Eat Ice Cream - The Rules
It's a Puzzle
Every game of Eat Ice Cream is a unique, randomly generated puzzle. Some are easy. Some are hard. Either way, you can see the solution by pressing "S" or clicking the "Show" button.
Winning
The goal is for the mouth to reach the ice cream cone in the shortest number of moves. The shortest number of moves is shown in the "Best" field. You can show or hide this value by pressing "H" or by clicking the "Best" field.
Moving
Move the mouth using the arrow keys or by clicking the arrow buttons. Press the spacebar or click "start over" to start over. But be aware that each time the mouth moves, the ice cream will try to move too. More specifically, the ice cream will try to move in the same direction as the mouth, but from its own perspective. However, there are a few subtleties to the way the mouth and the ice cream move. First, neither can move off the screen. So if you press a key that would cause either to move off the screen, nothing will happen. Second, the mouth cannot move into a black square. If you try to move the mouth into a black square, nothing will happen. Third, the ice cream gets blocked by the black squares. This allows the mouth to move while the ice cream stays put.
Changing the Puzzle
Get a new puzzle by pressing "N" or by clicking the button. Press "B" (back) and "F" (forward) to navigate through the list of puzzles that you have played.
The GameID: Loading and Creating Puzzles
The GameID allows you to "save" puzzles and to create your own puzzles. If you play a puzzle that you really liked, copy the GameID into a text file on your computer. Later, you or a friend can play the puzzle again by pasting the number into the GameID field and clicking "load". Send Dan and Eliza fun GameIDs at dandecrosswords@gmail.com.
You can also create novel puzzles with the GameID. The first number in the GameID determines what direction the ice cream will face. (0 for up, 1 for left, 2 for right, anything else for down) The next two numbers determine where the ice cream is placed. (00 is the top-left, 09 is the top-right, 99 is the bottom-right) The next two numbers determine where the mouth is placed. The remaining pairs determine where the black squares are placed. Ideally, the GameID will be 29 digits long. Shorter GameID's will be padded with zeros. Extra digits will be ignored.