Paths (Mind Loft)

About Paths (Mind Loft)

Paths is a network puzzle on Mind Loft, a free site of daily browser games. The map shows one depot and a number of towns, nine on the day we looked, with a river and two ridges in between. Your job is to lay lanes of track so that every town is connected back to the depot, and to pay as little as you can for it.

Lanes have different costs. An open lane costs 1, a lane on a ridge costs 2 (only when both its ends are on the ridge), and a river crossing costs 3. Later in the week cliffs appear, which block a lane completely, and stretches of old track, which cost nothing to run along. Towns turn green as they connect.

The point of the puzzle is sharing. A lane laid to reach one town also serves every town beyond it, so linking each town to its nearest neighbour usually ends up several over the best price, and one trunk line across a single river crossing tends to beat three separate detours. Connecting everything does not end the round: you keep trimming spurs and press Finish when you cannot cut any more. Undo and Clear are free.

Every board has a cheapest network proven by a solver. Matching it scores a perfect 10, a point comes off for every 4 over, and par is the cost that scores 8. The week ramps up: open ground Monday to Wednesday, cliffs from Thursday, old track and a ninth town on Friday and Saturday, and a 13x13 Sunday Edition with eleven towns. A new map goes up at midnight US Eastern Time.

How to play Paths (Mind Loft)

1. Open mindloftdaily.com/paths and press Start to see the day's map.
2. Drag or tap a lane to lay track; drag back over your own track to lift it.
3. Connect every town to the depot; each turns green when it is linked.
4. Trim spurs and reroute to bring the cost down toward perfect.
5. Press Finish when you cannot trim any further; your cost decides the score and leaderboard place.

Tips

• Look for old track first: a free lane is worth a detour to reach.
• Cross the river once with a shared trunk line instead of crossing it for each town.
• A ridge lane only costs 2 when both ends sit on the ridge, so skirting the edge is cheaper.
• Your first complete network is never the cheapest; keep testing whether a spur can be replaced by a shared lane.

Questions