About Pipes

Every tile holds a piece of pipe — a dead end, a straight, a bend or a junction — and every tile has been turned. Tap a tile to turn it a quarter clockwise. The job is to join them all into one network fed from the source in the middle, with no open ends anywhere: no pipe pointing off the edge of the board, and no pipe pointing at a tile that does not point back.

Water runs from the source through every join that meets, so the part of the network that already works lights up as you go, and you can see exactly how far it reaches. The round dead ends are taps: each one is somewhere the water has to get to. Every board is made by growing one network across every tile and then turning the pieces, so there is always a way back — and the fewest turns it takes is known, shown as par, and your result is rated against it.

The edges and corners are where to start. A pipe on the edge can only point one of a few ways, and a corner even fewer, so they settle first and everything next to them follows. The daily challenge is a seven-by-seven board, the same for everyone, ranked on fewest turns with the clock breaking ties. Free play has five-by-five and nine-by-nine as well.

Tips to win

• Start at the edges: a pipe can never point off the board, which rules out most of its turns
• Corners settle first of all — a bend in a corner has exactly one way to sit
• A dead end next to another dead end cannot face it, or the two would make a network of their own
• Watch the open-ends count: it only reaches nought when the board is solved