Browser games and pointless experiments. Nothing to install.

Cat Trap

Click tiles to build a wall. Trap the cat before it escapes the board.

Daily Today’s puzzle. Everyone gets the same one until midnight UTC. Play today's
Clicks: 0
Wins: 0
Copied to clipboard ✓

You may also like

2048 game card artwork 2048Slide and merge tiles to reach the magic number Rock Paper Scissors vs AI game card artwork Rock Paper Scissors vs AIAn AI that learns your patterns Reaction Time Test game card artwork Reaction Time TestHow fast can you click when it turns green Draw a Perfect Circle game card artwork Draw a Perfect CircleOne freehand loop, scored to the percent Save the Fish game card artwork Save the FishPull the pins in the right order Infinite Craft game card artwork Infinite CraftStart with four elements. See how far it goes Draw Logos From Memory game card artwork Draw Logos From MemoryTest how well you remember famous brand logos Fold Paper to the Moon game card artwork Fold Paper to the Moon42 folds. Exponential growth, visualized

What is Cat Trap?

A cat sits in the middle of a hexagonal board. Every tile you click becomes a wall. After each of your moves the cat takes one step along its shortest route to the edge. Wall it in completely and you win. Let it reach the edge and it escapes.

Underneath the cartoon it is a pursuit problem on a graph. The cat runs a shortest-path search to the boundary every turn, so it is not wandering and it is not guessing. If a route out exists, it will find it, which means you cannot win by reacting. You have to close routes before the cat needs them.

How to play

  1. Click any empty tile to place a wall.
  2. The cat moves one tile along its shortest escape route.
  3. Keep going until the cat is fully enclosed or reaches the edge.

The strategy that beats it

New players build a wall next to the cat and watch it simply walk around. The cat is faster at finding routes than you are at blocking them, so proximity is the wrong instinct.

  • Build far from the cat, not near it. Walls placed two or three tiles out cut whole families of routes at once. Walls placed adjacent cut one.
  • Work on the side the cat is heading toward. It commits to a direction, so blocking behind it wastes turns.
  • Close the ring, do not build a line. A partial arc is useless. Think about which tiles complete an enclosure and place those first.
  • Use the board edge and existing walls. The starting walls are free segments of your ring. Connect to them rather than starting fresh.
  • Force it into a corner region. The smaller the area it has, the fewer shortest paths exist and the faster your remaining walls do their job.

Why the difficulty swings so much

The board starts with a random scatter of walls, and that scatter matters enormously. A layout with several walls clustered on one side hands you most of a ring for free. A sparse, evenly spread layout can be close to unwinnable against a cat that always takes the optimal route. If a board looks hopeless after three moves, it may well be, and restarting is a legitimate strategy rather than giving up.

Similar games here

2048 rewards the same habit of playing position rather than reacting to what just happened, and Water Sort Puzzle asks you to plan several moves before committing. All of them are free, run in the browser and need no account.

Frequently asked questions

How do you win Cat Trap?

Place walls two or three tiles away from the cat rather than next to it, on the side it is heading toward, and think about completing a ring rather than building a line. Connect to the starting walls and the board edge instead of beginning fresh.

Is the cat actually intelligent?

It runs a shortest-path search to the board edge every turn, so it always takes the best available route out. It is not guessing, which is why blocking reactively never works.

Why do some boards feel impossible?

The starting walls are placed randomly. A clustered layout gives you most of an enclosure for free, while a sparse even scatter can be close to unwinnable against an optimal cat. Restarting a bad board is a reasonable move.

How many moves does it usually take?

It varies hugely with the starting layout, but a well-played game usually closes in somewhere between fifteen and thirty walls.

Does it work on a phone?

Yes. Tap tiles to place walls. The hexagonal board scales to your screen.

Is it free?

Yes, with no download, no sign-up and nothing stored on a server.

Is there a daily challenge?

Yes. The daily gives everyone the same board, generated from the date, and it resets at midnight UTC. Your result is recorded and the strip above the game shows your last seven days and your current streak. Nothing is sent to a server, so the streak lives on your own device.