page four

The Lattice

The other rooms let you fiddle. This one keeps score. Today's date deals a tangle of broken pipework — all of it connected until somebody spun every piece at random. Turn the tiles back until the current reaches the corners and the whole grid is lit. There is always a solution, and everyone who visits today is dealt the same one.

Click a tile to turn it clockwise. Shift-click turns it back. N deals a new puzzle, R restarts this one.

Size
Grid — Puzzle — Turns 0 Clock 0:00
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How the board is dealt

  1. 01

    Grow a tree

    Starting from the ringed tile in the middle, the generator repeatedly opens a random wall into a square it has not reached yet. The result is a spanning tree: every tile connected, no loops, no islands.

  2. 02

    Spin it apart

    Each tile is then turned a random quarter-turn or three. Nothing is added and nothing is removed, so the puzzle you are handed is always one tidy network wearing a disguise.

  3. 03

    Follow the light

    Current spreads out from the centre through every join that actually meets. Live pipes glow, orphaned ones stay grey, and that glow is the only feedback you get — no wrong-tile markers, no undo.

The same date integer that draws the flow field on the front page, arranges the Garden, writes the Chimes, names the town in the Almanac and scatters the sky in the Observatory deals this board too. Six rooms, one number. One rule worth knowing: a loose end is always wrong, so if a pipe is pointing at the outer wall, something near it needs turning. Nothing is saved between visits — your time is yours alone to remember or quietly forget.