Clockwork

Clockwork

Clockwork

Don't be fooled by the short time it took me to escape, in a way this one is actually the toughest of all castles. That's not only because of the Shooting Gallery but because of the 10 switches which allow for a whopping 1024 (!) combinations to get those Lightning Machines turned off. Testing those would require even more time since you can't access them all from the same room.

So I decided to take another approach: math! It took me a while to realize that my info on them was incomplete: only opposite states cancel each other out! I turned all switches off and then each on separately (starting at the top right and going clockwise) to see what they were doing with the Lightning Machines (from left to right) which resulted in this matrix:
 1 011010
 2 001101
 3 010011
 4 101001
 5 001100
 6 110000
 7 000101
 8 100001
 9 111100
10 001001
 
All off except switches 1+2:
1 011010
2 001101
--------
A 011111
B 101000
Since only 0+1 cancel each other out we'll get B!
Now if you put those premises into a Perl script to compute (thanks to Thomas S), you'll end up with 16 combinations that turn off all Lightning Machines.

© 8/2008 by Moon