Pipe Puzzle Tips: How to Connect the Pipes Before Time Runs Out

In a pipe puzzle, one wrong pipe is enough to spill everything. The good news: there are simple habits that make every grid easier, from where to start to how to check for leaks. These tips cover the basic rules, then the tricks that help you finish before the countdown ends and earn more stars.

How it works

Water, or another liquid, starts at a source. Your job is to build a path of pipes that carries it to every goal on the board. Pipes come in a few shapes: straight pieces, corners, and T pieces that split the flow in two.

When the countdown ends, the liquid starts to flow. If it reaches an opening that leads nowhere, such as an empty square, a rock or the edge of the board, it leaks and you lose. Fill every goal and you win. Pipe puzzles come in three main styles: you turn pipes in place, you lay new pieces from a queue, or you slide plates around like a sliding puzzle.

Know your pieces

A straight pipe only has two useful positions: across or up and down. A corner has four. A T piece joins three directions, which makes it the piece you need when the path must split toward two goals.

In games where you turn pipes, each tap usually turns a piece by a quarter turn. In our games it always turns clockwise, so a corner may need up to three taps. Count the turns in your head before you tap, instead of tapping until it looks right.

Start from the ends

Do not start in the middle of the board. Start at the source and at each goal, because their openings point in a fixed direction and tell you where the path has to go.

Then look at the edges, the corners of the board and the rocks. A pipe next to the edge can never point at it, so it often has only one possible position. Set these forced pieces first. The middle of the board usually falls into place after that.

Check every opening

A leak is always an opening that points at nothing. Before the liquid flows, follow your path from the source with your finger and check every opening along the way. Pay extra attention to T pieces: all three of their openings must lead somewhere.

You do not have to use every pipe. A pipe that is not on your path can stay any way it likes. What matters is that no pipe on the path points at a gap, a rock or the edge.

Race the liquid

Plan first, then act quickly. In our games, a square that is already full of liquid can no longer move, but every other square still can. So even after the flow starts, you can still fix the path just in front of it.

When you lay pieces from a queue, look at the piece you hold before you tap, and build the path in the direction the liquid is heading. A piece you do not need can go somewhere off the route. When you slide plates, remember that tapping a plate in line with the empty square also moves every plate between them.

Open the tap early

In our games, the big tap button starts the flow before the countdown ends. Open it with at least a quarter of the countdown left to earn three stars. Once the liquid is flowing, the same button makes it run three times faster.

Stuck? The light bulb hint costs 15 coins: the level starts over and a hand shows you what to tap, move by move.

Try our pipe puzzles

In Flower Pipes, you turn garden pipes to bring water to thirsty flowers. Choco Pipes gives you a queue of candy cane pipes to lay while the hot chocolate is already on its way. Glug Rocket is a sliding puzzle: move the pipe plates to fuel the sleepy little rockets.