I need help with Lumosity Pet Detective

[PaulBenne]

I've spent 45 minutes on this but I can only solve it in 17 moves. Can anyone do this in 15 or is this problem unsolvable?

[pinkcat]

17 too.

[Foolish Mortal]

Turtle, dog, porcupine, dog house, lean dog, porcupine house, cat, cat house, turtle house, lean dog house.

[PaulBenne]

Thanks!

[Evan]

아주 좋아!

[Foolish Mortal]

O_O Go-mah-wuh.

[pinkcat]

How long did this take you to solve FM?

[Foolish Mortal]

Maybe around 30 seconds

[DirkFrances]

Nice challenge.

[Foolish Mortal]

pinkcat This is a level 20 version on the mobile, so you can see why that wouldn't take too long.
Edit: Oh actually this one isn't too bad either, usually one of the 3 they ask you is particularly hard. Solved under a minute.

[DirkFrances]

Under a minute...

[pinkcat]

Is there a technique to solving this game?

[Evan]

31 moves will take me at least 31 minutes.

[Foolish Mortal]

@PC it can sometimes be useful to try to find out the general direction you have to go, or as it happens in higher levels, the minimal number of times you have to rotate around a certain area to get all of the pets in their houses rather than look at it as individual item groups and get tunnel-visioned. And only after you decipher the general path begin finding out how to achieve it exactly. You can try weighing the costs-benefits in picking up an item immediately or delaying it for later by keeping track of a counter of movement.

So in Paul's case, if I try to pick up that lean dog immediately I have to get it and get back for me to proceed in what would be the general optimal direction I'd have to go. That costs 2, whereas if I delay it till later (as the max capacity of pets is 4 and in that level there were only 5, being able to pick all the pets up isn't an issue), I just have to move away from the turtle to lean dog house which costs only 1) Same thing with the turtle, if I pick it up and place it in the house immediately that costs 2, if I place it later after the cat house, it costs 1. Albeit, you'd have to figure out that you have to delay the turtle before you can realize you should delay the lean dog as well, so there's a play on inhibition as the lean dog question is queried first.

[Evan]

That's pretty good logic.

[DirkFrances]

Even with a good strategy, it's hard to believe you can solve 31 moves in under a minute.

[PaulBenne]

@DF It's possible he could do it in under a minute with a bit of luck, but I don't think it's possible to do it consistently.

I am just amazed he got to this level in this game and solved it too. I would need hours to do it.

[Foolish Mortal]

Paul's right, like what I meant before "this level turned out to be easy," I wasn't actually expecting it to be so: the first path I considered ended up being the correct one.

[AnnaBanana]

Evan 31 moves would take me a few days. Serious.

[AnnaBanana]

Pet detective is an awesome game.

[Guest]

i need help on the pet game the parrot one can you help me
please

[Evan]

If you want help, you need to upload a picture. But you need to be a registered member to upload.

[Guest]

I think the orange dog is meant to be a fox

[Evan]

You could be right!

[Guest]

Turtle, dog, porcupine, dog house, lean dog, porcupine house, cat, cat house, turtle house, lean dog house.

This is literally 17 moves thoigh

[bumpstock]

I count 15?

[Guest]

This is literally 17 moves thoigh

15 for me...

[Guest]

turtle(3/15)(1/4)
yellow dog(4/15)(2/4)
porcupine(5/15)(3/4)
yellow dog house(6/15)(2/4)
blue dog(7/15)(3/4)
cat(10/15)(4/4)
porcupine house(11/15)(3/4)
blue dog house(13/15)(2/4)
turtle house (14/15)(1/4)
cat house(15/15)(0/4)

[azeroth]

Excellent! That top left square route will get 15 moves going either clockwise or anticlockwise. Foolish Mortal's solution was to go clockwise, yours goes anticlockwise.