How to Play

This page will take you through a sample turn to show you how to play the Ricochet Robot Challenge. But first, here are some hints:

Dial up users can disconnect while they move the robots to find a route, then reconnect before hitting the submit button.
Try working backwards from the target. Look for likely squares where you might need to place other robots from which to ricochet.
If you have several mouse buttons, then the extra buttons can be used anywhere on the board to undo a move.
Each game consists of 16 turns, during which each target is used once.

Sample turn

Suppose you arrive at the game with the board standing as follows:

The active robot and the target symbol are shown in the center of the board. Your aim is to move the active robot to the target in as few moves as possible. In this case you must move the green robot, near the right edge of the board, to the green triangle target, near the bottom left hand corner. The target is highlighted so you can spot it easily.

Robots can only change directions by bouncing off of obstacles, and there are no convenient obstacles which will allow you to reach the green target. Therefore, another robot must be moved first. After some thought, you may see a way to acheive this.

Here is one possible solution. The yellow robot must be moved first, so click on it to select it. When selected it will be highlighted.

The yellow robot must first be moved up to the top edge of the board. Click in the top-right hand square, and the yellow robot will move there, leaving a trail to show where it has been.

Next it must be moved to the right, so click four squares to the right, next to the wall. The robot will move until it hits the wall. Finally, the robot must be move down to the bottom edge of the board. Click on the bottom square of the column below the yellow robot. The board should now look like this.

Now you can move the green robot to the target, bouncing off the yellow robot. Move the green robot up to the top edge of the board, then left and down following the same path as yellow. When it has hit yellow, move it left to the target.
Finally, enter your name and press the `submit' button (which is enabled when you reach the target square with the active robot). Come back tomorrow and check the roll-of-honour to see how your route compared with the other entries.

If you make a mistake, you can use the `undo' button to undo your moves one at a time. The `reset' button moves all the robots back to their starting positions for that turn.

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