How to play Zip

Zip is a path puzzle played on a square grid. A handful of cells hold numbered dots, and some cell edges are blocked by thick walls. Your job is to draw a single continuous line that ties everything together. The idea will feel familiar if you've played LinkedIn's Zip; Zip Daily is an independent take on the same kind of puzzle, with a new grid every day, a full archive, unlimited practice puzzles and an editor for making your own.

The rules

1. Start on the dot labelled 1.
2. Move one cell at a time — up, down, left or right. No diagonals.
3. Visit the numbered dots in order: 1, then 2, then 3, and so on.
4. Fill every cell of the grid, and never visit a cell twice.
5. Walls block movement. You can't step across a thick edge.
6. Finish on the highest number. When the last cell is filled, you've solved it.

Every daily puzzle has exactly one solution, so you never need to guess between two equally valid answers — there is always a logical reason for the next move.

Controls

On a phone or tablet, put your finger on the dot labelled 1 and drag. The line follows your finger. To undo, drag back along the line, or press anywhere on the line to cut it back to that cell and carry on from there.

With a mouse, drag the same way, or click any cell in the same row or column as the end of your line to fill the whole straight run in one go. Clicking a cell that's already on the line trims the line back to it.

With a keyboard, click the board once to focus it, then use the arrow keys to extend the line one cell at a time. Stepping back onto the previous cell undoes the last move, and Escape clears the line back to the start.

Solving tips

Fill the corners first

A corner cell has only two neighbours, so the path must enter through one and leave through the other — unless the corner is where the path begins or ends. Corners are often fully determined before you've thought about anything else.

Watch for dead ends

Any cell with only one open neighbour left must be the end of the path. If it isn't the final numbered dot, your current line is wrong. Checking for cells you've boxed in is the fastest way to spot a mistake early.

Use the walls

Walls aren't only obstacles — they're clues. A cell walled on two sides behaves just like a corner, and a long wall splits the grid into regions the path must enter and leave through a limited number of gaps.

Don't cut the board in two

If your line separates the unvisited cells into two pieces, you can only ever finish one of them. Before committing to a long straight run, glance at whether it splits the remaining space.

Think about the next dot

The path has to reach the next number without passing any later one first. When two dots sit close together, the cells around them usually have to be swept up before you move on.

Daily, archive and practice

A new daily puzzle appears every day at midnight UTC. Weekday puzzles start easy on Monday and build to bigger, harder grids at the weekend. Missed a day? Every past puzzle is in the archive. Want more? Practice mode generates unlimited puzzles from 5×5 to 10×10, and the puzzle maker lets you design your own and share it with a link.