Pathfinder

What you see

A square grid of tiles sits between two markers. The start is a dot beside one row on the left edge, and the exit is an arrow beside one row on the right edge, often a different row. On a wide screen they are labelled Start and Exit. Your job: turn tiles until one unbroken track connects them.

• Click a tile to turn it a quarter turn clockwise. There is no anticlockwise turn: to turn a tile back by a quarter, you click three times. With a keyboard, move between tiles with Tab or the arrow keys and press Space to turn the focused tile.
• The lit path. Every tile connected to the start through matching open edges lights up, and it updates the moment you click. The line under the board counts them: No tile is connected to the start, 5 tiles connected to the start, and so on.
• When the route connects, the exit arrow lights up and the line under the board reads The start and the exit are connected. You can still turn tiles before you submit. After a correct check the lit track turns green.
• A clock counts up while you work. There is no deadline.

The tiles

• Straight: opens on two opposite edges. Only two distinct positions.
• Elbow: opens on two neighbouring edges. Four positions.
• Tee: opens on three edges. Appears from level 4.
• Cross: opens on all four edges and looks the same in every position. Appears from level 8.
• Blocked: marked with a cross; it never turns and never connects.
• Locked: a track tile with a small padlock in its corner. It cannot be turned. From level 5 there are two or three of them.

How a board is built

Each board is generated fresh by the game's code, in four steps.

1. A route is carved from a random row on the west edge to the east edge as a path that never crosses itself. The generator steers it towards a minimum number of turns, which rises with level.
2. Route tiles are placed: a straight wherever the route goes straight on, an elbow wherever it turns. The intended route is made only of straights and elbows.
3. Everything else is filled: blocked tiles on some cells off the route, and decoy tiles in random positions on the rest. Decoys are straights and elbows, plus tees from level 4 and crosses from level 8. From level 5, two or three tiles on the route are locked, already in their correct position.
4. The route is scrambled: every route tile that is not locked is turned to a random position. At least two route tiles are always wrong, and the board is never already solved.

Any route that connects the start to the exit counts. You are not required to find the one the generator carved, although it is usually the natural one.

What it measures

Pathfinder feeds the navigation facet of the Spatial dimension and carries 34% of that dimension, the joint largest share. The game's design weights it 60% spatial visualisation and 40% planning and sequencing.

There is no single classic laboratory task behind it; it combines two well-studied demands. The first is small-scale spatial transformation: to know what a click will do you must picture the tile turned, the same process Shepard and Metzler timed, applied to a simple shape many times over. The second is route planning towards a goal state: you know where you are (the start) and where you must end (the exit), and you need a sequence of changes that gets you there without dead ends. That is the same family of task Aon describes for its motionChallenge game: overcoming barriers between a given and a desired state. In the terms of the first spatial lesson, Pathfinder is extrinsic (how tiles connect to each other) as well as intrinsic (how each tile is shaped).

How it is scored here

• Connected: if the track reaches the exit tile and that tile opens east to the exit, the trial scores 100% and counts as correct. Any connecting route counts.
• Not connected: you get partial credit of up to 40%, in proportion to how much of the generator's intended route is lit from the start. Light half the intended route and the trial scores 20%. Lit tiles that are not on the intended route earn nothing.
• Nothing lit: if not a single tile of the intended route connects to the start, the trial scores zero.
• Clicks are not scored. Extra clicks cost nothing except time.

Level changes follow the result. A connected route moves you up one level. A partly lit route holds your level. A trial with nothing of the route lit, or a skipped trial, moves you down one level.

Time counts a little. Your trial credit is roughly accuracy to the power 0.85 times speed to the power 0.15, where speed compares your time with an expected time of about four seconds for each point of difficulty. At the extremes, being very slow trims a trial's credit by about 15%. Accuracy dominates: a connected route found slowly is worth far more than a broken one found fast.

Difficulty is measured from the board you actually got, mainly the length of the intended route and the size of the grid. Your Pathfinder score compares your credit, weighted by that difficulty, with what your difficulty predicts: 50 means exactly as expected, and each 10 points is one spread-unit above or below. Your session report shows the share of routes you connected, the share of route tiles you had correctly oriented, and the average route length you handled.

Where you will meet it

• Aon's motionChallenge is described by Aon as a complex planning game: about six minutes, as many puzzles as you can solve, measuring the ability to plan ahead and overcome barriers between a given and a desired state. It is a different puzzle, but it rewards the same habit of planning the whole path before the first move.
• Capgemini's game-based round, as candidates describe it, includes a Motion Challenge alongside other short games.
• GATE General Aptitude lists rotation, assembling and grouping of shapes under spatial aptitude, and rotation of tiles to fit a pattern is a direct application.

The method

1. Read both ends first

   Find the start row and the exit row. The first tile must open west and the last tile must open east. Fix those two first; they are certain.

2. Use the fixed tiles as clues

   Blocked tiles are walls: the route never passes through them. Locked tiles are gifts: they sit on the intended route, already turned correctly, so each one tells you two neighbours the route must reach.

