Zip Puzzle Tips: How to Find the Path Every Time
27 October 2026 · 2 min read
Stuck on a Zip puzzle? The trick is to stop chasing the numbers and look at the squares with the fewest ways in and out. These Zip puzzle tips show you where the path has to go, and you can practise them on a free grid every day.
How a Zip puzzle works
In a Zip-style puzzle you draw one line through a grid. On PuzzleDose the game is called Zipline: a 6 by 6 board with a handful of numbered stops. You start on stop 1, move up, down, left or right (never diagonally), pass the stops in order and finish on the last one. The catch: the line has to visit every square exactly once.
That last rule is what makes it a puzzle. Connecting the numbers is easy, filling the whole board on the way is not. Mathematicians call a route like this a Hamiltonian path.
Zip puzzle tips: 5 habits that find the path
- Start with the corners. A corner square has only two neighbours. Unless it is the first or last stop, the line must come in from one of them and leave through the other, so both moves are fixed.
- Count the free neighbours. Every square in the middle of the path needs exactly two connections. When a square has only two free neighbours left, you know how the line passes through it.
- Never cut the board in two. If your line splits the empty squares into two separate areas, it can only ever reach one of them. Back up and take another turn.
- Watch for dead ends. An empty square with only one free neighbour can only be the end of the path. If it does not hold the last stop, something went wrong.
- Plan from stop to stop. Look at the stretch between two numbers, say 3 and 4. When they sit close together, the line usually has to make a detour to fill a whole region before it reaches the next stop.
What to do when you get stuck
Drag back over your own line to shorten it to that square, then try a different turn. Often the mistake is only a few squares back. If you are truly stuck, the hint button draws the path one square further for you. It adds a few seconds to your time, so try a couple of backtracks first.
The full rules and a short FAQ are on the Zipline how-to page.
Zip, Zipline and other line puzzles
Zip is a LinkedIn game, and PuzzleDose is not affiliated with LinkedIn. Zipline is simply inspired by the same kind of path puzzle. If you enjoy drawing lines, Currents is the one to try next: you connect pairs of matching dots with pipes that may not cross, until every square is covered.
