Seesaw

📖 Strategy guide: How to balance Seesaw fast: budget the sides before you place

How to play

A beam rests on a pivot, with five slots on each side numbered by their distance from the pivot. The dark weights are fixed. Tap a weight in the tray, then tap an empty slot to put it there; tap a weight you placed to pick it up again, or tap it while holding another weight to swap the two. Every weight pushes its side down by its value times its distance: a 4 in slot 3 counts 4 × 3 = 12, exactly what a 6 in slot 2 counts on the other side, so the two cancel. Place all the tray weights so that the left and right totals match. Both totals are shown under the beam, and the beam leans towards the heavier side. The clock starts with your first placement; faster is better.

Daily, levels and challenges

The daily puzzle is the same for everyone and changes at midnight UTC: two fixed weights and four to place. Easy has three weights to place; Hard has a single fixed weight and six to place. Your daily time counts once and is kept on this device, so coming back later shows the solved beam. ⚔️ copies a link to the exact puzzle so a friend can race your time. ↻ clears the beam but leaves the clock running.

How the puzzles are made

Each puzzle starts from a finished beam: weights from 1 to 9 are dropped on random slots until the arrangement happens to balance. Some of those weights stay on the beam as the fixed ones and the rest go to the tray, so there is always at least one solution. A search then counts every way of placing the tray that balances. Puzzles with too many answers are thrown away, and so are those where the tray holds the same weight three times or where mirroring equal weights would be enough. The limit depends on the level, because six weights on nine free slots allow far more answers than three on eight. Most puzzles have more than one solution, and any of them wins.

Tips

• Place the heaviest weight first: it has the fewest slots where it does not overshoot.
• Work with the gap between the totals. If the left leads by 7, the right needs 7 more than whatever you still add on the left.
• Slot 1 is for fine tuning: a weight there adds only its own value.
• An odd gap can only be closed by an odd weight in an odd slot; every other product is even.