Five ways to let down the school upright
The shop opens at 09:00, and the restorer's van comes at 10:58. Eight string groups, three struts, and every turn of the tuning hammer costs minutes. On a fresh piano each group starts at 4/4 of its working tension, and a turn lets down a quarter, a half, three quarters or all of it. I wrote the obvious plans into the game as scripted hands. Here's how each one does on this piano:
| Hand | Turns | Done at | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Let it all go, bass up | 1 | 09:06 | Strut A cracks |
| Half turns, bass up and back | 2 | 09:10 | Strut A cracks |
| A quarter at a time, up and back | 32 | 11:32 | Whole, 34 minutes late, ★ |
| Biggest safe turn per minute | 13 | 10:46 | Whole, on time, ★★ |
| Par | 11 | 10:38 | Whole, ★★★ |
The quarter-turn hand is the one most people would pick, me included. It never cracks anything. It's also the slowest hand on the table that finishes.
Here's the odd part: every hand that finishes turns exactly the same 32 quarters of tension. The work is identical. What the careful hand spends its morning on is seating the hammer on fresh pins (2 minutes, 32 times) and walking it back and forth along the keyboard. Par seats it 11 times. Five of those 11 turns let a group go all the way in one go, the same move that cracked the plate in row one. Par just picks which groups, and when.
One rule
Each strut sits between two string groups and feels a couple of groups on each side. It compares the average tension on its left with the average on its right. How uneven the two sides can get is the strut's give. Go over it and the plate cracks. That's the whole rule.
Two things fall out of it.
First, a piano at full tension is fine. Every strut reads 0.00, because both sides pull the same. A piano at full slack is fine too, for the same reason. The danger is all in the middle, in the hour where some strings are down and their neighbours aren't.
Second, "bass first" is a habit, not a plan. Let the lowest group all the way down and strut A sees an average of 2 quarters on one side and 4 on the other. Its give is 1. That's 2.00, and it cracks on the very first turn. Par starts in the middle of the keyboard instead, with a half turn on the fourth group up, and never lets any strut's two sides drift more than its give apart.
And par runs hot. Ten of its eleven turns leave some strut at exactly 1.00, right on the line. The plate only cracks over 1.00, and the shortest plan lives on the edge of that.
Five pianos, each with one new problem
| Piano | What changes | Restorer | Par |
|---|---|---|---|
| The school uprightSt Aldhelm's Primary, the hall | Eight groups, three struts. Hester, the workshop's coach, talks you through the first few turns. | 10:58 | 98 min (10:38) |
| The baby grandThe Lantern bar, Quay Street | Overstrung, so the bass crosses the tenor. One long strut feels four groups a side and has less give than the others. | 11:40 | 134 min (11:14) |
| The welded concert grandCorn Exchange, the old stage | Somebody welded the plate in two places. Both welds read ? until you tap them (3 minutes each). One is sound. One has half the give. | 12:50 | 192 min (12:12) |
| The square pianoA farmhouse parlour, Long Sutton | A wooden frame. It creaks at 0.50 where an iron plate ticks at 0.75, long before it gives. And it has five struts to the upright's three. | 10:53 | 94 min (10:34) |
| The half-unstrung grandA house clearance, Mill Lane | Somebody started this one and stopped. The bass is already off, and the strut beside it starts the morning at exactly 1.00. | 10:16 | 62 min (10:02) |
The concert grand is where the hand that trusts the preview stops working. It never taps a weld, so it plans around a give the plate doesn't have, and it cracks strut D at 09:24. Plan as if both welds were bad and you finish whole at 196 minutes. Tap them first and par is 192. It's the only place in the game where anything is hidden, and the game marks exactly where.
What the game shows you
- Every turn, before you make it. The struts redraw the plate as it would stand after the turn, with the minutes it costs. I had the game's own test suite check that every step of every par plan commits exactly what it previewed. One marked exception: across a weld you haven't tapped, the preview trusts the give the weld claims.
- Every strut's reach and give, except a weld's real give, which costs 3 minutes to hear. Nothing is rolled. The same piano plays the same way every time.
- Par, and what it means. On four pianos it's the shortest plan there is, and a search proves nothing shorter exists. On the welded concert grand it's the shortest plan that taps both welds first. Skip the taps and guess right, and you can beat it by 6 minutes. The game will give you the third star for it.
- The sound of it. Pitch follows tension, so a string at half tension sounds lower than one at full, and P plays the whole piano as it stands.
It's a workshop puzzle, not a repair manual
The plate model is mine. Real pianos do carry a lot of tension, but no piano technician has checked the struts in this game against a real plate. The rule is there because it makes a good puzzle. Please don't take a hammer to your grandmother's upright because of anything on this page.
The tonnage is flavour too. In the game the concert grand carries 21.6 tons and the square piano 6.4. That number drives the tons figures on screen and nothing else. The sound comes from each string group's note and how much of its tension is left.
Questions
- What does it cost?
- Nothing. No account, no ads, no sign-up. It's a web page.
- Can I play it on my phone?
- The school upright, yes: it's the box at the top of this page, and it plays by tap. Pianos 2 to 5 run in the full game, which needs a keyboard.
- How long is it?
- Five pianos, from 8 to 21 moves each at par. Thinking is free: the clock only moves when you turn a pin or tap a strut.
- Has anyone else played it?
- Not yet. A test bot played it through, and the game's own checks (68 of them) all pass. You'd be one of the first people.
- What if I crack the plate?
- Press R and the piano goes back to how it was that morning. The game keeps your first try's stars apart from your best, so you'll know which was which.
The baby grand is next
It has a strut across the crossing that feels four groups a side, and a quarter-turn sweep cracks it. The upright taught you to work from the middle. Now find the middle of a baby grand.
Open the baby grandStart from piano 1Play the upright here
The full game runs on the keyboard: Space opens the workshop, 1 to 4 picks the turn size, Enter turns, T taps a strut, P plays the piano. You can point and click with a mouse, too. Hester only coaches piano 1, so start there if this is your first go.
The other four pianos need a keyboard. Send yourself the link for later.