Happy Life GamesHow to Beat Mow The Grass: Sliding Mower Puzzle Strategy
Mow The Grass puts a little lawn mower on a garden plot full of tall grass and hedges. You swipe, and the mower takes off in that direction and keeps going until something stops it. It cannot brake halfway, and it cannot turn mid-slide. Every square of grass it rolls over gets cut. Your job is to leave the whole lawn trimmed.
The fun is in the momentum. Because the mower only stops at hedges and edges, the lawn is really a small network of stopping points, and the puzzle is figuring out which order of stops sweeps over every last tuft. Once you learn to see those stopping points, levels that looked hopeless start to feel like routes on a map.
How to play
- Swipe up, down, left or right anywhere on the screen to send the mower sliding. On a keyboard, the arrow keys and W, A, S, D work too.
- The mower slides until it hits a hedge or the edge of the lawn. It cuts every grass square it passes over, including the one where it stops.
- Swiping straight into a hedge right next to the mower does nothing except a little shake. It doesn't count as a move.
- Driving back over grass you already cut is allowed. It just doesn't gain you anything.
- Cut every patch to finish the level. The percentage at the top tracks how much is done.
The counter next to the percentage shows your swipes against par, the smallest number of swipes that can clear the lawn. Finishing within par earns a "Perfect!" message. Going over par is fine, since the level still counts as cleared, so treat par as a bonus challenge rather than a limit.
There are no lives or timers. The one way to fail is to strand yourself: if the mower ends up somewhere it can never reach the remaining grass from, the game says "Dead end!" Undo is free and takes back one swipe at a time. The hint button shows the next move as a glowing arrow. If you have already wandered into a dead end, the hint resets the lawn for a fresh start and then shows the route from the beginning. A skip button is there for levels you want to leave for later.
Beginner strategy
- Look before you swipe. For each of the four directions, trace where the mower would stop. That gives you at most four options per move, which is easy to think through.
- Find the dead ends. A dead end is a pocket of grass with only one way in, such as a one-square-wide corridor that stops at a hedge. Once the mower slides into one, the only way out is back the way it came.
- Visit dead ends last, or on purpose. If a pocket can be cut on the way to somewhere useful, great. Otherwise, plan to finish there. Level 13 is built around exactly this idea.
- Don't chase the biggest swipe. The longest slide cuts the most grass right away, but it may park the mower in a corner it can't leave usefully. Level 3 is designed so that the greedy swipe is a trap.
Advanced techniques
Think in stopping points
Every spot where the mower can come to rest is a node, and every swipe is a connection between two nodes. On a bigger lawn, mark mentally the four or five stopping points you can reach, and which strips of grass each connection covers. You are looking for a route that covers every strip. Shorter rows that run between two hedges are often covered by exactly one connection, which tells you that connection must be part of your route.
Watch for one-way swipes
Some slides can't be reversed. The mower glides from A to B, but swiping back from B takes it somewhere else because a hedge sits in a different spot along the return path. Level 12 introduces these. Before you take a one-way slide, make sure everything you need on the near side is already cut.
Work backward from the finish
If one pocket clearly has to be last, ask which stopping point leads into it, then which point leads to that one, and so on. Building the route from the end is often faster than guessing from the start.
Use undo as a probe
Undo is free, so you can test a direction just to see where the mower lands and what it cuts, then take it back. This is especially useful on boss lawns, where a single wrong slide early on can quietly make the level unwinnable ten moves later.
Hunting for par
Par routes rarely waste a swipe on grass that is already cut. If your solution goes over par, look for two slides that cover the same row, and check whether a different order would let one long slide do the work of both.
Common mistakes
- Cutting the open middle first. Big open areas are easy to reach from many directions. The narrow corridors and side pockets are the hard part, so plan for them early.
- Forgetting the mower can't stop halfway. If a single uncut square sits in the middle of a long row, you can only cut it by sliding through the whole row.
- Swiping on autopilot after a mistake. When you see "Dead end!", stop and undo. More swipes will only add to the count.
- Missing a single square. When the percentage stalls just short of 100, look along the hedge edges for a lone patch of tall grass.
What changes in later levels
The first lawns are only a few squares wide and need two or three swipes. The garden gradually grows to as large as 9 columns by 13 rows, and the shortest route stretches past twenty swipes. Every tenth level is a boss lawn, larger and longer than its neighbors, with a "think first" warning at the start. The level after a boss is lighter. Later lawns mix in more one-way slides and more dead-end pockets, so the habits of mapping stopping points and saving pockets for last pay off more and more.
FAQ
What happens if I go over par?
Nothing bad. You still clear the level. Par only decides whether you get the "Perfect!" message at the end.
Can the mower stop in the middle of the lawn?
Only if a hedge blocks its path there. It always slides as far as it can in the direction you swiped.
Why did the hint reset my lawn?
If the current position can't be finished, the hint starts the lawn over and shows the route from the start. Undoing a few swipes yourself is the other option.
Does mowing the same strip twice hurt?
No, but it costs a swipe, which matters if you are trying to finish within par.