Mind Bits › Info › Sailors of the Heavens
Stellar Cartography
Space, it turns out, is mostly a filing problem. The ship is up, the home world is a coin over your shoulder, and before anything else can happen the navigation computer requires its star chart balanced. Each row and each column must hold exactly as many stars as nebulae, and no more than two of the same may ever sit in a line, a condition the computer describes as avoiding a migraine and everyone else describes as a tantrum.
The old navigators never guess. They hunt the forced moves first: two stars side by side demand a nebula at either end, no discussion, and a line already carrying its full share of one symbol must surrender every remaining cell to the other. Place the certainties and the next certainty tends to introduce itself. Done properly, the chart is less a puzzle than a queue.
It would be tempting to care less, except that the navigation computer has the processing power of a small moon and the temperament of a cat that has just been lifted off a warm laptop, and it also runs life support. You do not argue with the thing that also runs life support. You balance its heavens and you let it purr.
And there is one more thing, which the navigators only mention after their shift ends. With no destination posted yet, the chart you are balancing is the only thing aboard that knows where the ship might end up. Somewhere in those tidy rows is a heading nobody has told you about. The computer has filed it under later.
How to play
- Fill the grid so each row and column has an equal number of stars and nebulae.
- No more than two consecutive identical symbols in any direction.
- Some cells are pre-filled. Work around them.
- Fewer mistakes and faster times earn a higher score.