Train Tracks

About Train Tracks

Train Tracks is the classic rail-laying logic puzzle, played in the browser on Logic Puzzles Online, a free site of logic puzzles that needs no download and no account to play.

The grid has an entrance marked A and an exit marked B on its edge, and a number beside every row and column. Those numbers say how many cells of that line the track runs through. You pick a straight or a curved rail piece from a palette and set it in a cell, building one line from A to B with no branches, loops or crossings.

Once a day the site puts up a Daily board: the same Medium puzzle for everyone, with a new one at midnight UTC and a countdown on the game page. Signed-in players keep a streak and can see where they stand on the daily leaderboard, and friends can see each other's daily results. Outside the daily, Easy, Medium and Hard boards can be played as often as you like.

A piece that would break a row or column count, or that does not join up at the entrance or exit, costs a life instead of landing, so careless guessing has a price. An eraser, an undo button and a cross marker for cells you know are empty help keep the grid tidy.

It suits players who like short, clean deduction puzzles with a single answer, and anyone who already plays Slitherlink or Flow and wants a path puzzle with a different rule.

How to play Train Tracks

1. Open the Train Tracks page and choose Play today's Daily for the shared puzzle, or pick Easy, Medium or Hard for an extra board.
2. Read the numbers along the rows and columns: each says how many cells in that line the track passes through.
3. Pick a straight or curved rail piece from the palette and tap a cell to lay it.
4. Build one unbroken line from the entrance A to the exit B, with no branches, loops or crossings.
5. Mark cells you know are empty with the cross tool, and use undo or the eraser to fix a mistake.
6. The puzzle is solved when the track joins A to B and every row and column count is met.

Tips

• Clear any row or column whose clue is 0 first: no track can go there.
• When a line already holds as many track cells as its clue, mark the rest of it empty.
• Work inward from both A and B; the cells next to them are usually the most constrained.
• A track cell that already has two connections cannot take a third, so the edges around it can be ruled out.
• Use the cross mark rather than a guess: a wrong rail piece costs a life.

Questions