Sticks

Expert Sticks puzzles

Expert puzzles take three or four moves, and often just one set of lines will do. About half of them need a square bigger than one by one, which is easy to overlook.

Practice gives you puzzles you haven't solved yet, as many as you like, and keeps your best time without hints. Every puzzle is made and checked by a computer: the number of lines it asks you to move is always the fewest that can do it.

How to play Sticks

1. The board is a grid of dots, and lines join some of them, the way matchsticks make a figure.
2. Each puzzle says how many lines to move and how many squares to end with.
3. A square counts when all four of its sides are there and no line is inside it. Squares come in any size: the eight lines around a 2×2 space make one square, as long as nothing crosses it.
4. When you finish, every line has to be a side of a square: no line left over.
5. Move exactly as many lines as the puzzle says: it's always the fewest that can do it.

Tap a line to pick it up, then tap where it goes, or drag it there. A dashed outline marks where a line started: tap it to send that line home. Moving the same line twice counts once, and putting it back counts as no move. On a keyboard, use the arrow keys to move between spots, Enter or Space to pick up and put down, and Ctrl+Z to undo.

Solving tips

• Count the lines. Squares that don't share a side need four lines each, so 12 lines make 3 squares only if no two of them touch along a side. Every shared side saves a line.
• Think bigger. A big square with nothing inside it counts as one square. When the numbers don't add up with small squares, try a bigger one.
• Look for corners. Two lines at the outside corner of a figure often come away without leaving anything loose, and a gap with three sides already drawn takes a single line to close.
• Stuck? The first hint tells you something about how the answer is built. After that, each hint shows a line to move and where it goes.