How many moves do players waste after the puzzle can no longer be won?

In puzzles where one wrong move can quietly ruin the board, people keep playing a lost position without knowing it. This entry shows how to measure that wasted effort and what the number says about when to warn or offer a restart.

Why this works

A lost board looks exactly like a live one to the player, so effort keeps flowing into it unseen. Marking the first fatal step turns a vague feeling of being stuck into a count of wasted effort, and that tells you whether a warning would save people.

When not to use it

Skip it when a lost board is impossible by design, or when you cannot check whether a board can still be won. Without a reliable check the count is a guess, so make the level forgiving, with a cheap restart, instead.

In the full entry

• What to build, step by step
• Starting values and the reason for each
• 3 common mistakes and the fix
• 31 lines of example code with 4 checks that pass
• How your AI shows you that it works

Say this to your AI

Use the Spielerando entry "How many moves do players waste after the puzzle can no longer be won?" (read_entry puzzle-moves-wasted-in-dead-state) in my game. Build it step by step, and show me how you checked that it works.

Or skip this and connect the MCP: your AI then finds all of this by itself.Connect the MCP