How to play
- Start on 1. Press the stone marked 1 and drag. The line follows your finger from stone to stone: up, down, left or right, never diagonally.
- Meet the numbers in order. The line reaches 2 before 3, 3 before 4, and so on. It cannot cross a number that is not next.
- Fill every stone. The puzzle is solved when the line has passed through every stone exactly once and ends on the highest number.
- Mind the walls. A dark bar between two stones is a wall. The line cannot cross it.
To change your mind, drag back along the line, or press any stone on it and carry on from there. Press 1 to start again, and use undo to take back your last move.
Solving tips
- Corners first. A corner stone has only two neighbours. Unless it holds 1 or the last number, the line has to turn through it, so you can draw that elbow straight away.
- Walls make new corners. A stone with a wall on one side and the edge of the board on another behaves just like a corner.
- Watch for dead ends. An empty stone with only one free neighbour left can only be where the line ends. If it is not the last number, the line has gone wrong nearby.
- Never cut the board in two. The stones you have not reached yet must stay in one piece. A line that seals off a pocket of stones can never get back in.
- Count the stretch. When two numbers sit close together but many stones lie between them on the answer, the line has to wander. Look for the region it must sweep before it moves on.
- Think like a chessboard. Every step moves between a light and a dark square of a chessboard pattern. A stretch with an even number of steps starts and ends on the same colour, which rules out many routes on the bigger boards.
Our number path puzzle tips work through a whole board step by step, and Hamiltonian paths explained covers the maths behind lines that visit every cell once.
Levels and dailies
| Levels | Board | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| 1 to 5 | 4 by 4 | Gentle introduction |
| 6 to 15 | 5 by 5 | Gentle to easy |
| 16 to 100 | 6 by 6 | Gentle to medium |
| 101 to 220 | 7 by 7 | Easy to medium, with walls from level 121 |
| 221 to 340 | 8 by 8 | Easy to hard |
| 341 to 400 | 8 by 8 and 9 by 9 | Medium to expert |
Every fifth level is a little gentler, so the climb has places to catch your breath. The daily puzzle is a 7 by 7 board, the same for everyone: easiest on Monday and Tuesday, hardest at the weekend, and about one day in three has walls. Solve it on the day to keep your streak going.
How the boards are made
Each board starts from a random line that winds through every stone. The generator places numbers along it, and wherever another line would also fit, it adds a number or a wall to rule that line out, until exactly one answer is left. Then it takes away every number that is not needed. On the gentler levels it puts a few numbers back, in the longest stretches of the line, so the route is easier to find. A solver measures how much searching the finished board takes, and that sets its difficulty.
Questions
- Is Pebble Path like the Zip puzzle?
- Yes. If you play zip-style daily path puzzles, the rules are the same: one line, the numbers in order, every cell exactly once, and walls that block the way. Pebble Path is our own game and is not connected to LinkedIn. It has 400 levels to play at your own pace, plus a new daily board.
- Is there always exactly one answer?
- Yes. Every board is checked by a solver that tries every possible line and confirms that only one of them fits the numbers and the walls.
- My line reached the last number. Why is it not solved?
- The board only counts as solved when every stone is on the line. If you reach the last number with stones left over, drag back along the line to where it went wrong and find a route that takes in the missed stones.
- How do hints work?
- A hint lights up the next stones of the answer. If your line has already gone off course, it also rings the last stone that was right, so you know how far to go back. Three hints per puzzle are free, and "Show me" draws the hinted stones for you.
- Can I play with a keyboard?
- Yes. The arrow keys draw the line from its end, Backspace steps back one stone, U undoes your last move and H asks for a hint.
- Is my progress saved?
- Yes, in your browser on this device: the line you are drawing, the levels you have cleared, your daily streak and your times. There is no account to make.