This puzzle took us about one hour and 41 minutes.  Some other good teams seemed to struggle more on it.  We had some ideas about how it worked, plodded along, threw out some of our early assumptions, and got it right in the end, without too much trouble.

The puzzle was fun to work on, but didn’t have much of an “Aha”. It more or less worked as advertised.  

Anyway, the puzzle is here and our solving log is after the jump.

Log:

0:00:00

Opening puzzle

0:01:48

Printing issues…

0:04:02

So what’s our goal? “It’s your turn”? are all the pieces on the board our enemy’s? Are there two teams there?

0:05:05

I’m going to assume they’re all our enemy, for now.

0:05:34

We have one of each weapon

0:05:48

So, we fire all 6 and kill everyone?

0:06:48

J: If all the pieces are our enemy’s, why do we care how the pieces move?

0:06:52

oh, after each weapon, they all move?

0:08:08

Dunno what the 55hp guys do if they make it to the edges. Stop, or we kill them before that.

0:08:58

J: There are only 6 letters… how do we get an answer. Can’t we just guess? BATTLES?

0:09:05

Or BEATLES or STABLES

0:09:12

J: Um… it’s a warfare puzzle. I think BATTLES is much more apropos. Hell, why not? You always say they give us 100 guesses for a reason.

0:09:33

J: Suprisingly, wrong.

0:10:06

What the hell, throwing it into the letter bank tool at NPL website.

0:11:18

73 items. I won’t guess them all.. maybe a couple.

0:11:24

J: The tank furthest to the left and the soldier to his right are going to occupy the same square next turn, aren’t they?

0:12:03

It’s not BASEBALL BAT. maybe it’s 9 letters (like down the diagonal, J points out)

0:12:55

We tried SEATBELTS and TABLESALT.

0:13:06

Ok, let’s solve for real.

0:19:44

Let’s look at towers they don’t move   [My first key solving strategy decision]

0:20:22

the 110 needs the T and L and (A or S)

0:20:33

the 70 needs the L

0:21:08

So the peak of the L is either the 70, or one square up and left.

0:21:51

if it’s at the 70, it kills lots of other towers too. looks better.

0:23:02

The T has to hit all 3 60 towers, plus the 110.

0:24:02

It can do that in two spots. the 3-long NW-SE diagonal

0:26:56

I’m betting you read out the NW-SE diagonal of the 9x9. so to get some Ts, let’s extend the T up not down. so the 60-110 is the lower of the 3-long NE-SW diagonals in the T-shape.

0:29:01

That makes our long diagonal ??TLT?L?? assuming L fires after T

0:32:35

J: The E has to go in column 6. we need another 20 on the turret in column 6. The A will give the extra 10 to the two diagonally adjacent turrets. And the S will give the extra 10 to the remaining turret.

0:35:39

Or the S gets all the 60/110 turrets. but even then E is in column 6.

0:36:13

We know when the L was fired, becasue of the 45 tank.

0:36:39

It has to be fifth. It’s the only weapon that can give the 45 its 20.

0:39:50

J: The B has to hit the 75 tank in the upper right, and the A

0:41:39

A needs to be in the diagonal of the top right 50 guy, so it’s fired on move 2, to hit the 75 tank.

0:44:17

J: we have a problem, the 75 tank gets hit by L, and has 55 left… won’t work

0:44:31

That’s only a problem if it’s alive when we fire #5.

0:45:25

The A and B have to hit it to get to exactly 75  [At this point, we figured damage totals would exactly match… since they don’t have to, this led us down some blind alleys]

0:46:38

Ok, the two dudes in the top left… one has to get hit by A and one by E. So E has to fire 5th or 6th. So 6th.

0:48:00

and it has to be in the bottom square if it hits the 45. The bottom 2 squares, anyway.

0:50:45

So, the other two 50hp dudes need to be hit by A since they won’t be hit by E… and they can’t be.

0:52:30

We’re noticing all 5 soldiers need a 50 point blast (at least)

0:54:19

4 are on the same color and can get hit by A. the 5th needs to get hit by E.. on move 5. hmmm.

0:54:58

J: So, we were wrong about L, L can’t fire 5th. It doesn’t hit the 45hp tank.

0:56:14

We have proven that E fires 5th and L fires 5th. That’s not good. working it out.

0:59:40

Perhaps the 45 tank can be killed by B (50 damage)  [Starting to throw out the “exact damage” idea, since both E and L have to fire 5th otherwise]

1:02:01

In fact, my A proposal (row 6 col5 on #2) gives it 25 damage.

1:03:24

So, A fires 6nd, E fires 5th.

1:06:26

B has to hit the 100hp tank in col 3. and col 5.

1:06:34

To affect the main diagonal, it has to fire #1, #3 (overwriting the E in the main diagonal) or #5 (already taken) #1 puts it on the main diagonal.

1:06:47

So, it fires from somewhere on the main diagonal, cols 5-9, on shot 1.

1:08:52

the 55 guy who starts in col 5 is getting away. TLEB can’t hit him. A gives him 50 on turn 2. S needs to hit him on his path

1:09:16

J: We need S to hit the leftmost turrets.

1:10:30

Maybe B fires #4, from col 6 row 9. [We wound up moving B around the most]

1:11:49

Let’s make it so

1:14:43

The other 55 guy needs getting by the T, so the T is first or 3rd.

1:17:23

S seems to be locked into the square with the 110 turret in the lower left.

1:18:23

J: What’s killing the 75 HP tank in the upper right? It needs L, so L fires 3rd.

1:20:17

so, we have ?ALBE?

1:21:26

if S fires first and T 6th, we’ll miss the 55hp guy in row 3.

1:21:37

So, T fires first, and the order is TALBES.

1:26:16

Firing all 6, in order, doesn’t leave much interesting.

1:28:38

Maybe we should record where things die, and what letter kills them.  [This would have been a cool way for the puzzle to work. It didn’t work this way.]

1:30:06

T kills nothing. A kills 2 50 dudes and a turret.

1:34:14

Crap. nothing seems to kill the 75 hp tank.  [Always good to do a double check. Marking where everything died caught our error. I think I had moved the B weapon to the wrong place, earlier.]

1:35:17

I think we changed B to kill the 55 guy from r4 col 5. but he’s already dead form T and A

1:36:40

Oh, phew. we can just move B to row 8 col 5. it’s still 4th

1:37:34

J is redoing what the field looks like after all 6 fire.

1:41:10

J: solved it! the field spelled BATTLELAB