Author's walkthrough for Tours Roust Torus, by Andrew Schultz
This is a sequel in spirit to Shuffling Around ("Adventure Unaverted") and A Roiling
Original. The mechanics of point-scoring commands are the same.
You may see clues about what to do by "You feel half the person you were." Or "You
aren't half the leader you should have been." There are other clues, such as the tsetse
fly that appears once you visit all the rooms. So the question is: what to do with everything? You
may notice room names are repeated or, in the course of exploring them all, one seems a bit
different: Prep Area. It's almost repeated.
The clue here is that every word to find, then, has an even number of each letter. So, starting with
Ehs Ehs,
> SHEESH
> A
It doesn't matter which way you go at first, or what order you do things in. There is some
different text based on if you solve on room before another, but nothing too big.
In Prep Area ...
> REAPPEAR
> A
In Grain Grain ...
> ARRAIGNING
In Meta Meat ...
> TEAMMATE
In Tines Inset ...
> INTESTINES
In Pechan Pechan ...
> HAPPENCHANCE
In Latte Latte ...
> TATTLETALE
Now "Noon? No! No!" is a bit of a reverse on the puzzles you saw. You need to say
> ON
This starts a dance around the torus. If you mess up, you can try again. You cannot go to a square
directly next to you.
The problem of traversing the heptagonal map to open the center can be reconfigured as one of
modular arithmetic. You start at 0, and you must touch rooms 1-6 with various jumps. Note you can go
2 or 3 clockwise or counterclockwise, but after the first move, it is fixed. You cannot step on the
square you previously did, and you have to make a move of length 2 and one of length 3 at some point
in your walk. We're going to assume you only make moves of +2 and +3.
This can actually be done by trial and error, and it is not too bad. It seems like there are 2^6=64
choices (well, 62, without all-2 or all-3), and you could start crossing off ones that don't
work, but you can plan ahead to narrow things down quite a bit.
The key thing to note is that a 2-3-2 is never permissible as you'd have gone 7. The second
thing to note is 3-3-2-3-3, or any sequence of 5 moves with just one 2, is impermissible as well.
Here is the trial and error.
Let's start with 2. Then if the next move is 2, we get 2-2 and each subsequent one must be 2.
So we have 2-3. But now 3 must be the third move, and 2-3-3 leaves us with a branch. What are the
next two numbers? 3-3 makes 14 in the first 5, but 2-2 makes 7 in moves 3-5. That leaves a 3-2. But
now what is in slot 6? If 2, 4-5-6 sum to 7. If 3, 2-6 sum to 14. So we can't start with 2.
With 3, we have a different problem. 3-3-3-3 to start means 3-3 must be the last moves, or we have a
sum to 14 at the first 2. 3-3-3-2 to start gives a dilemma, too. Move 5 as 3 gives 14 in 1-5. Move 5
as 2 give 7 in 3-5.
So go with 3-3-2. 3 is in the next slot, but again we have a contradiction! 2 in slot 5 gives a
2-3-2, but 3 gives 3-3-2-3-3.
So 3-2 must be the way. Then 3-2-3-3 is forced, as we'd have 2-2-3 or 2-3-2 otherwise. But then
3-2-3-3-3 would be illegal, so 3-2-3-3-2 and then 3-2-3-3-2-3. If we check this out, it hits 3, 5,
1, 4, 6 and 2. So we get everything!
The problem can thus be reformed for math-o-philes as "How many ways do we make a sequence of
X+2 digits from 3 and 3-3-2? ... because we can just chop off the front 3 from here to get all
possible 6-jump sequences with no 2 in a row. For N digits, we get a recursion of f(n) = f(n-1) +
f(n-3) since anything with N digits comes from (n-3 sequence) + 3-3-2 or (n-1 sequence) + 3. The
base case is F(2)=F(1)=F(0)=1. So for 6 jumps we get F(8)=9.
> AAA
> AA
> AAA
> AAA
> AA
> AAA
(Or BBB! It doesn't matter.)
Now you can go in! There are some optional puzzles, but changing Scene, Scene is the main one.
You now have the option of winning right away, or you can pick off the other things.
> SENESCENCE
Wins right away. But wait! If you LISTEN a lot...
> DEEDED
This gives you five alternative puzzles. They're mostly just for challenge.
Item Time gives ...
> MIMETITE
Reps, Reps gives ...
> PREPRESS
Finally, to leave, you can see...
> SENESCENCE