Windpost advanced tips: reading levels like a puzzle setter

If you have already read our Windpost rules guide, you know how flowers, links, logs, letters and windmills work, and you have a method for tracing a route backwards from the house. This guide is for the next step: the habits that make the later chapters feel less like trial and error and more like reading a puzzle.

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1. Count taps per colour, not per flower

Because flowers of the same colour always turn together, a tap is really a turn of a whole colour group. A level's real "moves" are how many quarter turns each colour gets, from 0 to 3.

That changes how you count. A level with nine flowers in three colours has only three choices to make, each with four options. When you plan, write it as "pink 1, blue 0, yellow 2" rather than thinking flower by flower. The best number shown at the top is simply the smallest total of those group turns that delivers the letter.

It also explains why a level can have many flowers and still be short. Some flowers are there only because they share a colour with a flower on the route.

2. The best number is a clue

The "best" count tells you a lot before you touch anything.

• Best 1 or 2: almost every flower already points the right way. Look for the single group that is out of place. Chapter 3, letter 1 and Chapter 5, letter 1 both need only one tap.
• Best higher than the number of colours on the route: at least one group needs two or three turns. Remember that a "turn left" costs three taps.
• High best with lots of trees: the trees usually leave only one corridor. Find the corridor first and the flowers follow.

The longest single solve in the game is Chapter 2, letter 6, which needs seven taps across four colours. If you get stuck there, it is not you; it is simply the most demanding letter before the tunnels arrive.

3. Some letters have exactly one answer

On several letters there is only one combination of turns that works. Chapter 1, letter 4 and Chapter 2, letter 4 are like this, as are most of the early tunnel, two-letter and windmill levels, and the very last letter of the game.

On a one-answer level, guessing is slow. Instead, look for the most constrained square: a flower boxed in by trees, a house that can only be entered from one side, or a dandelion in a dead end. Fix that flower first. On these levels one correct deduction usually unlocks the next.

Other letters are forgiving. Chapter 1, letter 3 has hundreds of working setups. If you deliver it but miss the third star, the problem is the tap count, not the route.

4. Undo is your scratchpad

Wind is limited to the best number plus two, but Undo gives each tap back. Use that freely:

1. Tap a colour group a few times to see where every flower in that group ends up.
2. Undo back to the start.
3. Only commit to taps once you know the full plan.

The letter only moves when you press Fly, so all of this costs nothing.

5. Dandelions decide the shape

From Chapter 2 on, the letter must pass every dandelion. These are the strongest constraint on a level, stronger than the house. Before thinking about the mailbox, connect the dandelions to each other in the only order that makes sense, then attach the two ends.

Stone arrows near a dandelion are almost always part of the intended route. The puzzle setter put a fixed piece there for a reason.

6. Hollow logs: draw the shortcut in your head

In Maple Town, picture each pair of matching logs as one square. The letter keeps its direction through the log, so what matters is the direction it enters, not where the exit log sits.

A useful check: if a route seems to need the letter to change direction inside a tunnel, it is the wrong route. Put the flower that turns it before the entrance or after the exit.

Later chapters use two pairs of logs. Trace each pair separately, and check that the letter does not fall into the wrong pair on its way somewhere else.

7. Two letters: solve the harder one first

In Snowy Cedar Woods and after, two letters share the same flowers. Plan the letter whose route has fewer options first, often the one with dandelions or a narrow house approach. Then see whether the other letter can reach its house with the flowers left as they are, and adjust only colours the first letter does not use.

Remember the order: red flies first, then blue. Roof colour must match envelope colour, and arriving at the other house counts as the wrong house.

8. Windmills: count crossings

At Lighthouse Harbor a windmill turns a quarter turn clockwise every time a letter passes through it, and it resets each time you press Fly. You cannot tap a windmill.

Two habits help:

• Count how many times the first letter crosses each windmill. Once means the second letter meets it turned 90 degrees; twice means 180.
• A windmill on only one route is just a flower you cannot tap. Treat it as fixed for that letter.

Some later letters have three or four windmills. Write down each one's direction for the second letter before planning its route.

9. Spend hints on links, not on tunnels

You get three hints per chapter. Tunnels and windmills become clear once you trace them; colour links are where people loop. Save hints for a level where one colour group keeps knocking another flower off your route.

10. Chasing gold stamps

A gold-edged stamp needs a first-flight delivery using exactly the best number of taps. To give yourself the best chance:

• plan the whole route with taps and undos before the first Fly
• count your total group turns and compare it with "best" before you release the letter
• if you are over, look for a group you are turning three times; there may be a route that turns it once

If a chapter's star total is short of the 12 you need, the letters with the smallest best number are the quickest to bring up to three stars.

Lighting the towns

Each delivered letter lights a lamp in the chapter's town. Light all six in a chapter and you earn that chapter's postcard in your album, alongside the stamps. It is a nice reason to go back and finish a chapter properly before moving on.