along the bottom row, and F points down the left side. All three have nothing ahead, so they can go in any order. A hint here would light up A, because it stands in the way of two other arrows.
- Spot the traps. B points up, but A's body fills both cells above it. D points left, straight into A's body. C points left into the hole, and the hole is empty, but the dashed line carries on into B's head and F's tail. G points right at C's tail. Tapping any of these four now would cost a heart.
- Second wave. With A gone, the cells above B and the row to the left of D are empty, so both leave. F has gone too, so C's line now holds only B.
- Third wave. Once B is away, C's line runs through the hole and off the board, so C goes.
- Fourth wave. C's tail was the only thing in front of G. G leaves and the board is clear.
Read backwards, G waited on C, C waited on B and F, and B waited on A. That chain of four arrows is why the board takes four waves, and it is the same chain you would find by chasing G's blocker from the start.
Hearts, mis-taps and hints
You have three hearts per board, and the only way to lose one is to tap a blocked arrow. Run out and you can restart the board or, where the game offers it, watch a short video for one heart and carry on.
On a crowded phone screen the real danger is a finger landing on the wrong arrow. Press, then look: the arrow under your finger highlights, and you can slide to the right one before you lift. Only the arrow under your finger when you let go will move. With a keyboard, the arrow keys move between arrows, Enter or Space sends the highlighted one and H asks for a hint.
A hint is worth spending when you have scanned the whole board and found nothing you are sure of, and always before a guess on your last heart. You start with three, earn another for every five levels you clear, and can watch an optional video for two more. Because a hint picks the free arrow that blocks the most others, one hint often gets the waves flowing again.
The daily board is the same for everyone, gentler early in the week and hardest at the weekend. Your shared result shows the hearts you kept as well as your time, so a careful read is worth more than a quick tap. For habits that carry over to every puzzle on the site, read how to get better at logic puzzles.