Motion

How it is scored

Every puzzle you solve is worth 2 points, and 1 more when you did it in the fewest moves it allows. A move is one slide of one piece, whatever the distance. Skipped puzzles score nothing and cannot be returned to. The 40 puzzles come easiest first, and nobody gets through them inside the clock.

Every puzzle is solved by the site before it is served, so the fewest-moves bonus is judged against a real optimum rather than a guess, and the shortest solution to anything you skipped or solved the long way is shown at the end. Sliding the ball itself is always allowed, but every puzzle is built so its shortest solution moves at least one block: steering the ball round them scores the solve, not the bonus.

Where we had to choose

Aon describes the format and the six minute clock, and every account agrees on both. What nobody publishes is the marking. Prep guides agree that solved puzzles score and that fewer moves is better, and disagree on everything past that, so the two-plus-one scoring here is our choice, not Aon's. Reports also say the real reset restores the layout and that skipped levels never score; both are built in as described. Whether the real test shows you the fewest possible moves is unclear, so this drill does, because knowing the target is what makes the planning trainable. Nobody publishes the real levels either. Candidates say it gets hard fast and the first testers here said the opening puzzles were too easy, so the ramp now spends two tiers on warm-ups and then climbs to boards that need nine or more block moves in the right order. The depth is our choice, set to be harder than the reports of the real test rather than a copy of it.

How to work through one

Trace the ball's route backwards from the exit before you touch anything, and count what sits on it. Move the biggest blocker first, because the small ones have more places to park. Park a block where it will not need moving again, which usually means all the way to an edge rather than one cell over. When a plan dies, reset straight away: it costs you time, not the bonus.