games and stuff to play around with
games and stuff to play around with
Click tiles to build a wall. Trap the cat before it escapes the board.
Cat Trap is the classic circle-the-cat puzzle. A cat sits in the middle of a hexagonal board, and every tile you click becomes a wall. After each of your moves the cat takes a step toward the edge, always choosing its shortest escape route. Your job is to close the ring of walls around it before it slips off the board. It sounds trivial. It is not.
The cat isn't wandering randomly. It computes the shortest path to freedom every single turn, so a loose wall with gaps does nothing. The winning approach is to think in perimeters: start your wall several tiles away from the cat rather than adjacent to it, and close the circle evenly instead of chasing the cat around one side of the board.
Use the pre-placed random walls to your advantage, they're free segments of your fence. Watch which direction the cat commits to and reinforce that side one step ahead of it, not behind it. Most players lose their first few games, then something clicks. Your win count is saved in your browser, so build that streak.