KnightMaze
Daily knight-tour route puzzle
KnightMaze
Move a chess knight in L-shapes to collect every coin and reach the goal in the fewest moves. One fresh board every day.
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Frequently Asked Questions
How does the knight move?
Exactly like in chess — two cells in one direction, then one cell perpendicular, forming an L-shape. The game highlights every legal destination.
What counts as ‘optimal’?
The shortest possible sequence of knight moves that visits every coin and ends on the goal. We compute it with breadth-first search before you start.
Is the daily board the same for everyone?
Yes. The board is generated from the current UTC date, so every player worldwide gets the identical puzzle to compare scores on.
Can I practice without affecting my streak?
Switch to Unlimited mode to play endless procedural boards. Only Daily mode updates your streak.
About KnightMaze
KnightMaze is a daily route-optimization puzzle built around the chess knight's L-move. Every day a fresh 6×6 board is generated with a start cell, a goal cell, and a handful of scattered coins. Your job is to visit every coin and reach the goal in as few moves as possible. You move by clicking any valid L-shaped jump from your current position; the game highlights reachable squares so you never need chess knowledge to play. Each board has a pre-computed optimal move count, and matching it earns an S-grade. The daily board is identical for every player worldwide, so you can share your route trace and compare solutions. Unlimited mode offers endless procedural boards for practice without affecting your daily streak.
How to play
Tap any highlighted cell to hop the knight there. Collect all coins before stepping onto the goal. Use undo to reconsider a move, or reset to restart the board. The move counter tracks your route; try to match the optimal count. Grades range from S (optimal) through C (5+ moves over optimal).
Why a daily knight tour?
The knight's tour is a classical combinatorics problem studied in mathematics since the eighteenth century. What makes it cognitively interesting as a puzzle is that the L-move creates a non-obvious graph structure — squares that look adjacent on the board may require many moves to connect, while squares that look distant may be one jump apart. Planning a route that visits every coin requires holding multiple partial paths in working memory and pruning dead ends before they materialise. This forward-search skill is central to chess thinking and KnightMaze distils that single element into a five-minute daily puzzle. Completing the board in the minimum number of moves requires genuine route planning rather than trial-and-error, which makes an S-grade feel earned rather than lucky.