Travle

The Travle puzzle as it runs on Capitalle, at capitalle.app/travle. You get a start country and an end country and you name the countries that chain them together across land borders. Nine guesses, a row of dots counting them down, and a regional map that fills in as your chain takes shape.

1. Read the FROM and TO header. The map underneath already highlights both, start in one colour and end in another.
2. Type a country into the box and press Go.
3. Read the colour it comes back as, then extend the chain from there.
4. You win the moment your chain connects the start to the end, and the counter tells you how many guesses are left.

Border chains are a completely different skill from placing pins on a map. Knowing roughly where a country sits is not enough here, you have to know who touches whom, which is exactly the knowledge a coloured map quietly hides. The orange tier is what makes this version pleasant: being one country off the optimal line is a graded near miss rather than a wasted guess, so a shaky middle section still gives you something to build on. Nine tries leaves room to probe a border you are unsure about, and the map redraws your chain as you go.

Three colours and no ambiguity. Green means the guess brings you closer to solving, orange means you are next to the optimal route, black means the guess does not help right now. The map carries the same legend with Start, End, Connected, Detour and Not connected, so the shape of your route is readable at a glance, and a row of dots plus a counter tracks what is left of the nine guesses.

Practice

Shown in the header behind a padlock. The board does not say what unlocks it.

Hard

Also padlocked next to Practice, with no explanation given on the board.

• Orange is not a rejection. It says you are beside the optimal route, so keep that country in mind and step one across rather than abandoning the whole line.
• The board tells you upfront how many countries the shortest route uses, so compare that against the nine you get. The gap is your margin for error, and it is usually generous enough to probe a border you are unsure about.
• Black just means not right now. A country that does not help early can become the connector once the rest of the chain exists.