Safe Path

Some squares on this board are unsafe, and you cannot see which. What you can see is the number under your own feet: how many of the eight squares touching you are unsafe. Walk from the start on the left edge to the goal on the right, one step at a time, and read your way across. A zero means every square around you is safe and you may move freely. Anything else means you have to think before you step, because a step onto an unsafe square ends the round on the spot — and so does running out of steps.

It runs entirely on your device: 0 network requests, works offline. No ads, no account, nothing to buy, and no betting, money or prizes of any kind.

1. Focus the board — click it, or press Tab until it is focused.
2. Step with the arrow keys, or W A S D. One press moves you one square, and every move spends one step from the budget shown above the board.
3. Read the number you land on. It counts the unsafe squares among the eight that touch you — the four beside you and the four corners. 0 means all eight are safe.
4. Repeat a direction with Enter or Space instead of hunting for the same arrow again. It walks one more square the way you last went.
5. Back up with F, Shift, Z or Backspace. That returns you one square along the route you already walked, which is always safe — and it still spends a step, because a detour is a detour.
6. Or use the mouse: click any square next to you to step onto it. Clicking anywhere else does nothing, so a stray click can never end your round.
7. Reach the goal on the right edge before the steps run out. The start square always reads 0, so you always have somewhere certain to go first.

How do you find a safe path across a grid of hidden hazards?

By treating each number as a statement about a fixed set of squares, and only stepping where the statements leave no room for doubt. Two rules do almost all the work. First: if a square reads 0, every one of the eight squares touching it is safe — that is your licence to move. Second: if a square reads 3 and only three of its neighbours are still unaccounted for, then all three are unsafe, and you now know three squares to avoid for the rest of the round. Those two facts feed each other. Marking a square unsafe often finishes the count on a neighbouring number, which frees its remaining squares as safe, which gives you somewhere new to stand and one more number to read. The skill is choosing where to stand next: the best square is rarely the one closest to the goal, it is the one whose number would settle the most. When nothing is certain, do not step — walk back to a square you have already read and approach the unknown from a side where you have more information.

Is every board actually solvable without guessing?

Yes, and that is checked before the board is ever shown to you. A safe route from the left edge to the right is laid down first, column by column, and unsafe squares are only ever scattered off it — so a route always exists. But existing is not the same as findable, so a solver then plays the board under exactly your restrictions: it knows only that the two ends are safe and what the numbers it has stood on imply, it never guesses, and it walks only through squares it has proved. A scatter is accepted only if that solver reaches the goal. If it never does, after a couple of dozen tries, the board falls back to a layout where no unsafe square touches the route at all — every route square then reads 0, so the whole route proves itself one square at a time. Either way you get a board that reasoning alone can finish.

What is the step budget, and where does the number come from?

It is not a designer's guess. It is the number of steps that non-guessing solver actually spent — including every detour it made to go and read a number — plus six spare. So the budget is achievable by a route that provably exists, and it is tight enough that wandering costs you. The six spare are sized in wrong turns: going the wrong way and coming back costs two steps, so the margin covers three mistakes. The board also shows par, which is the shortest safe route from start to goal — the route you would walk if you could already see everything. Finishing near par means your reading was efficient, not just correct.

Why does backing up cost a step when it cannot possibly hurt me?

Because information is the resource this game is really about, and steps are how you pay for it. Retreating along your own route is always safe — you have already stood on every square of it — so if it were free there would be no reason not to shuttle back and forth reading everything on the board before committing to anything. Charging for it makes the real question honest: is that number worth the walk it takes to read it? That is the same question a surveyor, a network probe or a diagnostic test asks, and it is the habit the game is trying to build.

Is there any money, betting or in-app purchase in this?

None, and there never will be. No currency, nothing to buy, no lives or hints for sale, and no wager of any kind. Nothing you do here is worth anything except to you.

Do I need to see colour to play this?

No. Every square carries a character: a number where you have walked, a dot where you have not, a marker for the walker, S for the start and a star for the goal. When the round ends, every unsafe square is marked with a cross. The tints behind them only ever repeat something already written, so the board is complete in greyscale and in forced-colours mode.

Can I play it with a keyboard or a screen reader?

Both. Arrows or W A S D step, Enter repeats the last direction, and F, Shift, Z or Backspace backs up — nothing needs a mouse. Each square announces its column and row, the number under it if you have stood there, and whether it is the start, the goal or where you are standing now. The line above the board says what you are standing on, how many of its touching squares are unsafe, and how many steps you have left.

Does it work offline?

Yes. Once the page has loaded once, the whole game is on your device: the board is generated locally from a seed, the solver that verifies it runs locally too, and no server is involved in play at any point. There is no account, so there is nothing to lose your progress behind.

The board is seven squares wide and six deep, with up to eight unsafe squares scattered off the safe route. The start is always on the left edge, the goal always on the right, and the start square is always kept clear so it reads 0. Par is at least six steps and budgets usually land between twelve and forty, depending on how much reading the board demands. A round is two to four minutes. There is one board per seed and no difficulty setting: the difficulty is whatever the solver measured.

Grid Clues is the same reasoning without the walking — you deduce a whole board from its numbers at once, rather than paying steps to see them. Toll Roads asks the other half of the question here: given what you know, which route is worth taking? And Knight Hop is the movement puzzle with nothing hidden at all, which is a good place to start if the counting is the part you would rather leave for later.

Bookmark this page (Ctrl+D, or ⌘D on Mac) or install the app — it works offline the next time you need it.