The Doppit Almanac · No. 06

Fellit, a daily chain reaction puzzle

One push fells the whole forest

What it is

Fellit is a Doppit original, No. 06 in the almanac: a forest, a lumberjack, and exactly one shove. Every pine on the board needs a direction to fall, but the man in the red mittens pushes one tree only. All the rest must go down by cascade: a felled trunk lands across a stump, and that pine takes the next one with it.

You plan the whole catastrophe in advance, then let it happen.

How it plays

The felling code is short and unforgiving.

• A pine of height h lays a trunk over the next h cells in its chosen direction. The rings on its stump tell you its height. On Expert some pines print a question mark instead, and you work their height out from what the trunk must and must not hit.
• Trunks stay on the grid, never strike a boulder, and never share a cell with another trunk.
• A trunk that lies over a stump knocks that pine down, and a tall trunk smashes through every stump in its path.
• Only the mitten tree is pushed. Every other fall must trace back to that first shove.
• The forest reports as you work: warm gold means leaned and reached, pale means leaned but stranded, a green outline means not leaned yet.

The difficulties

Three forests are planted daily, and Expert is there for practice. Easy falls in thirty seconds to a minute. Medium stands for one to three minutes. Hard is three to six minutes of what-if timber work. Expert hides the heights of six or more pines and asks for seven minutes and up: the tangle only breaks once you suppose a trunk, follow the falls it forces, and find the pine it leaves with nowhere to go. A new board grows every day, and it costs nothing.

Nearby in the almanac: Snipit, Pipeit and Hoistit