ANADROME — A puzzle in two directions of time

What is ANADROME — A puzzle in two directions of time

ANADROME gives you one stream of commands and two to four boards that all obey it. The first board is the Current: it steps the instant you press a key. The others are echoes. A board badged Δ+2t replays that command two turns later; a counterflow board replays it rotated half a turn, so your right becomes its left and your up becomes its down. A fold is sealed when every walker stands on its own diamond at the end of the same turn — not one after another, but together. That single condition turns a plain maze into a scheduling problem, and it is the whole game.

Because one press drives every layer, you can never steer a walker on its own. Two things break the lock-step: a wall swallows a move on one board while the others take it, and the offsets mean the key you press now arrives somewhere else two or three turns from now. Later folds add pressure plates that hold doors open on other boards, and pulse tiles that burn on even or odd turns, reversed on counterflow layers. Ending a turn on a lit tile fractures the timeline and rewinds one turn; nothing else can go wrong. There is no clock and no lives, only the score.

How to play

1. Arrow keys or WASD move, Space waits, Z rewinds, R restarts; on a phone, swipe across the boards or use the bar of five keys.
2. Every press reaches all boards at once: instantly on the Current, two turns later on a Δ+2t layer, rotated half a turn on a counterflow one.
3. Blocked moves still spend a turn, so pressing into a wall is a free wait — often the only way to let one board fall behind another.
4. Seal the fold with every walker on its own diamond at the end of the same turn; a lit pulse tile rewinds you one turn instead.

Strategies that work

• A counterflow layer replays your command rotated half a turn, so while nothing blocks either walker they trace exactly opposite paths. Fold I is that at its purest: four presses of right seal it at par with both shards. From Fold III on, only a wall eating a move on one board breaks that symmetry.
• With a delayed layer, route the Current first and flush the queue afterwards: once the live walker stands on its diamond, Space holds it there while a Δ+2t board works through the commands still in the pipe. Fold II is exactly that — right four times, two waits, par 6, both shards.
• A plate counts as pressed only while somebody stands on it, and a door reads the plate as it was at the end of the previous turn, so there is a one-turn lag. In Fold IV the Current's own goal is the plate: two steps right, then two waits while the delayed walker crosses.
• Amber tiles burn on even turns, violet ones on odd turns, and counterflow layers feel that reversed. The cure for a tile that would burn you is rarely a new route — it is one extra wait, which flips the parity of the turn you land on. Fold V's safe lane is column one, row three, column five.
• A shard pays 120 and every move under par plus four pays 40, so a two-move detour nets 40, three breaks even and four loses. Four moves over par the efficiency bonus is already zero and shards become free profit. Rewinding costs the 150-point Steady Hand bonus once, however often you do it.

A little history

ANADROME was written for Puzzle-Me and has no older edition behind it. It belongs to the synchronised-control family of grid puzzles: one command, several agents obeying it at once. Most of that family separates the agents in space — Puzzle-Me's own Flux Paradox uses walls that exist in only one of two eras, both selves stepping in the same instant. ANADROME separates them in time. A delayed layer is your walker a fixed number of turns behind; a counterflow layer is your walker with every direction reversed, which on a grid is a rotation by half a turn.

Frequently asked questions