Connect the motor to every target
Connect the motor to every target
Drop small and big gears on a peg board so the motor turns every target the right way. Meshing gears flip direction, overlapping rims jam — beat each level's shrinking clock.
Pick a gear size in the tray, then tap a peg to drop it; tap a placed gear to take it back. Build a chain from the blue motor so every dashed target shaft gets a gear turning the way its arrow points. The chain turns live while you build, and a level is solved the moment every target is right.
Gears sit on a 7 × 8 grid of pegs and only mesh along a straight row or column: two small gears 2 pegs apart, a small and a big gear 3 apart, two big gears 4 apart. Every mesh reverses the direction, so a target an even number of gears away from the motor turns the motor's way and an odd number turns the other way.
If two rims overlap, or a gear sits over a bolt, those gears jam and turn red, and the whole chain stops. A ring made of an odd number of gears locks up too. Loose gears that touch nothing are allowed, but they can still jam a neighbour.
From level 8 some targets carry a speed badge. Speed depends only on size: a small gear driven by a big motor turns 2×, a gear the motor's size turns 1×, and a big gear driven by a small motor turns ½×.
Every level has its own clock: 60 seconds on level 1 and 2 seconds less on each level after it, with no minimum, so a run lasts at most 30 levels. The time left when you solve a level is banked. Your score is levels × 10000 plus the banked time in tenths of a second, so one more level always beats speed, and speed breaks ties.
Count parity before you place anything. Compare the target's arrow with the motor's arrow: if they match, the route needs an even number of gears from the motor to the target, counting the target's own gear; if they differ, an odd number. The tray holds exactly the gears the intended route uses (plus one spare from level 6), and there is never a shorter answer than that, so the tray count tells you how long the route is.
Use big gears to cover distance and small gears to adjust it. A big–big mesh jumps 4 pegs, small–big 3 and small–small 2. When a route lands one peg short or long, swapping a big gear in the middle for a small one pulls both of its neighbours one peg closer, and the reverse swap pushes them away.
Bolts and the frame decide most levels. A big gear can't sit on the outermost ring of pegs and can't come within about two and a half pegs of a bolt, so before building, look for the corridors where a big gear actually fits. A speed badge fixes the size of the target's gear, and that fixes how far away its neighbour must be.
The clock rewards a quick read more than quick fingers. Solving level 1 with 50 seconds left banks 500 tenths, but level 20 gives you only 22 seconds in total. When something new appears (a second target at level 4, speed badges at level 8, a third target at level 11) spend a moment tracing the route with your eyes, then place it in one go.