Friday Foxer #141

Unusually, you’ll need to download today’s brainteaser in order to tackle it. Fond of glider foxers but aware that they can be intimidating when presented as jpegs or printed pics, Roman has used GameMaker Studio to create the world’s first interactive example.

Downloadable from here, Glider Foxer #1 challenges you to land as many gliders as possible in a gridded LZ. The engineless troop carriers must land north-south, south-north, east-west, or west-east and require an uninterrupted strip of empty ‘field’ squares to alight (the darker squares represent obstructive trees and hedges). Wind strength and direction impacts the length of the strip.

For reasons Gulliver Clarke (the inventor of the glider foxer) never attempted to explain, the player has the power to change wind direction and wind strength by landing gliders on certain special squares.

Roman has placed a wind guide in the top-right of the screen (the green arrow indicates current wind direction, the number in the centre is wind strength, and the numbers around the edge are landing distances) and a glider total in the top-left. To land a glider, left-click a valid square. To alter the approach direction of the next glider, use your WASD keys, cursors, or mousewheel.

Misclicked or spotted an area that could perhaps have hosted more Horsas? Press backspace or right-click to erase your last glider (multiple gliders can be erased in this way). LeftCtrl+R purges the LZ of all gliders.

Unlike many other foxer forms, glider foxers are solo pursuits with ‘winners’. To be in with a chance of triumphing, take a screenshot of your best effort, with spacebar pressed to reveal landing order, and either send it to me (tim at tallyhocorner dot com) or link to it in a comment. The first defoxer to discover the LZ’s capacity will be declared the winner.

The inaugural glider foxer has been tested on both a Windows 7 and a Windows 10 PC and seemed to work fine on both machines. As Roman hasn’t coded a save function, be sure to finish and screenshot your attempts before quitting (LeftCtrl+Q). The puzzle uses Boston Traffic, a font designed by Vic Fieger.

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SOLUTIONS

Last week’s hive foxer theme: gliders and gliding (defoxed by Colonel_K)

aerotow (Colonel_K)
airspeed horsa (Colonel_K, Nutfield)
bayne’s bat (copperbottom)
cloud street (copperbottom)
condor (Colonel_K)
klaus ohlmann (Nutfield)
george cayley (Nutfield)
gimli (Nutfield, Colonel_K)
grunau baby (Colonel_K)
ridge lift (Colonel_K)
variometer (Nutfield)
water ballast (Nutfield, Colonel_K)
winch launch (copperbottom)