Prompt 4: Describe what it was like solving a single level (tell us which level!).
The level that I am going to talk about solving was level 4, the first level that really made me stop and think about the rules in the game. The first thing that I tried to do to solve this puzzle was to walk over all of the darker spots on the floor once and then zig zag from the top row to the bottom row over all of the regular lighter brown spots. My strategy was almost aimless as I was just walking over every tile of the level and hoping that it would mop up the entire floor. I tried this multiple times because of how this worked for the more simple, previous 3 levels of the game. This led to me having to undo the level multiple times and realizing that stepping over all tiles in a level simply does not allow you to win due to the gaps between spots that are left. Furthermore, I realized the rule that in order to mop up all of the spots, you must not leave any gaps in the floor where there were previous dirt spots first. This led me immediately to work backwards from my previous strategy. I decided to still get rid of all the darker spots first, and then once the gaps were created when walking from one patch of darker spots to the other, filling those gaps in again with lighter brown spots and then walking over the entire remaining patch of lighter brown spots. Moreover, it seemed like it was easiest to simply create multiple rows and/or columns of spots together instead of trying to walk in straight lines as this grouping allowed for moving in a zigzag motion. Lastly, considering that I have played this level multiple times, I know that there are many solutions to the problem as I took many different paths when solving the level. Overall, I spent the longest amount of time on this level in order to figure out the rules in the game and how to use the rules to manipulate the tiles in order to create a solvable path. With that said, subsequent levels were much easier and faster to solve.