Turing Machine is a logic puzzle game disguised as a punchcard computer, or perhaps the other way around.
What Is Turing Machine?
Turing Machine is a logic puzzle game for 1 to 4 players, ages 14 and up, and takes about 20 minutes to play. It retails for $39.99 and is available in stores and directly from Hachette Boardgames, which distributes Scorpion Masqué titles in the US. The age rating is primarily because there is some rules complexity in the logic, but you could easily adapt the rules to play cooperatively with your kids to help them learn logic if they aren’t able to figure things out on their own.
Turing Machine was designed by Fabien Gridel and Yoann Levet and published by Scorpion Masqué, with illustrations by Sébastien Bizos.
Turing Machine Components
Here’s what comes in the box:
- 45 Punch Cards
- Punch Card stand
- 48 Criteria cards
- 95 Verification cards
- Machine tile
- 4 Player Aid screens
- Dry-Erase marker
- Notepad
Each punch card is square, with a tab at the top indicating a value from 1 to 5, and a pattern of holes. At three of the corners, there are larger holes—a circle, a square, and a triangle—that serve as an alignment pattern to make sure you match it up correctly with the verification card. Each card also has the tab in one of three positions (left, middle, right), which are also indicated by a different color and shape. There’s a little cardboard stand that holds all of the punch cards.
The verification cards are large square cards that show a grid of 133 little red Xs and green checkmarks, along with the three larger alignment symbols. When you form a three-digit number by taking three punch cards (one for each position) and overlay them, you will get a single square hole showing, which then lines up with the verification card to reveal either an X or a checkmark. These cards—along with the criteria that go with them—are what make the game tick, and they’re just a really brilliant design. On the back of the cards are checkboxes for A to F, so that you can mark them with the dry-erase marker—I will note that the marks can rub off easily so keep that marker handy.
The criteria cards list various things that you can test for, like whether the blue triangle number is odd or even, or the purple circle number’s relation to 4. They get more complex, too, and in some cases, they can be testing for a number of different things, so you have to first figure out which test they’re even running. We’ll get into that later.
The player screens are one of the only components that I feel could have been done better in this game. There’s a player aid on the back, which is nice, but the biggest issue is that the screens are much too small. If you set up the screen and put your note sheet behind it, not only does half of the sheet extend past the sides of the screen, but the screen is short enough that (depending on the size of the table) it’s quite likely other players can see parts of your sheet over the top of the screen as well. And, of course, if you decide you actually need to refer to the player aid, you’ll have to hunch over or tip your screen, at which point you’ve just revealed your whole sheet.
There are several little touches that I really appreciated, as somebody who likes to keep game components organized and cards oriented correctly. The criteria cards are numbered at the top and bottom of each card, and the number is oriented right-side-up on both ends, so you can easily spot a card that’s turned the wrong way. The verification cards have numbers on four different edges—these are distinguished by both color and a character, with a corresponding color tab on the card back. All four numbers will be in numerical order together, and keeping the cards sorted will make it a lot easier to set up each puzzle. I’m not entirely sure why four different numbers are needed per card—my guess is just some more obfuscation, so you don’t get somebody who says “Oh, test 35? I remember that gives me a ‘yes’ for 254.”
The box itself is a little verification test, too: the box lid has a row of square cut-outs across the top edge, and the box bottom has four icons on each edge. If the lid is on the box correctly (that is, the lid orientation matches the back cover), then you get a green checkmark—otherwise, you get a red X. The box lid also has the game title cut out, which means if you have the mostly green rulebook cover on the top, correctly oriented, the title will appear in green; otherwise, you’ll see bits of text peeking through. I suppose not everyone cares about that sort of thing, but those little features tickled me when I saw them.
How to Play Turing Machine
You can download a copy of the rulebook here.
The Goal
The goal is to be the first to deduce a 3-digit code based on testing various criteria.
Setup
Put the machine tile in the center of the play area, and give each player a note sheet and a player aid (and a writing utensil). Put the punch cards in the stand and set them nearby.
Then, pick a problem to solve. The rulebook includes 20 puzzles, but there’s a website that will generate countless more puzzles, including a daily challenge, or even more challenging game modes. The puzzle will tell you which criteria cards to find, and which verification card goes with each criterion. Set the criteria cards face-up next to the machine tile in the spaces indicated, and then place the corresponding verification cards face-down next to them. (Mark the verification card backs with the dry-erase marker to help keep track of where each one goes.)
Gameplay
Each round, players will play simultaneously. You choose a 3-digit number, and up to 3 of the available criteria to test your number, making notes on your sheet.
Once you’ve chosen your 3-digit number to test, take the corresponding punch cards and stack them together. Then, you take the verification card for your selected test, place your stack on top of it, and see if you get an X or a check, recording the result on your note sheet. There’s also additional space on the bottom half of the sheet for notes about the criteria—if you’ve figured out the answer to one of the criteria, you can note it there. There’s also a grid on the top right where you can cross off potential numbers that you’ve eliminated. Each round, you may choose up to 3 criteria to test.
Here’s an example of how the tests work. Let’s say one of the criteria compares the yellow square (the center digit) to 3. There are three possibilities: less than 3, equal to 3, or greater than 3. If the secret code is 541, then this verifier test will give you a checkmark if the middle digit of your code is greater than 3, and an X otherwise. What’s important to note is that a checkmark does not confirm that your middle digit is correct, just that its relation to 3 is correct. If I submit “354,” it will say “yes” because my middle digit—5—is greater than 3.
