Pull

Puzzle · plays in your browser, no download

Where it comes from

The pull-the-pin puzzle, which arrived on phones around 2018 and became one of the most played shapes of game there is: you remove something holding something else back, and physics does the rest. The idea is older than the phones — it is the logic of a sluice gate, and of every puzzle where the only move you have is deciding what to let go of first.

How to play

Tap a wooden pin and it slides out. Whatever was resting on it falls.
Get all the gold into the basin at the bottom. Every single grain.
Not one drop of lava may reach the basin. One is enough to lose.
There are gutters on either side of the basin. Lava sent down there does no harm.
Every board is solved before it is dealt: a solver tries every order of pins, and the board is only handed out if at least one of them wins.

What makes this one different

Pull a wooden peg and whatever was resting on it falls. All the gold has to reach the basin at the bottom and not one ember of lava may get there with it. The order is the whole game: gold that has already settled narrows the mouth of the basin, so what comes after can spill over the rim — and a peg pulled too early shuts a road you needed.

The falling sand is three rules: a grain looks below it, then diagonally, then stays put. That is deliberate, and not for simplicity — it makes the game *predictable*, so a solver can try every order of pegs before a board is handed out. No board is dealt unless at least one order wins it, which is the same promise the card games here make.

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