A web of glowing strings is knotted over itself. Drag the orbs apart, watch the red crossings drain to zero, and leave behind one clean, untangled constellation.
About Untangle
Untangle hands you a snarl of neon strings on a deep-space board and one simple demand: no line may cross another. Every red segment is tangled with something; drag an orb and the strings follow it live, flicking from red to cyan the instant they come clear. The crossing counter in the corner ticks down as you work, so you always know exactly how much knot is left.
The early boards come apart in a few tugs. Later ones pack nearly fifty orbs into a lattice where fixing one crossing quietly creates two more on the far side. That is where the real game lives: you stop dragging on instinct, spot the outer ring hiding inside the mess, and peel the graph open from the edges instead of yanking at its middle. Pulling one stubborn orb across the board and watching thirty crossings collapse at once is the moment that keeps you loading the next knot.
All sixty puzzles are guaranteed solvable, your best time per level is saved, and undo forgives any tug you regret. Good for a two-minute breather or a long, stubborn evening.
Where Untangle comes from
This puzzle is Planarity, written in Flash by John Tantalo at Case Western Reserve University in 2005 from a concept by Mary Radcliffe of Western Michigan University. Every level is a planar graph drawn with its vertices on a circle so that the edges cross, and a theorem by Istvan Fary guarantees such a graph can always be redrawn with straight edges and no crossings, so every puzzle is solvable. The game's viral spread earned Tantalo a place among Cleveland's 'most interesting people' of 2006; this version is 360 PlayZone's own take on the classic. Source.
Inside Untangle: what we checked
The numbers below come from Untangle's own source code, and the screenshots are from our own test run of the game (20 October 2026).
- There are 60 levels, and they are the same for every player: each is generated from a fixed seed, and is always solvable without any crossings.
- Level 1 has 6 nodes and level 60 has 48. The number of lines grows faster than the nodes, from roughly 1.2 lines per node at the start to about 1.8 per node at the end.
- Levels unlock one at a time as you clear them, but you can replay any unlocked level.
- Stars are decided by time against a par that depends on the level: 2.4 seconds per node plus 0.9 seconds per line. Beat par for three stars, finish within 2.2 times par for two, and anything slower earns one.
- Every drag is stored, so Undo (Z or U) steps back one move at a time, up to the last 200. R resets the level.
- Progress, your best time and stars for each level, and the mute setting are saved in this browser.
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How to play Untangle
Grab any orb and drag it somewhere new; the strings attached to it move with you. Edges that cross another edge glow red, clean ones glow cyan, and the counter shows how many crossings remain. Rearrange the orbs until the counter hits zero to clear the level and unlock the next. Finish quickly to earn three stars for that knot.
Controls
Desktop: drag orbs with the mouse, Z undoes, R resets, M mutes, Esc opens level select. Touch: drag orbs with a finger and use the on-screen buttons for undo, reset, levels, and sound.
Tips & tricks
- Start from the rim: park the obviously-outer orbs in a wide circle first, then untangle the middle inside that frame.
- Orbs with only two strings are cheap to relocate; sling them far out of the way and deal with them last.
- If a knot will not loosen, one orb usually belongs on the opposite side of the board entirely; carry it across and see what falls clean.
- Stretching helps: spreading everything toward the edges makes the remaining crossings easy to read before you commit to fixes.
Frequently asked questions
Does Untangle save my progress?
Yes — Untangle saves your progress and settings in this browser's local storage, so you can pick up where you left off on the same device. Nothing is uploaded and no account is involved — clearing your browser data is what resets it.
Is Untangle unblocked at school or work?
Untangle is a plain web page of about 36 KB — no plugin, no installer, no app store — so it loads on a Chromebook or a locked-down school or office laptop the same way any other page does, and the whole game arrives in one short download. Whether it opens comes down to your network's filter rather than the game itself.
Who made Untangle?
Untangle was built in-house by the 360 PlayZone team using open web technology (HTML5), which is why it runs instantly without any download.