Zip is LinkedIn's path-drawing puzzle: numbered dots mark waypoints, and you must connect them in order with a single continuous path that fills every cell of the grid — without crossing itself. It looks like doodling. In practice it is arithmetic in disguise, and the players who count before they draw finish dramatically faster.
The rules
- Numbered cells are waypoints. Visit them in ascending order: 1, 2, 3, and so on.
- Your path is one continuous line through orthogonally adjacent cells.
- The path must pass through every cell of the grid exactly once.
- The path cannot cross or revisit itself.
Because the path covers the whole grid, the total number of cells in the grid is fixed — and that number is the foundation of every good deduction.
Technique 1: Count cells between waypoints
This is the core skill. If waypoint 2 and waypoint 3 are separated by six cells of distance along the grid, the path segment between them must consume exactly that many cells. Concretely:
- Count the total cells in the grid.
- Subtract the waypoint cells themselves.
- Divide the remainder among the segments between consecutive waypoints.
When a segment has only one plausible route that consumes exactly its cell budget, that segment is forced — draw it with confidence.
Technique 2: Start at the tightest segments
Not all segments are equal. A pair of waypoints that sit close together but whose cell budget is large forces the path to wander — and wandering paths reveal structure (dead ends, corners they must round). Start with the segment whose budget most tightly constrains its route, not with waypoint 1 by default.
Technique 3: Corners and dead-end cells must be on the path
Since the path visits every cell exactly once, every corner cell and every narrow pocket is a hard constraint: the path must enter and leave each through its only openings. If a corner cell has just two neighbours, the path is forced straight through it. Mark those forced passages early — they act as anchors.
Technique 4: Watch for isolation
If drawing a tentative segment would seal off a region of unfilled cells with no remaining entrance, that segment is wrong — the sealed cells could never be visited. When you stall, look for cells that are about to become unreachable; the fix is almost always one or two steps back.
Technique 5: When stuck, count what remains
Near the end of a puzzle, count the cells your path still needs to cover versus the cells available. If the numbers disagree, an earlier segment stole or skipped a cell. If they agree but you are blocked, the remaining cells almost always form a forced corridor — trace the only available route.
Fixing mistakes without starting over
Zip is forgiving in one way: a wrong path usually breaks visibly within a few moves (a dead end, an isolated pocket, a count mismatch). The moment something breaks:
- Identify the first cell where your path diverges from all valid routes — usually the last corner or forced passage.
- Erase back to that point.
- Try the alternative branch.
Starting completely over is rarely necessary.
Practice
Zip puzzles vary a lot from day to day — grid sizes, waypoint counts, and how generous the cell budgets are. If today's path is fighting you, compare against the completed route on our daily Zip answer page, which includes an explanation of how the path can be derived. Drilling past puzzles in the Zip archives is the fastest way to internalize the counting instinct.
Count first, draw second — that is the whole game.