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The Repton Challenge
January 18th, 2004 |
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On our December 25 column we
told you the story of an early computer game, one that
confronted chess players like Garry Kasparov, Nigel Short
and John Nunn eighteen years ago. A toddler who had played
it at the time is now 21. Thomas Friedel recreated "Repton"
and provided a download for our readers.
The reaction of chess enthusiasts was gigantic. Hundreds
of letters poured in while we were publishing a new level
to solve each day of our Christmas
Puzzle week. At the end we promised to stage a Repton
Challenge, supported by the company that markets the game,
Superior
Interactive. But before we get to the competition here
are a few more letters we received during and immediately
after the puzzle week.
David Zammit, Australia
Hi guys, love your website. I must say I was one of the
perhaps 99% of readers to get stuck on level 7 with the
3 diamonds and the rock. The solution came to me, but I
must say it involved a manouver which I was unaware of,
and perhaps many of your readers that are stuck there aren't.
Without giving too much away, perhaps that may help your
readers, as well as looking at the right side of the same
puzzle where there is a boulder perched ready to fall which
needs to be resolved in a similar manner. I have now finished
the entire game, along with all the extra levels. I loved
the extra levels. The small box was ingeneous with the
big box also being quite clever. Chris & Michael's
levels were equally entertaining. I'm working on a level
but in the mean time, please post some more, especially
some obscenely difficult but resolvable levels!
Yes, yes, David, you get your obscenely difficult
level below.
Dylan, CO, USA
In level 7 of Repton I am stuck not only on the part with
the three diamonds, but am also stuck on the bottom right
where a boulder is and there is one square of earth under
it. After you go under it, it falls and traps you out,
leaving no possible solution. Maybe I have done something
in the editor accidentally, but there is no way around
it.
Martin Leung, Irvine, CA
Thanks ChessBase for introducing this game to me and all
the readers. I started to play it because Mr. Kasparov
played it before! He is my idol. Now I am addicted. I usually
play other games like Starcraft or Warcraft III but now
I'm spending more time playing Repton. Its a simple and
fun game. In fact, it's one of the simplest games I have
ever played, but it takes a lot of calculation to solve
it. It's quite a shock when you're moving fast and you
don't notice a rock, and suddenly the falling rock sound
plays, and a split second later you're "dead".
Sometimes my hands sweat when I'm in difficult spots. And
whoever came up with that guy Repton with a green face,
must be really creative. Thanks a lot for sharing this
game with chess fans! I have passed it on to my friends,
and they like it as well.
Duncan Vella, Malta
This repton mania is no good. I'm no longer playing chess
now. Regarding level 7 with those 3 diamonds: I still cannot
get it. I tried piling as many boulders on the diamond
as possible, so that maybe the weight would squash it,
but nothing happened. Do you have to lose a life in the
process? Send us some hints!
Christopher Hume, Oakland, California
I would think team sports would of more interest (though
not by much) to your audience of Chess players than this
interminable discussion of Repton. It seems like filler
that dilutes the focus of your otherwise fine E-magazine
on Chess. Chess variants or similar two-player strategy
games such as Checkers or Go may be closely related enough
to be of general interest to your Chess playing audience;
but I am really not interested in reading about a video
game. Thanks, for the great quality and enthusiasm of your
chess coverage; but can we please wrap up the coverage
on Repton and get back to Chess?
Srinath, Pune, India
The infamous three diamonds problem in the 2nd last level
which was discussed in the article on 1st Jan troubled
me a lot too. But my case was a lot different. I'd read
Sherlock Holmes a couple of days ago, and I recollected
his saying, "When all impossibilities have been eliminated,
whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
or something to that effect. So, I began systematically.
Explored all possibilities in my mind, or tried them out.
The first time I found the right strategy I was shocked.
Thanks a lot to Tommy. I like your version very much,
especially the "zoom" feature. But I'm much more
grateful for the two screens you made for "purists".
I still have no idea on how to go about "small".
I've almost completed "Big", only top right section
is remaining. I admire both screens a lot. Mind-boggling
complexity within mind-boggling simplicity. I'm not sure
yet, but it seems that the solution to both your screens
may be unique... if they are, Hats off to you. Great! By
the way, do you think a program for solving a screen (general,
given a screen as input, as a matrix, say) of Repton would
be easier to write than one for playing chess? I would
greatly appreciate it if you could throw some light in
this area.
In general I would like to conclude that although repton
is nothing compared to the game of chess, I feel it slightly
resembles a chess study. Each screen has a solution, and
multiple solutions spoil the beauty. A screen can be composed.
