How to Solve Conduit: Rotate a Powered Route to Every Exit

Conduit starts with power entering from the top and three exits around the board. Tap a pipe tile to rotate it 90 degrees clockwise. You win when current can travel from the source to every exit through matching openings.

One detail matters: you do not need to connect every decorative or stray pipe. The tutorial says to focus on reaching the exits. That turns Conduit into a network-design problem rather than a demand to build one giant loop.

Trace backward from each exit

The exit tile has only one useful approach from inside the board. Inspect the neighboring tile and ask which rotations can feed that approach. Continue backward until the route meets a powered branch.

Working from the exits exposes forced orientations faster than sending power outward from the source in every possible direction.

Edge tiles have fewer lives

A pipe opening that points into a closed outer boundary cannot help the circuit. Corners and edge tiles therefore have fewer legal rotations than identical pieces in the center. Resolve them early, especially when they sit beside an exit.

For straight pieces, the edge often chooses horizontal versus vertical. For elbows, it can eliminate half the rotations at once.

Think in branches, not isolated tiles

Once one tile is oriented, its opening creates a requirement on its neighbor. Follow that requirement as a chain. A useful branch should either reach an exit or merge into a branch that does.

Avoid rotating a center tile just because it makes one local connection. Ask where both ends of that connection lead. A locally tidy pair can still point the circuit into a dead region.

Choose the junction that serves two routes

When two exits appear to need the same corridor, look for a junction tile that can split the powered route before the paths diverge. Rotating that junction correctly can determine several surrounding tiles at once.

If one proposed route blocks the only approach to another exit, it is not a valid branch even if it lights its own exit.

Use the power display as a diagnostic

Powered segments show how far the current currently reaches. If power stops, inspect the first unpowered boundary. Either the powered tile lacks an opening toward its neighbor, or the neighbor lacks the matching opening back.

Debug from that first break rather than spinning tiles at the far end. One corrected mismatch can light an entire prepared branch.

The final circuit check

• Start at the top source and follow a continuous powered route.
• Confirm all three exits are lit.
• Ignore harmless stray pipes that are not required by an exit route.
• If one exit is dark, trace backward from it to the first mismatch.

A three-exit workflow that avoids random spinning

Label the exits mentally as left, right, and bottom. Find a plausible final tile for each route, then work one step inward from all three. You will often discover that two partial routes want the same junction. Resolve that junction before polishing either branch.

Next, trace from the top source until it reaches the shared area. Any gap between the powered trunk and your exit branches is now a small connector problem. Rotate only the tiles in that gap. This outside-in method limits the number of tiles you are considering at once.

If the current reaches two exits but not the third, preserve the working branches. Debug backward from the dark exit and change the first mismatch. Rebuilding the entire network usually replaces one known-good route with several new uncertainties.

Conduit gets easier when you stop treating every tile as equally important. Exit approaches, edge constraints, and junctions carry the information. Solve those first and the flexible middle tiles become connectors rather than guesses.

A new Conduit puzzle is available every day. For more repetitions with the same rules, open Practice and choose Conduit.