How to Play Sequence: Join The Numbers In Order With One Line

Sequence is a follow-the-numbers puzzle on a five by five grid. The numbers one, two, three and on up appear once each, scattered across the board, and your job is to draw a single continuous line that starts on the one and runs through them in order, finishing on the highest number. One line, one colour, and it may never cross or run back over itself.

That single-line rule is what makes it a puzzle rather than a maze. Every square your line eats is a square it can never use again, so the route you take to reach the two decides which routes are still available for the three and the four. Blank squares are perfectly legal - a solved Sequence grid usually has empty space in it - and using space sparingly is the whole skill.

Every grid you are given is guaranteed solvable. The generator builds each board by laying down a single path that visits every square, numbering points along it in order, and then verifies the result with an independent solver before it hands the puzzle over, so a board that looks impossible is never actually impossible.

How to play Sequence

1. Choose Daily, which is the same grid for everybody in your timezone all day, or Quick for a fresh random grid you can play as often as you like.
2. Start on the number one. The line can only begin there; tapping any other number simply flashes red and tells you so.
3. Drag towards the two, one square at a time, up down left or right - diagonals are not moves. The line follows your pointer square by square.
4. If dragging is fiddly, tap instead. Tap the one to start, then tap each square along the route. Tapping a square already on the line rewinds back to it, which is how you undo.
5. Collect the numbers strictly in order. Stepping onto the four while the three is still uncollected is refused, and so is any square the line already occupies - the board flashes red instead of drawing it.
6. Reach the last number and the puzzle is solved on the spot. Leftover blank squares are fine - unlike Twine, filling the board is not the goal here.
7. Your score starts at a thousand and comes down for time and for every erase, so a clean, decisive route beats a fast, fumbling one.

Strategy and tips

• Look at the whole sequence before you draw anything. The order the numbers appear in on the board is not the order you visit them in, and a route that feels natural to the two often points away from where the three is waiting.
• Hug the edge on the long legs. Middle squares are the ones every later leg wants, and a line that takes the scenic route round the outside leaves the contested space free.
• Think of each leg as splitting the board. Because the line can never cross itself, everything on one side of a finished leg is cut off from everything on the other - so ask which side the numbers you still owe are on before you commit.
• Corners are cheap early and expensive late. A corner square has only two ways out, so sweeping it up on the way past costs almost nothing, while coming back for it later usually costs a whole detour.
• If a number you still owe ends up with no free square beside it, the board is already lost and it is cheaper to notice now: rewind to the leg that sealed it off rather than drawing on in hope.
• Erases cost twenty points each and seconds cost two, so it is almost always worth pausing to look before you commit to a long speculative route.

What makes Sequence different

It is not Numberlink, and it is not Twine. Those games print each number twice and ask you to join up the pairs with separate lines; Sequence prints each number once and asks for one unbroken line through all of them in order. There are no duplicate numbers on the board at all, and there is only ever one line to draw.

The Twine games on this site look similar and play completely differently, because they require every square to be filled. That single rule change turns Twine into a packing problem with usually one answer, while Sequence stays a routing problem where blank space is a resource you spend.

Because the line is drawn in order, mistakes announce themselves late. Everything is legal until the moment a number you still owe is walled off, which is why reading a leg before drawing it is worth more here than in any other puzzle on the site.

The illegal move is blocked rather than punished. You cannot draw a route over yourself and then be told you lost; the line simply will not go there. There is no losing state in Sequence at all - only a grid that is solved and a clock that is running.

It also plays as well with two people as with one, because the board is a shared object you can both point at. One person spots the forced corner, the other spots the leg that has to go round the outside.

Frequently asked questions

More to read

• Free daily puzzle games to play in your browser: A shortlist by puzzle type - word, logic, colour, memory - of dailies that take five minutes and are the same for everyone.
• Games like Wordle: daily puzzles worth a bookmark: One puzzle a day, the same for everybody, done in five minutes. Here is what actually kept working after the clones died.