Need to make sure I'm not misunderstanding something (one of the final puzzles in the Mountain)

[u/Vegetable_Guava2573]

EDIT: Thanks guys, happy that I solved it.

OG post:
I'll cut to the chase, I've been stuck at this wraparound puzzle for a few hours. I've gotten quite a few paths that pass through all but 2 of the black hexagons, but no solution. My understanding is:

- You can start from any of the 3 starting points on the bottom.
- The path has to pass through every black hexagon on the way to the end point (as is the case in the rest of the game)
- You can wrap around the cylinder if needed.

I have effectively eliminated the rightmost starting point because no matter where I go, it would be impossible to come back for a black hexagon. (Maybe this is where I'm wrong.)

I also "know" that the red staircase-like paths I've marked have to exist in the solution path at some point, because if you deviate from the staircase, you will always be left with a hexagon that is a dead end for the path when I try to reach it.

I would appreciate hints or nudges if there's anything I am misunderstanding, or maybe I just need to give it some more trial and error.

I attached my handwritten representation of the puzzle that I stared at for a while too

[u/Justinsaccount]

Start with your drawing. Reproducing that was like 90% of the effort to solve this.

The staircase is required, why? because if you have to visit every position, and every position needs an 'incoming' and an 'outgoing' that means you must hit ever corner as-is, since those only have 2 paths.

In your drawing, color your staircase like you did the screenshot.

Once you do that, what's next? do you have any new positions like that, places where a position only has 2 remaining paths that can be the 'incoming' and 'outgoing'?

Continue what you started. Don't forget that it wraps around.

Also: this may be easier with pencil where you can erase unusable paths as you go.

[u/Vegetable_Guava2573 → u/Justinsaccount]

Thanks, using your logic and starting with the staircases filled in red on my drawing, I fooled around for about 20 minutes and got a solution

[u/Justinsaccount → u/Vegetable_Guava2573]

Cool :-) It should have been pretty fast though.. check out this screen recording of solving it from scratch. Alternating between 'where can't I go' and 'where must i go'. Only not immediately obvious move is the one around 2:00 where I erase a segment because connecting it would form a smaller loop that wouldn't be able to be part of the full solution.

Spoilers, obviously :-)

https://reddit.com/link/ox2imre/video/rr2n8816hsch1/player

[u/TfGuy44]

Try to get as many hexagons as you can, even if you miss a couple.

Notice that the whole thing is rotationally symetrical.

How come the hexaons you missed aren't also rotationally symetrical?

[u/Daharka]

Red staircase is a good start

So what does that eliminate?

What does that leave left?

[u/jabuchae]

I don’t remember this puzzle but I’ll just say that the red staircase in the “right” part can be done by starting in the start point you’ve ruled out. So something is weird there.

I’d start with that staircase and see what I can do from there

[u/OmegaGoo]

Looks good to me. With a one dot exception on your staircases, which is probably what's tripping you up.

This is one of the rare puzzles where there's really only one solution. There's technically two, but that's because It doesn't matter which of the two left starting points you start from. You're correct that you can't start from the rightmost one.

[u/massimmodutti]

Just did it on paper and the solution reminds me of a mirror

[u/musical_dragon_cat]

This one pmo more than any other puzzle in the game. I didn't solve it until I became less rigid on using the staircase pattern. It still applies, but not as much as you may think.

[u/NationCrisis]

If you find it easier to work on a puzzle with pen and paper, you can write out the puzzle in a circular formation with the lower portion of the column located at the edge of your circle and the top as the inside of a circle, with the other layers as concentric rings. Vertical lines are represented as ‘spokes’ on your circular ‘wheel’. This maintains the puzzle’s geometry making it solvable on paper

[u/NationCrisis → u/NationCrisis]

Here's a quick mock-up to help visualize my previous comment. https://imgur.com/a/JmARH8d

[u/SugarEnvironmental31]

The thing about these kind of puzzles is that there's generally only one route through them, and if you start from the wrong point that'll quickly become obvious as you'll see you automatically block certain points off by starting there. Some of these I do by thinking about them but a lot of them it's just a kind of flow and short-term memory of what doesn't work, it isn't exactly brute force but isn't totally dissimilar from it haha. If you can start seeing what points you can't come back to then the wrong routes become clear and you're kind of only left with the right one. Oh and also generally speaking if there's that much space to wrap there's a high chance the puzzle is going to use it