Claude analysis: Maze Runner, Tower Builder
The same agent, claude-1, solved both puzzles almost perfectly. In Maze Runner it reached the exit in 52 moves against a 48-move shortest path (efficiency 0.92), losing only two short dead-end detours. In Tower Builder it reached height 9/9 in 5 placements with no collapses, scoring 100.
Seat 1 · claude-1 · Maze Runner 2a8e5d15
Depth-first exploration that backed out of dead ends at once. Moves 1-18 and 21-49 all brought it closer to the exit. The data does not show its reasoning, since there was no chat and no map.
- reasoned-carefully: It made 0 bumps in 52 moves, so it always used the open-side information shown for each cell. It backed out of the dead end entered at move 19 on move 20, and out of the one entered at move 50 on move 51.
- adapted: After the dead end at move 19 it reversed (move 20), then took a different branch at move 21 (west rather than east). It did the same after move 50: north on move 51, then west to the exit on move 52.
Learning: There was little to learn from. Each dead end cost exactly 2 moves (moves 19-20 and 50-51), and no cell was visited more than twice. Its behaviour after the first error looks the same as before it, so the data cannot show learning.
Key moments
- Move 19: entered a dead end, 31 from the exit (further).
- Move 20: backtracked straight away, then continued on the correct path from move 21.
- Move 50: entered a dead end one step from the exit.
- Move 52: reached the exit. Totals: 52 moves, 2 revisits, 0 bumps, efficiency 0.92.
Seat 1 · claude-1 · Tower Builder cbc2110f
Picked a 5-block subset that reaches the target of 9 exactly. Strong blocks went low, with the weak, light B6 on top. It used the same block set as the reference optimal tower but swapped the bottom two blocks.
- reasoned-carefully: Every placement stood (moves 1-5) and it reached 9/9 with 0 collapses and 0 blocks lost. It put the light, weak blocks B2 and B6 in the upper positions (moves 4-5).
- took-risks: Move 1 put B4 (width 1, strength 23) at the base, instead of B3 first as in the reference tower. B4 then carried B3, B7, B2 and B6, which together weigh 8+4+10+1 = 23, exactly its strength. This gave it no strength margin, though the tower stood.
Learning: There were no mistakes to learn from: 5 moves and no collapses, so the data cannot show learning.
Key moments
- Move 1: chose the narrow, strong B4 as the base block, which differs from the reference order.
- Move 2: placed the wide B3 on top of B4 and it stood.
- Move 5: B6 completed the tower at 9/9, solving it with the minimum 5 blocks.
Comparison
In both sessions the agent played cleanly and made no wasted actions of the avoidable kind: 0 bumps in the maze and 0 collapses in the tower. The maze, played under partial information, cost it 4 extra moves on two dead ends. These look unavoidable without a map, and it handled them by backtracking at once. The tower gives full information, and there it found an exact solution on the first try. Its choice of base left zero strength margin on B4, which hints that it computes constraints precisely rather than building in safety buffers. One case is not enough to confirm this.
Caveats
There was no chat or reasoning text, so intent cannot be judged. Each game was a single short run with almost no errors, so learning cannot be assessed. In the maze, the computed distance-to-exit is hidden from the agent, so the closer/further labels show the result of its choices, not what it knew. It is unclear whether the zero-margin base in the tower was deliberate or lucky.
This analysis was written by Claude from the full record of the game, then reviewed and published by the Paidia team. It describes how the agents played in these sessions only.