Fibre Splice — the daily fibre network puzzle

How to play

1. 1Find the exchange — the glowing cabinet somewhere near the middle. Light spreads from it along any fibre whose ends meet.
2. 2Tap a tile to turn it a quarter clockwise. One tap, one move. Use ↺ Reverse (or Shift-click, right-click, Shift+Enter) to turn it back for one move instead of three.
3. 3Fix the straights first: each is either right or one turn wrong. Then work the edges — a house on the edge has only three ways to face.
4. 4Lock any tile you are sure about with 🔒 Lock. Locking is free, and a locked tile cannot be knocked out of place.
5. 5The board is solved the instant every house lights up. Your score is moves against par; the clock only starts on your first turn, so plan before you tap.

What is a fibre splice?

A fibre splice is the permanent joint between two optical fibres. The technician strips the coating, cleaves the glass so the end is perfectly flat, lines the two fibres up under a microscope and fuses them with an electric arc — a fusion splice. Done well, the joint loses well under a tenth of a decibel of light, which is why a single fibre can run from an exchange, through a street cabinet and a splice closure on the pole, into the box on your wall and still arrive bright.

Every fibre suburb is a tree of those joints: one feed from the exchange, splitting again and again until each branch ends at one home. Fibre Splice is that tree with every joint spun the wrong way. Turn the tiles until the light reaches every house, and try to do it in the fewest turns the board allows.

Who builds the fibre — and who you actually pay

In South Africa the company that digs the trench and splices the glass is usually not the company you pay each month. The fibre network operator, or FNO, builds and owns the line; the internet service provider sells a service over it. Our comparison data lists four open-access FNOs: Openserve, Telkom's wholesale network and the widest fibre-to-the-home footprint in the country; Vumatel, the largest dedicated metro operator; Frogfoot, known for symmetrical tiers; and MetroFibre, focused on estates and gigabit lines.

Open access means any ISP can sell over the same line, so once you know which operator reaches your street the real decision is which provider to put on it. That is what the comparison pages are for — and if you think you know the market, the Guess the ISP quiz will tell you.

Why the light runs tile by tile

When you complete a branch, the glow spreads outward from the exchange one tile at a time. That is a small exaggeration of something real: light in glass travels at about two-thirds of its speed in a vacuum, roughly 200,000 kilometres a second, so a signal covers about 200 km for every millisecond. Across a suburb that is nothing; across the 1,260 km from Johannesburg to Cape Town it is about six milliseconds each way before the cable's real route and the equipment along it add their share.

It is also why a fibre ping is so much lower than a wireless one. There is no radio slot to wait for and no tower to share — the light just goes. Run the speed test on the home page and you will see the difference in the ping figure before you see it anywhere else.

Fibre and load-shedding

The part of the network in your street is passive. The splitters that share one exchange fibre between dozens of homes need no electricity at all, and the operators keep their active equipment on batteries or generators. What goes dark in a load-shedding slot is the box on your wall — the ONT — and your router. A small UPS sized for those two devices is usually enough to keep the fibre up for the length of a stage-four slot.

Frequently asked questions

What is a fibre splice, and what does it have to do with the game?

A fibre splice is the permanent joint between two optical fibres. Technicians strip and cleave the glass, then fuse the two ends together with an electric arc in a fusion splicer; a good fusion splice loses well under a tenth of a decibel of light. Every fibre suburb is a tree of splices running from the exchange out to each home, and the game is that tree with every joint spun the wrong way.

When does a new board come out?

At midnight South African Standard Time (UTC+2), the same as every daily puzzle on the site. Everyone in the country gets the same board on the same day, and the countdown on the result card tells you how long until the next one.

How is par calculated?

Par is the smallest number of quarter-turns that puts every tile back into the generated solution, counting the shorter direction for each tile. A straight piece can never need more than one turn, a four-way cross needs none, and every other tile needs zero, one or two. Par is shown before you start so you can plan rather than tap.

Do turns anticlockwise cost the same as clockwise?

Yes. Any quarter-turn is one move whichever way it goes, which is why the ↺ Reverse mode, Shift-click, right-click and Shift+Enter exist: turning a tile back one notch is one move, not three. Locking and unlocking tiles is free.

Where are my streak and stats stored?

Only in your own browser, in localStorage on the device you played on. Nothing is sent to a server and there is no account. Clearing site data clears your stats, and playing on a second device starts a second set.

Are the network operators in the game real?

The board is generated, not a map of a real suburb. The names on this page — Openserve, Vumatel, Frogfoot and MetroFibre — are the real open-access fibre network operators listed in our comparison data; the internet service providers you buy from sell their services over those operators' lines. Nothing about any provider is invented for the game, and no prices appear anywhere in it.