Unscrew

What is Unscrew?

Unscrew is a physics puzzle on a board of one material. Plates of the same material, on one or more layers, are screwed to it with chrome screws. Pull a screw and the plate tells you at once what holds it. Two screws keep it fixed. One screw lets it swing under its own weight until it hangs straight down or lands on a screw, a stud or another plate. No screws and it drops off the board. The board is cleared when every plate has fallen. The catch is that a pulled screw never disappears: it goes back into a free hole, and free holes are exactly what the board does not have enough of.

There are ten materials, each with its own board and its own four tones: wood, metal, copper, rust, leather, concrete, marble, ice, plastic and carbon. The plates come in forty shapes, from a two-cell bar to a nine-cell plate, with discs, triangles and a diamond among them, and each shape swings the way its weight says.

How to play

Tap a screw to pull it. The board reacts immediately, before you decide where the screw goes. A plate left with one screw swings, a plate left with none drops, and the holes those plates were covering open up as they leave.

The screw stays in your hand and every hole that can take it lights up. A hole is legal when nothing solid covers it: the screw has to pass through a hole in every plate lying over that spot. Tap a lit hole to put the screw there, or drag the screw onto it. If it passes through plates, they are pinned again. Putting a screw back where it came from is allowed, and it still counts as a move.

Every board is proven by a solver before it ships. The par is the proven optimum in placed screws. Match it for three stars, finish within two moves of it for two stars, and any finish earns one. There is no timer and no move budget: the only way to lose is to hold a screw with nowhere to put it.

Strategy tips

Read the swing before you pull. A plate on one screw turns toward its heavy side, and where it stops decides which holes it covers next. A swing that lands over your only free hole is the classic trap.

Pull for cascades. A screw shared by two or three plates drops all of them at once and pays a cascade bonus. The holes under a falling plate open in the same move, often giving you the parking spot you were missing.

Count free holes before every pull, not after. If the board has one free hole, the screw you pull must either go back there or open a new one on its way down. Re-pinning a plate on purpose costs a move but keeps the run alive.

FAQ

How is my score calculated?

Every plate that leaves the board pays 100 points plus 40 per cell. Two plates dropped by one pull add 150, three or more add 400. Clearing the board adds a bonus that starts at par plus three moves and shrinks by 60 points for every move you spend, so a clean line is worth real points. If you get stuck, the points for the plates you dropped stay, but there is no clear bonus and no stars.

Can the puzzle become unsolvable?

Yes, and that is the loss. Every board starts solvable, but pulling in the wrong order can cover every free hole while a screw is still in your hand. The game says so immediately and offers the board again.

Do the materials play differently?

The rules are the same on every material; what changes is the board, the plates and the light. Each material has its own test board today, and the campaign grows from there.