[Speedsolve]

Sir Robert Playne is now mostly known for his work as a bellfounder, but during his lifetime he occasionally dabbled in computational alchemy. Of particular note among his contributions is Playne's Algorithm, a method for alcohol sorting which is highly reliant on output conditionals. The original schematics for the mechanical implementation shown here were found half-crumpled, wedged between the pages of a book on treatment of alcoholism in the Great Library of the Imperial University. In the margin, in a different hand from the original author, someone had written "Confound this Devil's algorithm!".