Dots

A calm but brainy line game. The board is a grid of colourful dots. Drag from one dot to another of the same colour — up, down, left, or right — to link them up and clear them away. Close a loop and every dot of that colour vanishes at once. Fresh dots rain down to fill the gaps. You get thirty moves; clear as many dots as you can.

How to play

The board is a six-by-six grid of dots in five colours. To make a move, press a dot and drag to a neighbouring dot of the same colour — only straight up, down, left, or right, never diagonally. Keep dragging from dot to matching dot to build a longer chain.

Let go and every dot in the chain is cleared, as long as you linked at least two. The dots above tumble down to fill the holes, and new dots drop in from the top, so the board is always full. Each release uses one move.

The big play is the loop. If your chain returns to a dot it already passed through, you have closed a loop — and instead of clearing just the chain, every single dot of that colour anywhere on the board is wiped out at once. A loop can be as small as four dots in a square. Loops are the key to a high score.

You have thirty moves in total, shown at the top. Your score is the number of dots you clear, so look for long chains and colour-clearing loops. When the moves run out, the game ends.

Tips & strategy

Hunt for loops, not just lines. A short line of three or four dots is fine, but a loop clears every dot of that colour on the whole board — often a dozen or more from a single move. Before you commit to a plain line, glance around for a square or rectangle you could close instead.

Build a loop out of the most common colour. The more dots of a colour are on the board, the more a loop of that colour wipes out. If one colour is crowding the grid, look to enclose a loop in it for a huge clear.

Longer is better, but a loop beats length. When no loop is available, trace the longest single-colour path you can — every extra dot is another point. But a four-dot loop that clears fifteen dots beats a winding ten-dot line every time.

Spend your moves wisely. You only get thirty, so avoid clearing tiny two-dot pairs unless you are setting up something bigger. Reshaping the board with a medium clear can drop dots into position for a loop on your next move.