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Reactor Core Priming
Last job before the sky. The fusion core was invented by Dr Helene Voss, who described her own process as splitting atoms in reverse, and angrier, then retired to somewhere without a telephone. Priming one means linking fuel masses into a single chain that adds up to the exact ignition figure. Not roughly. Exactly. The cells connect up, down, and sideways only, never diagonally, which the core finds diagonally offensive for reasons Voss took with her.
The reactor techs hunt for a short chain first, because a pair that already hits the target beats a grand tour that nearly does. When nothing obvious offers itself, they start from the biggest number that still fits and top it up with whatever small cells sit beside it. Too little fuel and the core merely sulks. Too much, and you will understand at last why the designers bolted the escape pods directly onto the reactor room wall.
While you work, the day's flight plan finally arrives from Central Command. Under destination it says to be advised mid-flight, which is what it says every day. Under mission objective it says see destination. Somewhere upstairs, presumably, sits a person who knows where the ship is going and why it needs this many missiles to get there. No one has ever met this person. The crew run a betting pool on whether they exist.
The core catches, the deck settles into its familiar hum, and the ship remembers what it is for. Maintenance is over. Time to sail.
How to play
- You have 60 seconds. Make them count.
- A 5×5 grid of numbers is shown along with a target sum.
- Tap adjacent cells to form a chain whose values add up to the target.
- Cells must be horizontally or vertically adjacent. No diagonals, this isn't chess.
- The chain locks in automatically when the sum hits the target, and a new puzzle appears.
- Solve as many as you can before time runs out. Each solved puzzle is worth 100 points.