Tile Rotate

Every tile on the board carries an arrow, and between the tiles sit four pivots. Turning a pivot spins its two-by-two square a quarter-turn — the four tiles ride round to the next corner and each arrow turns with the square it is sitting on. Line all nine arrows up before the turns run out.

The twist is that you do not get to choose which way they line up. Add the nine arrow values together and no turn can ever change that total, so the finish direction is fixed before your first press — the board tells you what it is, and the whole puzzle is getting there in the turns you have.

It runs entirely on your device: 0 network requests, works offline. No ads, no account, nothing to buy, and no betting, money or prizes of any kind.

1. Focus the board — click it, or press Tab until it is focused.
2. Read the finish direction in the status row first. It names the one direction every arrow has to end on, it is worked out from the board you were dealt, and nothing you do can move it.
3. Choose a pivot with the arrow keys. The four tiles it will turn are marked on the board as you move.
4. Press Enter or Space to turn that pivot a quarter-turn clockwise — tiles and arrows together, as one square.
5. Press F or Shift to turn the same pivot the other way, which undoes a clockwise turn exactly. Both directions spend one turn from the budget.
6. Or click a pivot's two round buttons — the clockwise one on the top row, the anticlockwise one below it. One click is one quarter-turn.
7. Watch the small number on each tile. It counts the quarter-turns that tile has taken so far, counted round to zero after four, which is exactly what four turns of one pivot amount to.
8. Finish inside the turn budget, which is the shortest possible solution plus three spare.

How do you solve a rotating tile puzzle?

Work out the finish direction first, then work backwards from the corners. The finish direction is not a choice here — the total of the nine arrow values, counted modulo four, cannot be changed by any turn, and a finished board's total is that same direction, so the board you were dealt already names its own answer. Once you know it, the useful move is to look at the four corner tiles: each corner sits under exactly one pivot, so a corner can only ever be fixed by that pivot, and getting all four corners right first removes most of the choices. After that the edges follow, and the centre tile — which four pivots all touch — is the one you leave to last, because every turn you make moves it. The mistake that costs rounds is spinning a pivot to see what happens: a quarter-turn you did not plan usually has to be paid back with three more, since turning a pivot four times returns the board to exactly where it started.

Is every board actually solvable?

Yes, by construction. The board starts finished — all nine arrows on one direction — and the game then applies eight random quarter-turns to it. Every one of those turns has an exact opposite, so a route home always exists: at worst it is the scramble run backwards. No board is ever generated and then checked, so there is no possibility of an impossible deal slipping through.

The budget is measured rather than guessed. Before the board is handed over, a breadth-first search walks the entire reachable space — three by three with four pivots is small enough to search exhaustively rather than approximately — and reports the true shortest solution. Your budget is that number plus three, so par is always achievable and always tight.

Why can I only finish the board in one direction?

Because of a quantity the rules cannot touch. A turn adds a quarter-turn to four arrows at once, which moves the total of all nine by exactly four — that is, by nothing at all once you count modulo four. So the total is fixed for the whole round. A finished board has all nine arrows on the same direction, and nine of anything counted modulo four is one of it, so the total you can read off the opening position is the finish direction itself. That is why the board is three by three and not four by four: on an even board the total is always zero and tells you nothing, and you would be left guessing which way to aim.

What does the small number on each tile mean?

The quarter-turns that tile has taken so far, counted round to zero after four. It is the honest record of your own turns, and it is most useful on the corners: each corner tile sits under exactly one pivot, so the four corner numbers are the four pivots' net turn counts. A corner showing zero means that pivot has done nothing at all, however many times you pressed it — four quarter-turns of one pivot is the identity, and turns spent that way are simply gone. Seeing that as a number is a lot faster than noticing it in the arrows.

Is there any money, betting or in-app purchase in this?

None, and there never will be. No currency, no prizes, nothing to buy, no wager of any kind — the game has no way to take a payment and no server to take one with.

Do I need to see colour to play this?

No. Every arrow is drawn as an arrow glyph and named in words, the turn count is a digit, and the tiles under the selected pivot are marked with an outline and a bracket as well as a tint. The puzzle is complete in greyscale and in forced-colours mode.

Can I play it with a keyboard or a screen reader?

Both. The arrow keys move between pivots, Enter or Space turns the selected pivot clockwise, and F or Shift turns it back. Every pivot button announces the four arrow directions it carries, and the live region reads out the finish direction, how many arrows already point that way and how many turns are left.

Does it work offline?

Yes. Once the page has loaded once, the whole game is on your device — the board, the solver that sets the budget, and your progress. There is no server involved in play at any point.

Nine tiles, four pivots, four directions. Boards are dealt from eight random quarter-turns and rated by the solver at five to seven turns from home, with a budget of three spare — enough for one wrong route, not enough to spin blindly. The board is three tiles wide, so it fits a narrow phone without scrolling, and a round is a minute or two.

Only the turn count is shown, never a clock: this is a planning puzzle, and a timer would reward guessing quickly over thinking once.

Ring Turn is the other rotation puzzle here and asks the same question from the other side — what a turn costs you elsewhere on the board. Light Grid rewards the same discipline in a different algebra: pressing a cell twice is nothing, so what matters is which cells you pressed an odd number of times. Parity Bits goes straight at the idea underneath both of them, that a quantity the rules cannot change is often the fastest route to the answer.

Bookmark this page (Ctrl+D, or ⌘D on Mac) or install the app — it works offline the next time you need it.