There may be beautiful moves as a key. Unwanted elements
(pieces in chess; monsters, transporters in repton) cause
disappointment.
Conan, LaPointe, Lorne, Canada
Level 7 was fun it didn't take me long to realise that
I needed to push the rock out of the way as it was falling.
I couldn't tumble the rock out of the way any other way,
so the idea didn't take too long to come into my head.
But it was an interesting twist to the levels which probably
had many of us pondering for a long time. Thank you for
the interesting game.
John Vasileff, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Thanks for introducing me to Repton - its been a lot of
fun. Regarding some of your readers having trouble solving
level 7, I had a hard time finishing the level AFTER discovering
the correct method on my 1GHz laptop. I then tried on my
2.x GHz desktop and did it with ease. It seems that the
game can get bogged down when the window is maximized on
slower hardware (restoring the window to default size helped.)
Allan Johnson, West Jordan, UT 84088
Level 7 is pretty tricky, adding a new skill to the mix:
the quick arrow push technique.
Note: It is true that
the push manoeuvre in Level 7 requires that your graphics
card is fast enough. If you have an old card without
a hardware accellerator you should make the Repton window
as small as possible to execute the push, which incidentally
is known as an "octapus", after the password
in the original screen where it was first introduced.
Jon Haughton, Darien, IL, USA
I got addicted to repton just the other day and i have
solved the first 7 levels with relative ease! There are
some tough parts though, especially in level 7 near the
bottom with 3 diamonds and a boulder about to fall on one.
Dang you need fast fingers (thank god for online lightning
chess!). Thanks for the challenge, I was up during the
early hours of January 1 playing this, so be sure to warn
us again about how not to get addicted to it! Repton rules!
Kerem Yunus Camsari, 18, Ankara, Turkey
This is just incredible! We were playing this kind of games
when I was a kid! It's like "sokoban" and some
other superb PC games which are so full of joy and mystery!
I am curious too, about the fact that the time I spent
for each level was gradually getting smaller and smaller!
Maybe I was getting better! And about the complaint of
"manipulation skills" that is right in a way.
However, a little action makes the game adorable and forces
the player to make some mistakes like enclosing some places
and etc... And I don't think the Repton game should be
of pure logic and mathematical sense, It's fun to see a
monster, chasing you making funny movements, and it's even
more fun to gobble down a huge boulder onto it. I am happy
with the game's action and puzzle balance. And please give
us more puzzles and levels!
The Repton Challenge
For our Repton competition Superior Interactive had donated
three dual prizes, each consisting of their programs Galaforce
Worlds and Ravenskull. To this we add a special chess prize,
which is a copy of Fritz signed by the 2004 Wijk aan Zee
winner.
This is how the competition works: two copies of the Superior
programs go to readers who have sent us the password of
the final (eighth) level of our Christmast Repton 1, and/or
have written nice letters to us. All messages we received
since December 25 will be included in the selection, but
so will all we receive from now until the end of the competition.
One copy of the Superior games, together with the autographed
Fritz program goes to the first person who sends in the
solution to Tommy's Very Hard Level. Here time
is critical. This level will be publised on this page on
Wednesday, January 21 at 17:00h GMT, which in winter is
the same as London time. It translates to 18:00h Paris/Berlin,
12:00 noon New York, 22:30 Delhi, 02:00h Tokyo, 04:00h
Sydney. You can find the time at your location here.
At the time the final link in the list below will become
active.
The winner of the Repton Challenge is the first to
send in the password that appears, together with a congratulation
message, when you have solved all parts of the Very Hard
level (finallev.rep). Make a screen shot of the solved
level and save it in GIF. We will ask the winner to send
in this picture to prove that he or she have actually solved
the level – and not simply hack the file.
For those of you who want to practise for the ultimate
Repton 1 challenge we are providing you with three new
levels designed by Michael Nunn. They contain features
that are to be found in Repton 2 and 3 – skulls,
bees or spirits, cages, fungus, time capsules, etc. You
have to figure out what each element does all by yourself.
Tommy's Very Hard Level contains none of these –
just the elements you knew from Repton 1.
Frederic Friedel
Links
Garry Kasparov enjoying Repton on Christmas Eve 1985
 The
latest Repton game is available from the Superior Interactive
site. Click on the logo on the right to download a trial
version. For $19.95 you can get a key that upgrades it
to the full version. You may also want to try the PDA and
cell-phone versions of Repton from Masabi.
The Superior site also has the games Galaforce and Ravenskull.
Frederic Friedel
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