DEAD WEIGHT

What you do

You walk a skeleton across a grid dungeon to the exit door, and you are not expected to make it on the first life. Every death leaves a body lying exactly where it fell, and that body is now part of the room: it bridges a pit, it sheathes a spike row so the next you can walk over it, it jams a crusher. The puzzle is deciding where to die.

The board only moves when you do. Each cell you cross spends one turn, the traps step forward with you and stop when you stop, and the pips under a trap count the turns left before it fires — so there is no reflex test in it, only routing. Fewest bodies wins.

There are 25 rooms in one fixed order, the same for every player. A solver has proved the minimum for each: levels 1 to 6 can be cleared with 2 bodies, 7 to 13 with 3, and the last three need 8. Pressure plates and doors arrive at level 13, and ice — where a body keeps sliding until something stops it — at 16. Past the ladder there is a room for every date from 2020-01-01 to 2099-12-31: add ?day=YYYY-MM-DD to the game address and everyone who opens that date gets the same room.

How long a round takes

There is no clock to beat: a room lasts as long as your thinking does. The counter above the board counts active play time only — it starts on your first step and pauses while the tab is in the background.

Waiting is a real move: Wait 2 turns steps you one cell aside and straight back, so you end where you started with every trap two beats further on. Undo takes back a step but never a death, and never rewinds the clock.