At the end of the round, players will simultaneously give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down indicating whether they’re ready to guess the answer. If nobody is ready to guess, return the punch cards and start another round.
Any players who are ready can secretly compare their final guesses to the answer (printed upside down in the rulebook, just like our old math textbooks). While you can also check your final guess by running the code through all of the verifiers—the solution is the only 3-digit number that will give you a “yes” for all of the tests—this risks letting other players see your guess, right or wrong.
If you guess incorrectly, you are eliminated. If you’re the first to correctly guess the answer, you win! If multiple players guess correctly in the same round, the winner is the player who used the fewest tests. Otherwise, it’s a tie.
Game End
Technically, the game ends as soon as somebody correctly guesses the code and wins, but, usually, when we play, we give the other players another round or two to try to get the correct answer.
Turing Machine is a 2023 Game of the Year Finalist!
Why You Should Play Turing Machine
Five years ago, after I first played Cryptid, I spent some time marveling at how the game worked, the way the combination of the board arrangement with a few wooden pieces and a particular set of clues led to exactly one solution, a location on the board that everyone was racing to find. It’s all based on logic and math, but seeing it how it was implemented and how all the pieces fit together to create a puzzle to solve is just fascinating.
I had a very similar reaction to Turing Machine the first time I put together a set of punch cards and matched it up to a verification card. First is simply the design of the punch cards themselves, that any 3-digit number you form from the cards will leave exactly one open space, and that those 125 possible combinations all give distinct results. Then there are the verification cards that give a “yes” or “no” answer for each combination. Pair those up with the right set of criteria, and you’ll get a puzzle that has exactly one solution. Amazing! It’s not magic—it’s math. What I love about it is the way that it shows how cool math and logic can be.
Setting up a puzzle is easy but a little tedious—you’ll have to sift through the big stack of verification cards to find the 4 to 6 cards you need for the current puzzle, and then do the same for the slightly smaller stack of criteria cards. Of course, if you put the cards back in order when you put the game away, the setup will go much faster, but it does mean taking that little bit of extra time instead of shoving everything back in the box. (Trust me—looking for a particular card out of a randomized stack of 95 is no fun, let alone doing it several times!)
The puzzles in the rulebook start off easier, and what’s nice is that they’re marked with both a difficulty level and a luck level. For these, you might get lucky if you happen to pick a code that reveals more about the answer. The later puzzles have a higher difficulty level and a lower luck level. With some experience, you can look at the criteria and start to consider which numbers those criteria could even point to, and narrow down your options for guessing.
The easiest criteria are testing a particular digit—is it odd or even? What’s its relation to 4? Then you get some that are about the combination of digits: how many 3s are there in the code? Are the digits in increasing or decreasing order (or not in order at all)? Is the yellow digit greater than or less than the purple digit?
But those criteria start to get really wacky! The tougher ones don’t tell you right away what they’re testing for. For example, criteria #33 checks if a specific color is even or odd. For any given puzzle, it is checking one of the three digits, and gives you a check or X based on whether that digit is even or odd, compared to the solution. However, you don’t know which of the three digits it’s actually checking, so at first getting a check or an X doesn’t tell you very much at all. You’ll need to run multiple tests with different numbers to figure out which digit actually matters to the test.
The trickiest part about learning Turing Machine is understanding what the verifiers do and don’t tell you, because if you misunderstand the results then you just won’t arrive at the right answer. I highly recommend playing through one puzzle as a group so that everyone can see how the tests work and how to interpret the results, because in normal play everyone is running tests on their own, and it isn’t until the end of the game that you may find out somebody misunderstood the tests. And even when you mostly understand how they work, some of those complex criteria cards can still throw you for a loop. I have had some players who just couldn’t completely grok the concept, so it’s not intuitive for everyone.
That said, as with Cryptid, I think Turing Machine can be incredibly rewarding and satisfying for those who like figuring out logic puzzles. In this case, they’re also mathy puzzles: you’re working out a number where the middle digit is even, the last digit is greater than 3, and the sum of all three digits is less than 7… but first you had to arrive at those criteria.
The gameplay itself can feel a little more solitaire—there’s no interfering with other players or messing with their process. If you take a verification card somebody else needs, they just wait until you’re done. It’s a race, not a battle. But that leaves room for conversation about other things while you play, and it also makes it an excellent solo game. The one thing that does come into play is that, because you don’t know how close the other players are to finding the solution, sometimes in a multiplayer game you may gamble and make a guess before you’ve got the answer 100% finalized. You might take a chance because you’re sure about two of the digits and have a 50-50 guess on the third, but if you’re wrong you get eliminated. Also, since ties are broken by the player who used the fewest tests, you don’t have to use all three tests each round—in later rounds sometimes you might not be getting any new information anyway.
Turing Machine was released at the end of 2022—there were some limited sales at conventions like Gen Con and Spiel, but it very quickly sold out and was hard to find otherwise until the second print run arrived earlier this year. For me, it really lived up to the buzz and I’m glad I finally had a chance to try it for myself. I’m giving it our GeekDad seal of approval—it’s definitely one of my favorites from this year. If you appreciate daily puzzles like Wordle, you could give the daily Turing Machine puzzle a spin!
For more info about Turing Machine, visit the Scorpion Masqué website, or the Turing Machine page to generate puzzles.
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Disclosure: GeekDad received a copy of this game for review purposes.
