| Logic Games Online | Play Netwalk | Daily Expert Netwalk |
In the game of Netwalk, you are a network administrator, and someone has scrambled your network. Your job is to rotate all the pieces so that every computer is connected to the server by pipes and there are no lose ends in your network. Of course, the less work you need to do to complete your network the better, so Netwalk is scored by the number of clicks it takes you to rotate everything into place.
Left click to rotate a tile counter-clockwise, and right click to rotate a tile clockwise.
When you are certain of a tile's orientation, press the spacebar with the mouse cursor over that tile. The background will turn blue and you won't be able to accidentally rotate it without toggling the background again. This also helps you to see which tiles you still need to work on. In some browsers, clicking the tile with the mouse wheel will give the same result.
The different difficulties correspond to different sizes, with Beginner being 5x5, Medium 7x7, and Expert 9x9, with the added difficulty in expert that connections can wrap from left to right and from top to bottom.
Play our daily expert netwalk or all the netwalk you can handle or read on for some tips on solving these puzzles.
All the netwalk puzzles at Logic Games Online can be solved using the following logic to deduce the direction each tile must face. Most of these techniques involve determining which ways a tile may not face until there is only one way remaining.
There are five basic types of tiles in Netwalk,
the Blank 
,
the Computer 
,
the Line 
,
the Elbow 
,
and the Tee 
.
It is helpful to note that the Server 
is not
special for any of the solving techniques, since if all tiles can be reached
from the server, all tiles can also be reached from every other tile.
We will begin with techniques that are useful one time only, then follow them with techniques that will build on the current state of the Netwalk puzzle.
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Blank tiles are immediately helpful. Any Line or Tee next to a blank tile must have its flat edge facing the blank tile. Turn all the Lines and Tees that are next to blank tiles and mark them as known using the spacebar (or the middle mouse button if your browser doesn't use it for something else). We also know that Computers and Elbows can't connect to a Blank, but we still don't know which other way they should be turned.
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We can't have two Computers connected to each other with no way for them to connect to something else, so look for a pattern of two Computers with any number of Line tiles between them. Since the Lines can connect the Computers, they must all be turned the opposite direction.
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A Computer trap consists of 3 Computer tiles around 3 sides of some other tile. This other tile must connect to the 4th side (the one with no Computer) or it will simply be connecting computers together. The special case of this that is of most interest right now is when a Computer is surrounded by 3 other Computers.
There is also the disguised Computer trap in which one or more of the 3 surrounding Computers is not directly next to the center tile but would be connected to it by Lines if the center tile faced that direction.
Now we will discuss the techniques that depend on the current state of the Netwalk puzzle, which you will apply over and over in different parts of the puzzle to complete it.
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When two or more Line tiles are next to one another, they must all face the same direction. Similarly, a Line's flat side is next to a Tee, the Tee's flat side must face the Line.
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This technique works for Elbows even when you only know one attachment point for the Elbow. Since the side opposite the attachment point cannot be attached, any Tee or Line in the position must have its flat side face the Elbow. In addition, another Elbow in that position must attach on its far side from the Elbow with the known attachment point. Note that if you know an Elbow cannot attach on a side, you also know that it must attach on the opposite side.
Whenever a tile has as many known attachment points as it has attachments (1 for a Computer, 2 for Lines and Elbows, and 3 for Tees), it must be rotated to attach to all of them. Or if the number of places it cannot attach and its number of attachments sum to 4, it must be rotated to avoid all such places.
The techniques above should be enough to complete any Netwalk puzzle at Logic Games Online. If you do get to the point where you can't figure out any more tiles, you can always guess at a tile and then work things out. Try to pick a tile that will force the direction of other tiles so that you will quickly find a contradiciton or the solution.