Let's all play Spacechem

Seeing as it's post-commentary, you're probably right, but don't ruin the magic for me.

Awesome review of all the solutions, MrBlarney! I like the commentary on the quick improvements, as well. I did not know about the trick with flip flop on the wall.

I've always thought that the basic reactor layout would make for an awesome gray or black T-shirt.


In other news, I'll post my puzzle tonight, US Eastern time.

#3: Oh Jerry! Oh... You!

The sub-plot of the classic "Junior Mints" episode of Seinfeld involves Jerry dating a woman who's name he can't remember. In celebration of this comedic cross-up, let's cross up O and U!


You can import this challenge into ResearchNet with the following code:
Solution Criteria: Least cycles. Tiebreaker: least symbols.

Solution Deadline: Solutions are due to me via PM by Friday, June 12, 12:00am PDT / 3:00am EDT / 7:00am UTC. I won't be counting myself in the rankings.

Attached Thumbnails

 

The preview image says "U2O," but the molecule is clearly U2O2. What is the deal?

You can make the formula say whatever you want, I think, so probably a typo on Ted's part.

I was bit puzzled by this, as well. U2O was the label the molecule builder generated for me, so I went with it.

Wow, got a fair number of submissions already! I'm really looking forward to recreating them and seeing them in action tonight.

This is shaping up to be a very competitive challenge; keep the solutions coming!

One of the puzzles in the main game includes U2O as an input molecule, so the game must have made an automatic assignment as you were creating your output.

The puzzle itself is subtly tricky. I feel like I have a pretty good solution already, but I can't help but feel like there's some way to squeeze out one more cycle from each output.

Yeah, this was neat (and I had to update my solution already, oops!)

After a long time working on this puzzle, I finally whittled my solution down to 28 symbols.

...What do you mean it's a cycles puzzle?

I started out with what I thought was a decent solution, then I spent some time refactoring 12 cycles out of it. Today, I took another look and removed 18 more. THIS GAME.

I feel like most of you people are going to beat my solution by like 300 cycles.

Yeah, um... you should really shoot for sub-300 on this one.

the worst part is i have sub-300

that's how dumb i feel when i try to spacechem

Guys, it's so cool to hear that everyone's really enjoying the puzzle! I'm working hard to learn some basic video capture and editing so that I can do proper justice to everyone's solutions in the upcoming recap. Exciting stuff!

Your cycle count is not too far off from mine, actually!

i spent ~two hours on this. ver1 was the first thing that came to mind and took 322. ver2 was a huge improvement, so i tried to write a quasi-mirrored solution based around the opposite input spots. it was one cycle faster.

i went back to 2.0 and made a couple small tweaks that saved 18 cycles and let me remove the sync operations (for another 1 symbol gain, because i couldn't put the blue start far enough away from where the blue sync was without using one arrow). i couldn't apply those changes to 2.1 due to the spatial differences, so i don't have any more ideas and i guess i'm sending now!

Attention engineers: just over 13 hours left for Puzzle #3!

I should be able to post the recap by Monday evening at the latest.

EDIT:

Hmm, I'm kinda confused by my own deadline. Anyway, submissions still accepted for the next 13 hours!

Yeah, the deadline should have passed yesterday. But if you want to keep accepting solutions, hey, that's on you

Challenge 3 Results

Thanks to all engineers who submitted a solution! I'm glad everyone enjoyed it!



(The video recap is more bare bones than I'd hoped due to time constraints. Maybe I can get things more polished next time!)

Results:


DFalcon is the next puzzlemaster!

It's our narrowest spread yet. I'd like to think that means we're improving

Edit: I've added myself to the end of the puzzlemaster queue. If you want to take a stab at it, whether it's your first or second time, let me know.

#4: Desalination

With SpaceChem's patented reactor technology, even junior engineers can create profitable exotic molecules!
Which is good, because the senior engineers have to fix the water supply after the latest horrendous space kablooie.



You can import this into ResearchNet with the following code:
Solution Criteria: Least cycles. Tiebreaker: least symbols. I will be trying to improve on submitted solutions, so anything I do won't be ranked.

Solution Deadline: Solutions are due to me via PM by Thursday, June 25, 11:59 PM U.S. Pacific time (find your own local time here).

I'll be traveling then without much computer access, so the solution writeup will probably be a couple days late - Mogri's choice as next puzzlemaster whether to go ahead with the next puzzle on schedule, or wait.

Edit: After-the-fact readers may be interested in a hint provided below.

Glad I didn't stick with my first solution!

I am ready to go a second time, though I wouldn't mind second-timers going in roughly the same order as before.

OK - if anyone else speaks up in the next week, I'll push them ahead of you. Probably ahead of me, too, if it's a new face.

Darn, foiled in a close one by DFalcon yet again!

I'll volunteer to do a second puzzle, though I don't have a specific one in mind yet. Plenty of time to decide, though.

As for the current puzzle, it's an interesting twist on the previous puzzle - same general concept of debond and switch around, but this time with only two bonders available.

i'm working on an idea so i guess i'll probably go up after this one if that's alright?

Sure thing! I'll slot you in for next round.

I've got another challenge, as well.

is there any way to change how many outputs are required to finish the level? it's not a big deal since i can either change how it works (though i'll need to play with it to make sure it's not getting too complicated) or just ignore that it slightly bothers me aesthetically

I don't think so.

We have a couple of solutions! I am starting to think this puzzle is harder than intended. If it seems infeasibly complex, consider you can make NaClH as an intermediate step.

If you're comfortable with JSON, you can use cearn's Sandbox Viewer to edit the number of outputs that you have to create. Note as well that this can only be done for Research missions.

Time's up, right? Spineshark can announce the next puzzle while we're waiting for the results.