Zen Puzzle Garden: Player's Guide

Common Raking Patterns

The key to solving tricky gardens is to have a strong repertoire of raking maneuvers up your sleeve. After a while, you will start to get a feel for which moves are going to help and which ones might get you stuck. There is no substitute for experience, but have a look over these common raking patterns for some ideas.

The Empty Corner Empty corners are easily dealt with. Simply rake out smaller corners until there are none left.

The Lone Rock In order to rake around a lone rock, try to approach the rock from each of its four sides.

The Long Rock Long rocks are easier to deal with, because you have enough space to walk up to them, turn around, and come back.

The Pair of Knights It is often useful to wiggle between two rocks like this by walking into the first rock, and then turning into the second.

The Loop This is a less obvious maneuver, but is very useful. Look for empty paths in the sand which are 2 squares wide. It is possible to walk around the edge of the path and come back.

The Kink If there is a rock set one square into sand, consider walking into the rock and then turning.

The Circuit Similar to the Kink, it is possible to rake all the way around a rock in this this situation.

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