Move with the arrow keys or the buttons below
| ↑ ↓ ← → | Drive the mower. |
| On-screen pad | Same controls on a phone. |
| New lawn | Generate a fresh garden. |
Lawn Mower asks you to cut every square of grass in the garden. You cannot drive over ground you have already mown, and stones block your path, so what looks like a chore is actually a routing puzzle: find the order that covers everything without stranding yourself.
Mathematicians call this a Hamiltonian path problem, and it is famously tricky. The trap is that the garden always looks easy at the start. It is only when three unmown squares are left in different corners, with your mower stuck in the middle of a cut lawn, that the puzzle reveals itself.
Mow in strips, the way you would a real lawn. Going up one column and down the next covers everything systematically and almost never strands you, whereas wandering toward whatever grass is nearest is how you get trapped.
Work from the far corner back toward an exit. Cutting yourself off deep in the garden is the usual failure, so planning to finish near the edge keeps your options open throughout.
Watch for squares that can only be entered from one side. A patch of grass with stones on three sides must be visited from its single opening, and if you cut past that opening early it becomes unreachable.
Look at the whole garden before moving. The route is much easier to see from a standstill than halfway through, and there is no timer forcing you to start.
No, which is exactly what makes the routing a puzzle rather than a chore.
You cannot finish that lawn, so you start again with a fresh route in mind.
Gardens are generated with a valid complete route, though finding it takes planning.
No, so you can plan your route as carefully as you like.
No. Lawn Mower runs entirely inside this page, so it starts the moment the page opens. There is nothing to download, no plugin, and no account to create.