How to play

The idea

A jungle tomb door accepts some offerings and rejects others. It follows one hidden rule. Your job is to find the rule with as few probes as you can, then prove it in a trial.

Offerings are strings of 3 to 5 glyphs. A glyph is a symbol (sun, moon, eye, serpent, feather, wave); deeper in the crypt it also has a color (red, green, blue) and can be turned upside down.

A chamber, step by step

1. Read the wall. Accepted offerings hang on the left, rejected ones on the right. Mossy tablets are the free starting examples.

2. Probe. Build an offering on the altar and offer it. The door answers yes or no and the tablet joins the wall. You have up to 10 probes, and each costs 65 of the chamber's 1000 points.

3. Take the trial. When you think you know the rule, open the trial: the door shows 6 new offerings and you mark which ones it would accept. 5 of 6 opens the door. After the trial the rule is revealed.

Every day has four doors, and each one adds depth:

I. The Entrance: four stone symbols (sun, moon, eye, serpent), no color, one simple rule.

II. The Great Hall: all six symbols in three colors, one rule, often a harder one.

III. The Treasury Gate: glyphs can be turned upside down (a small gold wedge marks them); two simple rules joined by “and” or “or”.

IV. The Burial Chamber: a rule with an exception, “A but not B”.

What the rules look at

Symbols: a symbol that appears, how many glyphs there are, what the string starts or ends with, whether it starts and ends with the same symbol, two identical symbols in a row, whether all symbols differ, at least two of a symbol, one symbol coming before another.

Colors: a color that appears, the color it starts or ends with, how many glyphs of a color, more of one color than another, whether all three colors appear, whether it starts and ends with the same color, colors that read the same backwards.

Upside-down glyphs: whether any glyph is upside down, whether the first one is, at least two of them, an upside-down symbol or color, upright and upside-down glyphs alternating.

Examples of real rules: “Ends with a serpent”, “All three colors appear”, “Starts with an upside-down glyph or ends with a wave”, “All three colors appear but fewer than 2 suns”.

Tips

Look for what all accepted tablets share before you spend a probe. Probe offerings that split your remaining guesses in half, and change one thing at a time: one symbol, one color, one turn. Rejected tablets are as useful as accepted ones. In the Burial Chamber, find the main rule first, then hunt for the exception.

Questions