No edges: when the cloth wraps around
This cloth has no edges. Lead a thread off the right side and it comes back on the left; off the bottom — back at the top. In the game the faded cells around the board show the other side.
Everything else is classic: connect matching buttons, don’t cross threads, cover the whole cloth. But one change breaks the habit most players rely on.
Why corners don’t help here
On a normal board you start from corners: a corner cell has only two neighbours, so the thread passing it has no choice (/guides/corners-and-edges/ explains it in detail). Without edges there are no corners. Every cell has four neighbours, including the cells on the outer rows, which touch the opposite side. The top-left cell is as free as the centre.
Two buttons that look far apart can be next to each other through the edge. Before you plan a long route, check the short way across the border — in each direction, horizontal and vertical.
What to lean on instead
- Buttons close to each other. Measure distance both ways round. A pair that is two cells apart across the edge usually has the shortest, most forced thread.
- Placed threads. Once a thread is down, it acts like an edge for its neighbours. The first thread is the hardest; after it the board starts to behave like a classic one.
- Fences. Some levels in the set add fences. On a board without edges they are the only fixed walls — count exits from them, as in /guides/fences/.
- Pockets. A cell squeezed between threads on three sides still needs a button or it can’t be filled — the logic from /guides/dead-ends-and-pockets/ works as usual.
Look at the level above. Several buttons sit on the outer rows; across the edge they are neighbours of buttons on the far side. Try the short wrap-around connections first and see which threads are forced.
A habit worth building
Mentally redraw the board centred on the button you’re working with. On a wrap-around cloth any cell can be the centre, so the “middle” of a thread may lie across the border. Players who solve these levels fast stop seeing the outline as a wall.
Not sure two cells touch across the edge? The rightmost cell of a row neighbours the leftmost cell of the same row; the bottom cell of a column neighbours the top cell of the same column. Nothing touches diagonally across a corner.
The No edges set starts with 4×4 boards and ends with 6×6 boards with fences and only four threads. The small and mean set mixes wrap-around boards with fences too.