Circle Puzzle
About Circle Puzzle
Circle Puzzle is a meshed-gear alignment puzzle · a little Swiss-watch movement. You get a stack of concentric wheels, each rotated to a random starting position. Tap the RIGHT half of a wheel to turn it clockwise, the LEFT half to turn it counter-clockwise · and because the wheels are meshed, every neighbour turns with it by a different, hidden amount. The goal is to bring every wheel's marker around to the guide at the top · all wheels aligned · before your tap budget runs out.
It is really two puzzles. First you have to figure out how the wheels move: the gear ratios are different every game, so a tap that nudges one wheel a little might whip its neighbour around several notches. Once you have read the mechanism, you work the wheels back and forth · turning one to line it up knocks the others out, so you trade offsets up and down the chain until every marker sits at the top at once.
Difficulty grows the stack; level tightens the budget. Easy rounds have two wheels, coarse notches, and a generous budget. Harder rounds add wheels (up to four), use finer notches (more notches per turn), and scramble the start further. Higher labyrinth levels shave the budget down so there is less room to experiment.
Deterministic. The wheel count, the notch resolution, the hidden coupling, every wheel's starting offset, and the tap budget are all derived from the round seed · so the same save code is always the exact same puzzle. Useful for "try to do it in fewer taps" challenges with a friend on the same round.
Part of the PlayMemorize family of brain-training games. Runs entirely in your browser, works offline as a Progressive Web App.
FAQ
Q: Which way do the wheels turn?
Tap the right half of a wheel to turn it clockwise, the left half to turn it counter-clockwise. The wheels are meshed, so every tap also turns the neighbouring wheels by a hidden gear ratio · learning those ratios is half the puzzle.
Q: What happens if I run out of taps?
If any wheel is still out of line when your tap budget hits zero, the round is lost. The budget always leaves room over the shortest solution, so a clean run is always possible once you have read the mechanism.
Q: Is the puzzle the same for everyone?
Yes when handed the same seed. The wheel count, the notch count, the hidden coupling, every wheel's starting offset, and the tap budget are all derived from the round seed.
Q: How does difficulty change it?
Higher difficulty adds wheels (up to four), uses finer notches, and scrambles the start further. Higher labyrinth levels shave the tap budget down so there is less room to experiment.
Q: Does it work offline?
Yes. PlayMemorize is a Progressive Web App. Install once and Circle Puzzle works without an internet connection.
