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Terrain Reconnaissance
Touchdown, and the xenobiologist finally gets her turn. The reconnaissance rover must roll across every sector of the landing site exactly once, in one unbroken line. No sector twice, no doubling back, no leaving one for later and hoping nobody checks. She checks. Some sectors come pre-flagged with numbered markers fixing when the rover must pass through them, so the whole route threads from the first number to the last with everything else stitched neatly in between.
Surveyors pick up two habits, or they pick up a taste for starting over. Commit the forced moves early, the corners and dead ends where there is only one way in and one way out. And never seal off a sector you still owe a visit, one stranded square means resetting the entire run while the xenobiologist sighs in a way that carries across two ridgelines.
She insists this is the only proper method for cataloguing the local flora. The local flora, it should be said, is cataloguing the rover right back. The tall blue fronds lean to follow it. The ground cover rearranges itself when nobody is looking, though always, she notes, into tidier rows than before.
It is on the far leg of the sweep that the rover's camera finds what the flora has been so politely standing around: a canyon, and down in the canyon, tucked where the sun barely reaches, a structure. Occupied. Defended. Expecting someone. The rover finishes its route the way you finish a sentence in a room that has gone suddenly quiet.
How to play
- Draw a continuous path that visits every cell on the grid exactly once.
- You can only move to horizontally or vertically adjacent cells.
- Some cells have fixed numbers showing their required position in the path.
- The path must respect all numbered anchors.
- Fewer moves (undos/resets) and faster times earn a higher score.