This is field 1. 48 pages fit from the gate. Four looks can make it one.
It runs on the game's own code. From the gate, 48 different pages fit what you can see. A look at a line gives you its toes, stride and width; find them on Grandad's card. A look at a crossing shows which line cut through. Four looks can bring it down to one page. You have light for five.
Get the page right and it saves into the game, so /play/ picks up where you stopped. Phones can play all four fields here. The full game needs a keyboard.
What the gate gives you for nothing
From the gate you can see every line, the pattern it walks in (single file, side by side, pairs, fours), and every place two lines cross. You can see if a line bolts, but you can't see a single stride, and every crossing is churned snow, so nothing from the gate tells you which line cut through which.
That's more than it sounds like. On field 1, line A walks in pairs. Only one animal on Grandad's card walks in pairs: the stoat. That slot is written before you spend any light.
The order is the hard half.
The whole rulebook is three lines
These are Grandad's rules, word for word from the game:
- The later one cuts through. Where two lines cross, the animal that came second leaves its print on top. Chains of crossings order lines that never touch.
- Never the same visitor twice. Every line on a field is a different animal.
- Hare, rabbit and pheasant bolt at fresh hunter sign. The first time one crosses a line a fox, cat or stoat made earlier that night, a hare or rabbit breaks into long bounds and a pheasant takes off. It always bolts. So a calm crossing means the other line came later, or never hunted.
Rule 3 is the one the game is built around. On field 2, line A breaks into long bounds where it crosses B. Before you spend a look, you know three things. A is a hare or a rabbit. B is a hunter. And B came first.
Calm tells you things too. Here's Grandad on field 3: “A rabbit that walks calm over a line wasn't frightened by it. Either it got there first, or the other one never hunted anything.”
Can you just guess? Field 1, half the time. Fields 3 and 4, 2 nights in 30 at most.
I'd rather show you than ask you to trust me. Every night in the game is generated, then thrown away unless two things hold. With every look taken, only the true page fits. And a reasoner that never sees the answer gets there inside the light. Par is that reasoner's look count.
The game's test suite runs 2,595 checks, most of them on exactly that, and all of them pass. It also plays 30 nights per field with readers that skip something:
| Reader (30 nights a field) | Field 1 | Field 2 | Field 3 | Field 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No looks, any answer | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| No looks, picks among answers that fit, listens to Grandad | 7% | 3% | 3% | 0% |
| Reads toes, never stride (right first time) | 50% | 13% | 0% | 0% |
| Reads everything except bolts (right first time, at par) | 100% | 13% | 0% | 7% |
Field 1 is the tutorial, and you can half-guess it. On fields 3 and 4, the best shortcut gets 2 nights in 30, at most.
Grandad's reply to a wrong page is “nearly” (one or two slots off) or “a few off”. He never says which. He looks at the page twice a night at most, and a wrong page costs a look of light. The cap is there because without it, you could skip the looks and just keep asking him.
One winter, four fields
When the page is right, the night redraws itself across the snow, one line at a time, in the order the animals made it.
- First snow. 3 lines, light for 5 looks. Grandad talks you through the card, the look and the first rule.
- The hare's field. 4 lines, 5 looks. One line “changes its mind halfway”, and Grandad tells you to watch it.
- Hedge corner. 5 lines and 6 looks. Calm is evidence.
- The long paddock. 6 lines, 7 looks, last snow of the winter. On the first night it lays, 288 pages fit what you see from the gate.
Each field has three stars: Grandad said “right”, right on the first page, and done in par looks or fewer. Want another go? Ask for a different night: fresh snow, new lines.
What's real and what isn't
The animals are real: fox, cat, roe deer, badger, hedgehog, pheasant, hare, rabbit, stoat. The Track Card is the game's. Its stride and width bands were set so each animal reads differently from the others, and nobody has checked them against a tracking guide. Don't learn tracking from it. In the game, prey always bolts at fresh hunter sign; real hares are less tidy than that. And a hedgehog out in snow would be rare, since they hibernate; this paddock has them anyway.
Honest gripes
- The full game needs a keyboard. It starts on SPACE and looks on L. On a phone, play it here.
- There's no sound at all yet.
- Four fields is the whole winter. There's no daily field yet.
- Field 1 is easy. The table above says so.
- Grandad won't say which slot is wrong. That's the game, but it stings the first time.
- Nobody outside my own test scripts has played it yet. You'd be early.
Questions
- Is it free?
- Yes. No account, no ads, nothing to install.
- Do I need to know animal tracks?
- No. Everything you need is on Grandad's card. If you do know tracks, trust the card over your memory; its numbers are the game's.
- How long is it?
- Four fields. Each gives you light for five to seven looks, and Grandad reads two pages at most. I won't guess at minutes, because nobody has timed a stranger yet.
- Can I play on my phone?
- Here, yes: all four fields, by tap. The full game at /play/ needs a keyboard.
- What happens when I get it wrong?
- Grandad says “nearly” or “a few off”, and you lose a look of light. A second wrong page, or a wrong one with no light left, ends the field. He reads you the night on the walk back. Then you can ask for a different night.
- Is it for kids?
- You play an eleven-year-old, and nothing gets hurt on screen; you only ever see prints. But I built it for adults who like logic puzzles, and nobody has tried it with children.
- Is my progress saved?
- Yes, in your browser. Fields you solve here count in the full game.
The hedge corner is next.
Field 3 has five lines, and a hare that crosses two of them without running. Play it up top, or open the full game: the fields you solved here are already saved there.
P.S. If you only try one thing, try field 2. Grandad says to watch the line that “changes its mind halfway”. You can see it from the gate, for nothing.