Enigmarch 2026, Day 5: PATH

[tahnan]

Yup, averaging about a puzzle every two days. Sounds right.

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Janitorial Path

Welcome, new hire! We're starting you out with an easy little cleanup job. Building's over there--just gather up the letters at the start, feel free to drop anything in the recycling bin before you enter, and just go through and clean up all of the stray letters in the rooms There's a bin in each one, where you can drop any letter you don't need, and it'll get upcycled into a brand-new letter.

Of course, you'll want to make sure when you enter a room that the word you're carrying fits that room's category. So don't try just running straight through and shoving everything into bins willy-nilly; you'll need to plot out a path.

I'll see you when you come out in the southeast corner, where you can drop whatever word you've got onto the blanks there. And keep it friendly; no room for negative emotions in this company.

(Click through for a larger image. Full text description: a grid of rooms, 5 across by 3 down, with openings connecting all adjacent rooms, and openings in the outer walls in the northwest and southeast. Outside the northeast room is the word START and a blank recycling bin; outside the southeast room are four blanks. In each room is a recycling bin with a number; a large letter; and a smaller word or phrase. Reading from left to right, top to bottom, they are in order: +1/C/Dessert; -5/K/Skill; -8/J/Fastener; +7/T/Hair; +11/A/Salt Source; -6/I/Security; +5/L/Athlete; +13/O/Card; -2/M/Chess Term; +12/E/Dynasty; -11/N/Salt Source; -7/K/Connector; +10/G/Quirk; +6/P/Drink; +0/H/Appetizer.)

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When you're done with your answer, be sure to drop it in the answer checker for proper disposal.

Comments

[lorelei]

This was an interesting one. I first got started in the lower left, then filled out the left half, which was enough to see the answer. Then I struggled to get the right half to work, but I finally worked out the rest of it. I was not expecting that development.

(In retrospect I should have been able to start from the beginning, but I wasn't reading carefully enough. Also I had a much easier time working backwards, for some reason?)

[tahnan]

I was kind of happy with the way it came out, and not just because I learned all kinds of new font-setting Python/Pillow tricks. Certainly I knew that it'd be possible to jump in in the middle, and that it'd be possible to get the answer from a small part of it, but, well, these aren't deeply engineered puzzles. :-)