How to play Ladle Lane

What a recipe swipe cooking game is

Cooking games come in two kinds. In time-management cooking games you rush between stoves and plates. In cooking puzzle games, like this one, the counter is a grid of ingredient tiles, and you cook a dish by tracing a path through its ingredients in the right order. It is a cousin of the word games where you link letters into words, with recipes in place of spelling.

What makes it a puzzle is the board. The tiles you need are rarely in a neat line, and every dish you cook removes tiles and drops new ones in. So each swipe is a choice between the order that is easy now and the one that leaves a better board behind.

Playing Ladle Lane on AllFun

AllFun Ladle Lane takes you from a food truck to a fine restaurant in six eateries, from The Ladle Truck and Teacup Corner to The Silver Cloche, with six dishes and 35 levels at each: 210 levels in all. Every order card names a dish and lists its ingredients in cooking order, so a pizza reads dough, tomato, cheese.

Trace the path with a finger or the mouse and lift to serve. A dish cooked for the first time is added to the Dish Book. More puzzles like it are on our puzzle games page.

The rules

• Paths: a swipe goes from tile to neighbouring tile in any of eight directions, diagonals included, and never through the same tile twice.
• Recipe order: the ingredients along the path must spell the recipe from first to last. The tiles clear and new ones fall in.
• Moves and goals: a level sets a move budget and one or more targets: a count of served orders, a certain dish, a coin total or thawed ice. Moves run out, not minutes.
• Patience: on some levels a bar empties above each customer. The fuller it is when you serve, the bigger the tip, up to 60% of the price; at zero the customer leaves.
• Hot streak: quick serves in a row add 10% each to your coins, up to 50%.
• Chains: a single swipe can run through one recipe and straight on into another. Two orders in one move pay 60% more, and the first tile of the path becomes a flame.

Specials and helpers

Serving a dish of four ingredients or more leaves a golden spice, which counts as any ingredient. Tap a flame to cook away its whole row. Frozen tiles cannot be used until a path passes next to them. Three helpers come free once per level: Hint draws a working path, Shuffle deals the tiles again, and the Knife removes a tile or one layer of its ice. When the goals are met, every move left pays 15 coins, and your coins decide the stars.

Six tips for a busy kitchen

1. Read every order before you swipe. Two customers may want dishes that share an ingredient, and one path can serve both.
2. End where the next recipe starts. A path that stops beside the opening ingredient of a second order is a chain waiting to happen.
3. Serve the lowest patience first. A tip is a large part of a dish's value, and a walk-out is worth nothing.
4. Thaw early. Ice spreads your choices thin. Paths that run beside frozen tiles free them while doing something useful.
5. Keep golden spice for long recipes. It is most useful where one missing ingredient blocks a dish of four or five.
6. Save moves for the end. Fifteen coins for each move left can be the difference between two stars and three.

Cooking puzzle FAQ