A Snailo level is a route that touches every leaf exactly once. Slide at random and you will usually paint yourself into a corner. A few minutes of looking first turns it into a calm, almost relaxing hunt for the one path that works.
Start with the dead ends
Look for a leaf that has only one neighbour you can reach. The snail cannot pass through such a leaf, because there is only one way in and no way out. So the route must either start or finish there. Spotting these leaves tells you a lot before you move.
Twigs create dead ends
Twigs are walls between leaves, and they take neighbours away. A leaf that looked well connected can become a dead end once a twig is counted. Check every leaf’s remaining neighbours after reading the twigs.
The chessboard trick
Imagine colouring the leaves like a chessboard. Every step the snail takes goes from one colour to the other. So the route alternates colours, and the number of leaves of each colour tells you where it can start and end. If one colour has two more leaves than the other, no route can exist, so you know the picture is wrong. If they are equal, the start and the flowerpot must be on different colours.
Work backwards from the flowerpot
The flowerpot is where the route ends, so it is the one place you are sure about. Walk backwards from it: which leaf can come just before the pot? Which one before that? Combined with the dead ends, this often reveals a long stretch of the route at the end, leaving a smaller puzzle in the middle.
Plan around the new ideas
- Strawberries fix an order. Plan the stretches between strawberry 1, 2 and 3 separately, then join them.
- The mushroom bridge is used twice, once sideways and once up and down. Decide which crossing comes first before you start.
- Wet leaves make the snail slide straight on, so a wet leaf can move you further than you expect. Trace where each slide ends.
- Two snails work best when you split the garden into two halves, one for each snail and flowerpot.
When you are stuck
Slide back along the trail, or touch it to jump back to an earlier leaf. Most dead ends are caused by one early choice, so go back further than feels necessary. If you are still stuck, free hints are available every day.