Daily puzzles: how the Glyph Lock works

Glyph Lock gives everyone the same lock each day. Here is how it is built and how to think about it.

How the daily lock is made

The date (UTC) seeds a random generator that decides how many rings the lock has, which rings are chained together, and a sequence of scramble moves applied to a solved lock. The number of scramble moves is the par. Because the lock is only ever scrambled by legal moves, it is always solvable.

Chained rings

A ring marked ⛓2 is coupled to ring 2: when either turns, the other turns the opposite way. Eight turns of a pair put both back where they began, so you can always “spend” turns on a pair to adjust one ring by a known amount while the other changes predictably.

A strategy that usually works

1. Solve the unchained rings first; they do not disturb anything.
2. For a chained pair, turn until one of the two is solved.
3. Fix the other with any ring that is chained to it, then re-correct the first.

Streaks

Solving the daily lock on consecutive days builds a streak, saved in your browser. Practice locks do not count toward it.