Solution: Pushing the Rules

Answer: BROAD

Written by Thomas Gordon

This puzzle takes the form of a Sokoban-esque game, where the player (represented by a comma) pushes around letters. Strings of letters disappear when they form a word.

Part One: Learning the Rules

The first few rooms of the game are intended to help the player understand the rules and how the game is structured. The first room teaches the player that words, when formed, will disappear; they progress by pushing the W up to form the string WORDS.

The second room teaches the player that words must be a minimum of four letters long to disappear. This is shown by having a three-letter word, STY, formed in the middle of the room, but not disappearing. The player progresses by creating the string STYMIED to remove the blockage.

(N.B.: The reason that there are spaces in the ‘tutorial text’ words is so those words don’t disappear either. There is no other reason for these spaces.)

The third room teaches the player that words must be valid Scrabble words in order to disappear. The player needs to get the letter Z to the other side of the room to form the word JAZZ, and thus will need to remove the letters that are blocking the way in the middle. Attempting to form ITALY will not cause the letters to disappear, because ITALY is not a valid Scrabble word.

The two valid Scrabble words that will cause the A and L blocking the path to disappear are ALIT and TALI. Forming either of these words will then allow the player to push the letter Z across the room and form JAZZ. A discerning player might also realize that JAZY is a Scrabble word, and thus use the Y to clear away the letters blocking the exit without needing to remove the A or the L.

Heading upwards, the next room is a “final exam” of sorts; there is a CO blocking the player’s exit, and the letters N, C, E, P, and T also in the room. However, if the player attempts to make the word CONCEPT, the substring ONCE will disappear before they are able to complete the full word. The player must either counter-intuitively place the letter T first (so that finishing the substring ONCE will also complete the entire word), or find another word which fits the constraints of CO??, CO??E, or CO??EP. (CONTE works.)

The next room to the left is meant to teach the player something fundamental about the underlying logic of the game. The player’s goal is to get the letter U to the other side of the room to form the word QUIZ, thus letting them progress. However, the topology of the room means that the player can’t get the letter U to the other side of the room without getting it stuck against a wall in the process.

In the middle of the room, there is the letters O, R, and E, which can remove the letters S and H (which are blocking the path) by making SHORE or SHERO or SHOE or SHOER. However, in order to complete this room, the player must realize that the tiles that form the walls are letters as well; more specifically, they’re Xs! Thus, any string the player makes that contains an X and is also a valid Scrabble word will also delete that X “wall” tile. By forming the word XEROX, the player can clear holes in the walls to allow the U to be pushed to the other side of the room, forming the word QUIZ and clearing it.

Progressing into the next room, however, it seems the player is stuck. They can go no further in this direction; the entire path dead-ends.

They are, however, treated with a view of some letters in a room that they’ve never seen before, as well as a bunch of walls. The top row of the last few screens also spelled the phrase THE ANSWER IS, heading from left to right (while the player was traveling from right to left).

What can we do now?

Part Two: Pushing the Rules

As one might quickly work out, the fact that the player can delete wall tiles is actually incredibly powerful. The player’s goal is now to work out how they can break out-of-bounds and reach the right-most screens where the answer is (presumably) contained.

Tracing our way back through the game, the only place that we can punch a hole out of the map is in the second room. Instead of using the letters S, T, and Y to form the word STYMIED, the player can instead make the valid Scrabble word XYST, escaping into the space above this row of rooms. This lets the player access a space that contains a number of letters – B, C, C, E, E, E, I, R, and T – and three barriers beneath the top “row” of the map, which leads over to where the answer is written.

The player can reach this top row by (seemingly) forming three Scrabble words which start with X, thereby removing a tile from each barrier and letting the player pass through. The two four-letter Scrabble words that start with X – XRAY and XYST – aren’t possible, but two five-letter words – XEBEC and XERIC – are. That deals with two of the barriers, leaving only a leftover T to deal with the final barrier.

In order to deal with this final barrier, the player will need to use every source of letters available to them. The first source is the word THE, in the top-left; we can use the E as part of the word. We can also steal either an M or an I from the tutorial text (i.e. the word MINIMUM) by making the word XYST directly under that letter tile and pushing it away from the wall from below. Using these tricks, we have just enough letter tiles to form the word EXIT!

By forming the word EXIT, the player can then access the top row of the level map, and is then able to pass above the entire set of rooms and access where the answer is written, revealing the answer BROAD.

Author’s Notes

There's a bit in The Princess Bride where Inigo's father is forging the sword, and it's a constant struggle; where each new small change throws the balance off, or makes the blade too short, and the whole thing has to be done and redone, again and again, for the whole thing to be perfect. Writing this puzzle felt like that. The core a-ha was dreamed up briefly; but, then, making the rest of the game work around it took painstaking trial and error, and the long-suffering sweat of many very kind testsolvers. Thank you, testsolvers. You made this puzzle into what it is.

For slightly silly reasons, every word that clears in this game is hand-coded. Some solvers got caught out by words that should work, but don't; if you were one of those, I'm sorry! I tried to catch all of them. I failed, but generally enough were caught to give most people the illusion of a properly constructed game.

This puzzle was inspired by the works of the late Jack Lance.