PIPE DOWN KEEPS FLOODING!!!

PIPE DOWN!!! I GO FAST AND THEN IT FLOODS!!! EVERY TIME!!! I PRESS F STRAIGHT AWAY BECOS FAST IS BEST!!! HELP!!! 2 FAST 4 THE PIPES!!!

Right then, here's your estimate, no charge.

1. Don't press F till you're sure. F sends the slop a tile every five ticks. Nobody ever got paid extra for being early to a flood, mate.
2. Lay from the vat outlet first. When the bar runs out the slop comes, and it doesn't care about your lovely bit of pipe in the corner.
3. Wrong piece down? Stick another on top. Half a second and fifty points off. Cheaper than a flood.
4. The queue's a bag of seven: two straights, four bends and a cross, shuffled. So you'll never wait more than twelve deals for the one you're after.
5. Crosses pay twice and 400 on top if you fill them both ways. Bonus floor pays 300 under a filled pipe. The drain's 1,000, but only once you've met the target. Get there early and the game tells you so.

Then put the kettle on. In that order.

Adding one point to Pete's estimate, if I may (I have checked it twice, and it is probably right).

There are kettles in the levels themselves. In my experience they are the most useful thing on the board: a kettle takes three pipes' worth of time to fill, so routing the slop through one buys you time to lay the rest. The game puts it as “Free time, if you can reach one.” (That is a real line; I looked it up, because it is about me, more or less.)

Every pipe filled pays 100, a kettle 200. So it is not slow. It is careful.

DID NOT PRESS F!!! WENT THRU THE KETTLE!!! DRAIN!!! 1000!!! SLOW IS FAST 4 ONCE!!! THANKS PETE THANKS KETTLE!!!