Rinks

Easy Rinks puzzles

Easy rinks are 7 by 7, with four to six stars and no holes in the ice. Par is five to eight slides, usually six. There's room to wander: hardly a slide leads anywhere you can't get back from, so it's all about finding a way past each star.

Practice gives you rinks you haven't solved yet, as many as you like, and keeps your best time without hints. Every rink is made and checked by a computer, and its par is the fewest slides that pick up every star.

How to play Rinks

1. Slide the puck across the ice in any of eight directions: up, down, sideways or diagonally. Once it's moving, it keeps going.
2. A snowbank stops it in the spot before it, and so does the edge of the rink. A patch of snow stops it dead on the patch. It can't cross a hole in the ice, so it won't slide that way at all.
3. Stars don't stop it: it picks up every star it passes over. Pick them all up to win.

Swipe in a direction, tap a spot in line with the puck, or use the keys: the arrows or W, A, S, D for the sides, and Q, E, Z, C or the number pad for the diagonals. On a computer, point at a spot to see where the puck would end up. Undo has no limit, and Ctrl+Z takes a slide back. Every rink has a par, the fewest slides that pick up every star, worked out by a computer; you're ranked by time.

Solving tips

• Find the stops. The puck can only end up where something stops it: next to a snowbank or the edge, or on a patch of snow. Those spots are the whole map of where you can go.
• Watch for dead ends. Some spots are easy to get into and hard to get out of. On open ice, the corners are the classic trap: from one, the puck can only slide to the others. Before you slide into one, check that you can still reach every star left from there.
• Use the diagonals. A diagonal slide slips between two snowbanks that only touch at a corner, and often reaches a star the straight lines can't.
• Stuck? A hint shows the next slide of a shortest way, or how many slides to take back from a dead end.