Robot Route Program it for one maze. Teach it for every maze. Find where each one breaks.

1. Quick start — read this, start playing

   • Every move is: face that way, then step one square. A = ahead, L = left, R = right, B = back. Hit a wall or the edge and the robot crashes.
   • Act 1: in pencil, write a program for Training maze 1 on your Program Strip. No touching the robot. Then run it. Reached the goal? +2. Now run the same program on Test maze 1.
   • Act 2: walk the robot by hand through Training mazes 1-4. Before every step, look at what's open next to the robot, find that row on your Habit Sheet, and tally the move you make.
   • Then test: on Test mazes 1-3 the robot moves alone, doing the move with the most tallies in each situation. Reach the goal within 30 steps? +3.
   • That's the whole game. Everything below is for when a question comes up.

2. Setup

   • Lay out the Maze Book. Put the robot token on the start square of Training maze 1, its arrow pointing the way the printed arrow points.
   • Play solo, or split into two teams. Each team takes one Habit Sheet table and one Program Strip.
   • The robot only ever knows one thing: which of the three squares next to it (left, ahead, right) are open. It can't see the goal.

3. Act 1 — program it

   • Everyone writes a program for Training maze 1, one move per box, in pencil. Don't touch the robot while you write. The shortest one is 16 moves.
   • Run each program move by move. Hit a wall or the edge = crash, and the run is over.
   • Reached the goal? +2.
   • Now put the robot on Test maze 1 and run the same program. Watch what happens. A program only knows the maze it was written for.

4. Act 2 — teach it

   • Walk the robot through Training mazes 1, 2, 3 and 4, one at a time. Take turns moving it. Choose any route you like.
   • Before every step: look left, ahead and right of the robot. Find the matching row on your Habit Sheet, then tally the move you're about to make.
   • A situation not on the sheet? Then the robot has nothing to go on there. Don't tally it.
   • Tip: pick one habit and show it every time. A robot shown three different things in the same situation learns nothing useful.

5. Test it

   • Put the robot on Test maze 1. Nobody steers now. Each step, find the situation's row and make the move with the most tallies.
   • No row for it, no tallies in it, or a tie: the robot freezes. That run is over.
   • Goal reached within 30 steps? +3. Still wandering at step 30? It's going in circles. Stop.
   • Run Test mazes 2 and 3 the same way. Most points wins. Ties share the win.

6. What the robot teaches

   • Program: exact steps for one problem. Perfect there, useless anywhere else.
   • Learning: a rule picked up from examples. It works on mazes it never saw. That's the whole reason to learn instead of program.
   • Only what it has seen: Test maze 2 has a crossroads. No training maze does, so there's no row for it, and a habit-taught robot freezes. Real AI gets stuck the same way on situations missing from its training data.
   • Edge cases: a habit that works almost everywhere can still fail badly. On Test maze 3 the keep-the-wall-on-your-right habit goes round in circles with the goal two squares away.
   • The robot can't see the goal. Neither can a learned rule. It only knows what its sensors tell it.

7. Variants

   • Left hand: train the keep-the-wall-on-your-left habit instead. It beats Test maze 3, which the right-hand habit never can. Neither habit is smarter. They fail in different places.
   • More data: add a crossroads row to your sheet in pencil, teach it on Test maze 2, then try again. That's retraining.
   • Shortest program race: who can solve each training maze in the fewest moves?

Downloads

• Instruction sheet

  Plain paper · 1 page · 8.5 × 11

  One 8.5 × 11 page for the table — quick start, setup, turns, and scoring.

  Open Download

• Full rules

  Plain paper · duplex · 2 pages

  Same game, longer type — plus what the cards teach and the variants.

  Open Download

• Maze Book

  Plain paper · 2 pages

  Four training mazes, three test mazes, and robot tokens to cut out.

  Open Download

• Habit Sheet

  Plain paper · 1 page · pencil

  Two teams' tally tables (what the robot learns) and Program Strips (what you write).

  Open Download