Connect Dots Tips: Route Planning, Hit Zones and the Clock

Updated October 2026

Connect Dots asks for one unbroken stroke through numbered dots, in order, before a bar runs out. Each cleared board adds a dot, and one slip ends the whole run, so your score is a streak of perfect rounds. The rules sound simple, but the way the game decides what counts as touching a dot, and when the clock starts, changes how you should play. This guide lays out those details from the game code and turns them into a routine that holds up as the boards get crowded.

The rules in exact terms

The first board has 4 dots. Every board you clear adds one more, up to a maximum of 30, which you reach after 26 cleared rounds. From then on the board stays at 30 dots, but each further round allows a little less time per dot. Your score is simply the number of rounds cleared in a row. A round ends in failure for any of four reasons:

• your finger comes within range of, or slides across, a dot whose number is higher than the one you need next;
• you lift your finger before the last dot;
• the touch is cancelled by the system, for example by an edge swipe or a notification gesture;
• the time bar empties.

Any one of these ends the game. Touches that start away from dot 1 are simply ignored, so a stray tap before you begin does no harm.

The clock starts before you touch

The time budget for a round is 2.2 seconds plus 0.52 seconds per dot. That is about 4.3 seconds for the first board, 7.4 seconds at 10 dots, 12.6 at 20 and 17.8 at 30. After those first 26 rounds the per-dot share shrinks by 4 percent per round with no floor: about 15.5 seconds for the 30-dot board at a streak of 30, 12.6 at 36, 9.1 at 46 and 6.8 at 56. The important part is when it starts: the first board appears when you press Start or touch the play area, and from then on the bar begins to drain the moment the new dots appear, not when you put your finger on dot 1. Every second you spend studying the layout comes out of the same budget as the drag itself.

Seen per connection, the budget tightens slowly. Spread across the links between dots, it allows about 1.4 seconds per link on the first board, about 0.8 seconds at 10 dots and about 0.6 seconds at 30. The bar is blue while more than 35 percent remains, turns yellow below that, and red below 15 percent. It runs on real time, so switching apps or locking the screen mid-round will almost certainly cost you the run.

Hit zones are larger than the dots

Each dot is drawn as a circle with a 16-pixel radius, but the game reacts to your finger anywhere within 26 pixels of its centre (both shrink together on a crowded board on a small screen, as described below). In other words, every dot has an invisible ring about 10 pixels wide around it. This works in your favour when you are aiming for the next number, since you can register it while still a little outside the circle. It works against you when you pass near a number that is not due yet, because grazing that invisible ring counts as touching the wrong dot.

The practical rule: give upcoming dots a clearance of roughly half a dot's width beyond their visible edge. If a route squeezes between two later numbers, assume it is not safe unless the gap is clearly wider than two dots side by side.

Old dots are safe ground

Here is the detail most players miss. The failure check only looks at dots with a higher number than the one you need. Dots you have already connected are ignored completely. You can drag straight back over them, cross your own line, or loop around an early number without any penalty.

That opens up routes. When the straight path from one number to the next would clip a later dot, a detour through territory you have already covered is always safe. The finished part of the board is a free corridor, and on crowded boards it is often the quickest way around a blocker.

How often the straight line is blocked

Dots are placed at random, normally at least 70 pixels apart and at least 34 pixels from the edges. We generated thousands of boards with the game's own placement rules on a 390 by 844 phone screen, where the play area measured 358 by 662 pixels, and checked how often the direct line from one number to the next passes through the hit zone of a later dot.

• With 4 dots, about 4 percent of links are blocked, and 88 percent of boards can be cleared with straight lines only.
• With 10 dots, about 15 percent of links are blocked, and only a quarter of boards are straight-line clean.
• With 20 dots, about 29 percent of links are blocked, and almost no board is clean.
• With 30 dots, about 42 percent of links are blocked.

So the game changes character around the 10-dot mark. Early boards reward speed; later boards are mostly about spotting the two or three links that need a bend and planning them before you start. Dots are never placed closer than two hit-zone radii plus an 8-pixel gap, so neighbouring hit zones never overlap, on any screen. When a small screen cannot fit the board at that spacing, the game shrinks the dots and their hit zones together instead. In our simulation of a play area of 288 by 386 pixels, which is what we measured on a 320 by 568 phone screen, the hit zones stayed full size up to about 15 dots and averaged about 90 percent of full size at 20 dots, 79 percent at 25 and 72 percent at 30. On a 390 by 844 screen they stay full size all the way to 30. On compact phones the links are shorter but the targets smaller, so drag through the centre of each dot.

A routine for each board

1. Find 1 and 2 first. Locate the start and the first link, then touch down. On early boards, scouting the rest while you drag is faster than scouting before.
2. Read two links ahead. While you draw toward the next dot, your eyes should already be on the one after it, checking whether the straight line is clear.
3. Bend early, not late. If a link is blocked, curve around the obstacle from the start of the link rather than swerving at the last moment near it.
4. Use the finished part of the board. When unsure, route through dots you have already connected, since they cannot fail you.
5. Lift and reset between rounds. A cleared board turns green and pauses for about 0.6 seconds before the next one appears, and the new round only begins from a fresh touch on its dot 1. Use the pause to relax your hand.

Habits that end streaks

Most failures on long runs come from the same few habits. One is cutting corners through the invisible ring around a dot two numbers ahead. Another is lifting the finger to readjust grip, which counts as a failure even if you were only pausing. A third is studying a large board for several seconds before touching, when the clock has been running the whole time. Finally, many players speed up as the streak grows. The time per link shrinks only slowly after 15 dots, so the better approach is a steady pace and more care on the blocked links.

Your best streak is stored on your device, and the result card lets you post your streak to the Hall of Fame, which ranks timed runs on their own board.