3. Sketch the route in your head

   Before clicking, trace a plausible path from start to exit through the open cells. Straights go on straight cells, elbows go where the path turns. A cell holding a straight cannot be a corner; a cell holding an elbow cannot be a straight run.

4. Count clicks, then click

   For each tile on your route, count clockwise quarter turns from where it is to where it needs to be. For a straight, the answer is 0 or 1. For an elbow, anticlockwise one quarter means three clicks.

5. Follow the light

   Turn tiles from the start outwards. The lit path shows you exactly where the track breaks. If it stops, the fault is in the first unlit tile on your route or in the last lit one.

Worked example 1: a 4 by 4 board

Start: row B. Exit: row C. No blocked or locked tiles. Plan the route, then count the clicks each tile needs.

Show the solution

Ends first. B1 is a straight; it must open west, so it must lie west–east: one click. C4 is a straight already lying west–east, open to the exit.

Plan the middle. From B1 the track enters B2, an elbow, so it must turn: up to A2 or down to C2. Down fails: C2 is an elbow that would have to turn east into C3, and C3 is also an elbow, so it cannot run straight on into C4. Up works: A2 turns east, A3 turns south, the straight at B3 carries the track down, and C3 turns east into C4. So: B1 west–east, B2 west–north, A2 south–east, A3 west–south, B3 north–south, C3 north–east, C4 west–east.

Count clicks.

Tile	Now	Needs	Clicks
B1 straight	north–south	west–east	1
B2 elbow	north–east	west–north	3
A2 elbow	east–south	south–east	0
A3 elbow	north–east	west–south	2
B3 straight	north–south	north–south	0
C3 elbow	south–west	north–east	2
C4 straight	west–east	west–east	0

Eight clicks in total. B2 is the one that catches people: turning it back one quarter takes three clicks, because every click is clockwise.

Worked example 2: a 5 by 5 board with walls and locked tiles

Start: row D. Exit: row B. Three blocked tiles, two locked tiles (B3 and C4) and some tees as decoys. Use the locked tiles before anything else.

Show the solution

Locked tiles first. B3 is a locked straight lying west–east, so the route runs along row B through it: B2 must open east and B4 must open west. C4 is a locked elbow opening north and east, so it links B4 above it with C5 to its right. B4 must therefore open west and south: a south–west elbow.

The exit. The exit is on row B, so B5 must open east. C5 has to connect C4 (west) to B5 (north): a west–north elbow. B5 then opens south and east.

The start. D1 is already lit, lying west–east. D2 must open west. B1 is blocked, so B2 cannot be reached from the west; the route must climb column 2: D2 west–north, C2 north–south, B2 south–east.

Count clicks.

Tile	Now	Needs	Clicks
D2 elbow	north–east	west–north	3
C2 straight	west–east	north–south	1
B2 elbow	west–north	south–east	2
B4 elbow	east–south	south–west	1
C5 elbow	north–east	west–north	3
B5 elbow	south–west	south–east	3

Thirteen clicks. The tees at A1, A4, C3 and E2 are decoys; none of them is needed. The locked tiles did half the planning for you.

Tips and traps

Levelling up

Boards grow from 4 by 4 to 7 by 7, the route winds more (a target of eight turns at level 10), blocked tiles rise to seven, and decoy tees and crosses appear at levels 4 and 8. Locked tiles arrive at level 5, which makes the middle levels easier to plan than they look, so use them.

The skill that separates higher levels is planning before clicking. On a 7 by 7 board, trial-and-error clicking from the start costs a lot of time and often builds a path that dead-ends. Spend the first few seconds tracing a full route from both ends and through every locked tile; then click only tiles on that route.

1. Week 1
   • Three sessions: say the click count for each tile before you touch it
   • Fix the two end tiles first on every board
2. Week 2
   • Three sessions: trace the whole route before the first click
   • Check your report: is the gap between tiles oriented and routes connected closing?
3. Week 3
   • Three sessions at level 5 or above: use every locked tile as a clue
   • Fix straights first, then elbows
4. Week 4
   • Three sessions at your highest stable level
   • Aim for zero wasted clicks on at least one board per session

Check yourself

5 practice questions

1. An elbow currently opens north–east. You need it to open west–north. How many clicks?
2. A straight tile is in the wrong position. What is the most clicks it can need?
3. Your track is lit all the way into the exit tile, but that tile opens north and south. How is the trial scored?

and 2 more

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Sources

1. Shepard, R. N., & Metzler, J. (1971). Mental rotation of three-dimensional objects. Science, 171(3972), 701–703. doi.org/10.1126/science.171.3972.701
2. Uttal, D. H., et al. (2013). The malleability of spatial skills: A meta-analysis of training studies (intrinsic and extrinsic spatial skills). Psychological Bulletin, 139(2), 352–402. PDF
3. Aon. Prepare for your online assessment (motionChallenge). aon.com
4. PrepInsta. Capgemini game-based aptitude (candidate-reported). prepinsta.com
5. GATE 2026, IIT Guwahati. General Aptitude (GA) syllabus. PDF

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