Pipe Connect — Rotate Pipes to Link Source and Sink
Rotate pipe tiles so water flows from the source to the sink. Click any tile to turn it.
How to play
- Click any pipe tile to rotate it 90 degrees clockwise.
- Connect the blue source (top-left) to the green sink (bottom-right) with an unbroken pipe path.
- Tiles currently fed by the source glow cyan, so you can trace the live flow.
- Click 'New Puzzle' for a freshly scrambled, always-solvable layout.
Each tile is a piece of pipe. Click a tile to rotate it 90°. Turn the pipes so an unbroken path of water connects the blue source to the green sink. Lit (cyan) tiles are currently fed by the source.
How it works
Pipe Connect is a tile-rotation puzzle. A grid of pipe tiles is presented, each tile showing one or more pipe segments. Click any tile to rotate it 90 degrees clockwise. Your goal is to orient all tiles so that a continuous, leak-free flow of water runs from the source tile to the sink tile.
The puzzle is related to network flow problems in computer science and can be solved by constraint propagation: start from the source and follow the one valid direction water must travel, determining the correct rotation for each tile in sequence. Corner tiles, T-junctions, and dead-end tiles each significantly constrain which rotation is valid.
A good approach is to work outward from the source. The source has a fixed outlet direction; the tile it points to has exactly one rotation that aligns with that outlet. Continue chaining outward tile by tile, using each resolved tile as a constraint for its neighbor.
This game is satisfying for people who enjoy spatial reasoning and logic puzzles, and it provides a visual analogy for thinking about network routing and graph traversal.
Worked example
Solve a 3x3 grid starting from the source
- Identify the source tile and note which direction its outlet faces (e.g., right).
- The tile to the right of the source must have an inlet on its left side — rotate it until it does.
- Follow that tile's outlet to the next tile and repeat: rotate until inlets and outlets align.
- At a junction tile, check which pipe arms are needed and which must be blocked.
- Continue until the chain reaches the sink tile — if water flows without breaks, the puzzle is solved.
All tiles correctly oriented; water flows from source to sink with no breaks.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Rotating tiles randomly hoping the layout falls into place — always work outward from the source using the previous tile's outlet as a hard constraint.
- Clicking a correct tile extra times, accidentally rotating it past the right position.
- Ignoring the sink tile's required inlet direction — the last tile must orient so its open end faces the sink's inlet.
Key terms
- Source
- The tile where water originates; its outlet direction is fixed and serves as the starting constraint.
- Sink
- The destination tile that water must reach to complete the puzzle.
- Constraint propagation
- Solving technique where fixing one tile's rotation narrows the valid rotations of neighboring tiles.
Frequently asked questions
- How do I rotate a pipe?
- Just click (or tap) any pipe tile — it rotates 90 degrees clockwise each click.
- How do I know I've solved it?
- When a continuous flow links the blue source tile to the green sink tile, every connected pipe lights up cyan and a success message appears.