How to Play Plant Path

Plant Path has one rule. Draw a single line from circle 1 through every numbered circle in order, filling every cell of the grid, and never crossing yourself. Everything else on this page is detail.

The rule, in full

Start on circle 1 and draw one continuous line.
Pass through the numbered circles in order: 1, then 2, then 3, and on to the last.
Fill every cell of the grid. The line may not cross itself or double back through a cell it has already used.
Finish on the last circle with no empty cell left. The board is solved the moment that happens.

Every board in Plant Path is generated and then proven to have exactly one solution before it is ever shown. There is always one right path, and it can always be reasoned out; a guess is never required.

An unsolved 4 by 4 Plant Path board with circles numbered 1 to 4 — Level 3 of the ladder, a 4×4 with four circles. The line leaves 1 by the top row, sweeps it to the far corner and comes back to 2, steps down to 3 in the bottom corner, runs the bottom row and climbs to finish on 4 with nothing left unfilled. It is the only path that works.

The same board solved: one line from 1 through 2, 3 and 4 covering every cell — Level 3 of the ladder, a 4×4 with four circles. The line leaves 1 by the top row, sweeps it to the far corner and comes back to 2, steps down to 3 in the bottom corner, runs the bottom row and climbs to finish on 4 with nothing left unfilled. It is the only path that works.

Controls

Put a finger, or the mouse, on circle 1 and drag. The line follows you one cell at a time, straight along rows and columns, never diagonally. You can lift off whenever you like and pick the line up again from its end.

Took a wrong turn? Slide back along the line and it retreats with you, or tap any cell the line has already passed through and it trims back to that point. Nothing is lost by backing up; the boards have no clock and no lives.

On the web the game plays in any modern browser with a mouse, a trackpad, or a touch screen. In the iOS and Android apps it plays in portrait on a phone and scales up to fill a tablet.

Rocks

Some boards carry rocks: blocked cells the line can never enter. A board with rocks is complete when every cell that is not a rock is filled, so a rock changes the shape of the path without changing the rule. Rocks first appear in the thirties of the level ladder, one per hard board, and the daily puzzle carries them on a weekly rhythm: none on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday, two on Tuesday and Thursday, four on Friday and Sunday.

An unsolved 6 by 6 Plant Path board with six circles and one rock in the bottom-left corner — Level 34, the ladder's first rock. The rock sits in the corner, so the cell beside it has only two ways through, which is the kind of clue the strategy guide is about.

The same board solved, the line flowing around the rock — Level 34, the ladder's first rock. The rock sits in the corner, so the cell beside it has only two ways through, which is the kind of clue the strategy guide is about.

Walls

Past level 40 the boards add walls: a thick stroke of ink along the edge between two cells. The line may not cross a wall, but both cells on either side of it still have to be filled, so the path has to reach each of them by another way round. Walls let a board carry fewer numbers while staying uniquely solvable, which is what makes the high levels feel harder without the grids getting any bigger than 7×7.

An unsolved 6 by 5 Plant Path board with six circles and one wall drawn along a cell edge — Level 44, one wall. The line visits the cells above and below the wall on separate passes.

The same board solved, the line passing on either side of the wall without crossing it — Level 44, one wall. The line visits the cells above and below the wall on separate passes.

Hints

Stuck? Tap the hint under the board. A small light shows the next stretch of the correct path from where your line currently ends, and you carry on from there. You begin with ten hints, and when they run out the game offers ten more in exchange for watching a short video. The video is always optional and never required to finish a board.

A board finished with a hint is marked "Hint Used" on its celebration card, and a hinted solve banks fewer league points than a clean one.

What opens when

A new player is walked through three tiny tutorial boards and straight into the level ladder. The other doors off the menu open one at a time, so each arrives as its own moment:

Milestone	What opens
Every tenth level	A gift box for the garden
Level 15	The daily puzzle: one shared 7×7 board a day
Finishing level 24	The league: a 24-hour race for points
Level 40 and beyond	The high ladder, with walls, in cycles of twenty levels

The ladder itself has no end. The first forty levels teach one thing at a time: width, then height, then the hard 6×6 and 7×7 boards, then rocks. After that the game climbs in cycles of twenty, each a saw of easy openers, hard peaks and a breath before the 7×7 summit.

Play now Read the strategy guide