The Witness Guide to the Swamp's Rotating Platform

The Witness Guide to the Swamp’s Rotating Platform

Do you hate that stupid rotating platform? Do you not understand it? Does it feel like it just rotates in whatever direction it wants? Then this is the guide for you. It contains all possible solutions to the platform, and explains how to make it rotate in the direction you want it to.

Ground Rules

So you’ve made your way through the swamp. The puzzles are fun. Maybe you’ve gotten stuck on good ol’ Swampy Boots. But you’ve gotten to this platform. You solve it. It rotates. Cool, it’s one of those that has several solutions! But then it’s like it has its own will. No matter how much you beg it to rotate in one direction, it goes in the other. How does it work, you ask in anguish?

To start, here’s the infuriating thing as you first encounter it.

For this guide, I’ll be referring to the starting points and exits by A and B, and 1 and 2 respectively, and to the coloured squares as P for purple, R for red, B for blue, and K for black (so as to not conflict with blue). (You might argue that the purple square is magenta, which I agree with, but the path it leads to is purple, so that’s the standard I’ll be following.) Here’s a visualisation.

The guide will use this format for the solutions:

<Starting point><Exit>-<Paths connected>

So, for example, if we’re starting from point A, getting to exit 2, and connecting purple and red, it will be written as A2-PR.

Understood? Brilliant. Let’s get to it!

Solutions

If you just want to know how to get it to rotate the way you want and figure the rest out yourself, go ahead!

As a general rule, going from starting point A to exit 1 and starting point B to exit 2 will turn the platform clockwise, and going from starting point A to exit 2 and starting point B to exit 1 will turn the platform counter-clockwise. In short, A1 and B2 = clockwise; A2 and B1 = counter-clockwise. If you want, that’s all you need to figure everything out!

Otherwise, here are all eight solutions, ordered by which paths they connect:

A1-BP will rotate the platform clockwise.