cd82 — ARC-AGI-3 game guide

Full spoilers for this public game. Play first if you want to discover its rules yourself.

Fire colored dye from 8 compass stations, plus a dab tool from level 3, to match most of a reference pattern on a grid.

You fire colored dye from eight stations around a small target square to recreate a reference pattern shown in the corner, before your move countdown runs out.

Controls

Level by level

Level 1

cd82, level 1
  • The arrow keys move the paint bucket around eight stations in a ring around the White 10x10 canvas: N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W and NW. Each press steps to the neighboring station in that direction. A press that would cut through the middle or leave the ring does nothing, but still costs an action.
  • Fire throws the bucket's paint at the canvas. A side station (N, E, S, W) paints the half of the canvas nearest it. A corner station (NE, SE, SW, NW) paints the triangle nearest it, including the diagonal line of cells.
  • Color swatches (small squares with a Darker Gray frame) sit along the top. Click one to load that color: a White bar moves under it and the bucket changes color. Each level starts at the N station with Purple loaded.
  • Clicking anything that is not a swatch (or, from level 3, the dab nozzle) does nothing but still costs an action. You cannot click the bucket to fire it.
  • Make the canvas match the reference pattern in the top-left corner. The game only checks right after a throw or a dab, and it skips the canvas's two diagonal lines, so 80 of the 100 cells have to match.
  • Paint simply covers what was there. A later throw overwrites an earlier one wherever they overlap, so order matters.
  • Each level allows 100 actions. Everything counts: moves that go nowhere, clicks on nothing, color picks, throws. The 100th action loses the level, so you really get 99.
  • The countdown is a Darker Gray line along the bottom edge of the screen that turns Black from the right as you use actions.
  • A throw is animated: the bucket slides toward the canvas, the paint lands, and the bucket slides back.
  • There is no undo. RESET clears the canvas back to White and refills the countdown.

Level 2

cd82, level 2
  • Level 1 has two colors (White and Purple). Level 2 adds Orange. From level 3 there are seven: White, Purple, Orange, Yellow, Green, Red and Blue.

Level 3

cd82, level 3
  • From level 3 a small nozzle in the current color appears next to the bucket whenever it is at a side station (N, E, S or W). Click the nozzle to dab a block 4 cells wide and 3 deep onto the middle of that side of the canvas. It never appears at corner stations.

Level 4

cd82, level 4

    Level 5

    cd82, level 5

      Level 6

      cd82, level 6

        Mechanics

        You control a color-throwing rig built around a small 10x10 target square, cycling between eight fixed compass stations (N/NE/E/SE/S/SW/W/NW) around it. At each station you pick a color, then fire to wash half the target (cardinal stations) or a diagonal triangle of it (intercardinal stations) in that color. From level 3 on, the four cardinal stations also gain a second tool -- an arrow-dab that paints a small block, 4 cells wide and 3 deep, in the middle of that station's edge in the current color -- because Fire alone can only ever lay down a full half or triangle and can't build the more intricate patterns those levels need. The goal is to reproduce a small reference pattern shown in the corner before a 100-action countdown runs out; the countdown restarts on each level and counts every action, including moves that go nowhere and clicks on nothing, and the 100th action loses the level. The win-check is a bit forgiving, since it never checks the target's two diagonal lines of cells, across six levels of increasingly multi-region, multi-color targets.

        Notes and caveats

        Added 2026-09-11 when the informal-name registry was extended from the original 6 games to the full 25-game public demo set. No replay video or hints exist yet for this game -- only the level screenshots rendered from their own game source on 2026-09-12 and the three replay links in resources[] -- two ARC Prize published with the GPT-6 Astra results, plus a human win published 2026-09-15 (6/6 levels, 216 actions, no mid-run resets), whose raw recording is committed under arc3/. Corrected 2026-09-12 after an adversarially-verified direct source read: the write-up omitted the level-3+ dab tool and overstated how strict the win-check is.

        All official game guides · The Slippery Seven · Human and AI results