This week has been one of the most intense periods of creative activity in my life. I think it's fair to say that this puzzle has tested my sanity. This is my first computation puzzle, although it is arguably much easier than any that has come before, testing players' game fundamentals much more than algorithmic wizardry. As such, the competition is sure to have been very intense.

I have thrown everything I have at the problem: this submission is the product of about 50 hours' work across nearly 30 different solution files, and is crammed full of every single clever trick and tiny optimisation I could think of. Each component has been broken down and redesigned over and over again, just to shave a few more metric points. I could talk for days about the story of how this machine came to be, but I'm sure nobody wants to listen to that.

From my first solve submitted on the day of release, until around 16 hours before the deadline when I finally threw in the towel, my metric score has been tending asymptotically to a plump and juicy power of ten. As you can see, I have failed by the slimmest of margins.

In the distant past, when alchemy was still considered a science, some of the greatest minds dedicated themselves to the pursuit of a totally empty goal: the Magnum Opus is nothing but a dream, yet so many lifetimes of human effort were wasted chasing blindly after it. After this week, I think I understand a little of what our predecessor alchemists must have felt.

For now, I have to call it quits and rest. I firmly believe that the winning score for this puzzle is a three digit number, and I've come as close to proving it as I can. This community is full of incredible talent, and I feel that I've only scratched the surface of this solution space, so it's reasonable to expect that a number of people have achieved what I could not. If you're one of them, congratulations. You are a better alchemist than I could ever be.

Thank you Haxton for an amazing puzzle, and thank you Mr Puzzel for your wonderful mod which has made building this machine so enjoyable.