As applause fills the lecture hall, a purple haired woman with cat ears remains in her seat, arms crossed, unamused. "I don't- that molecule is *clearly* bigger than a proxy arm! How can it be MADE of it if-- ughhh! This *whole* Symposium has been nonsense! The tensionless water, fluids that don't actually organize themselves, that *damned* crystal! I come all the way out here and every single lecture has been worthless!" She sighs, slumping backwards in her seat. "I honestly learned more about alchemy just by making the machines myself than I did from any dumb lecture. Who knows? Maybe something fun will happen at the uppity alchemy banquet..." As people start filing out, she follows suit, mumbling to herself. "At least I get to show off the gown I commissioned..."

And then there's a line break to separate the lore from the solve notes.

Arm 17 takes 3 sets of 3 inputs. 3 projected tin atoms are used to make 3 iron. Arm 29 puts 3 quicksilver on a debonder, removing the quantum bonds from yet another 3 iron.  Arm 22 waits 3 cycles before pulling away the freshly bonded core. Arm 17 is active for 3 cycles, then waits for 3 cycles, coming to rest where it started at the end of the tape loop. 3 of the same shape briefly existing at the same time as the top route stalls out the tape loop. 3 sets of 15 arms for a total of 45 arms, the 45th of which rests on 3 hexes of track. I'm truly proud of this machine. 

This build seemed daunting going into it, because purifijection math can be scary. After a bit of processing though, I realized this puzzle was designed very kindly. If the optimal ratio for each input was uneven, one of the inputs would be rate limited, and be unable to be pulled at input speed without a much slower odd one out pipeline. Thankfully, it works out that you can pull both inputs exactly 9 times and get the materials you need to make the final shape. Pulling any more of one means pulling less of the other, resulting in a sub-optimal machine. All 9 quicksilvers from our lead can be used to project our 9 tins, so I just bond the two atoms together and then debond them to just ignore that quantum bond entirely. The 9 lead gets bricked for later. Arms 15 and 16 move on a diamond track, pulling off now-projected iron bricks and peeling them off in sets of three for arm 17 to grab. Each set of three quantum bonded iron constitutes one half of the output's quicksilver core. Arm 17 gathers up three of these halves. Two of them are used to form the quicksilver core, as one might surmise, but the third is used in a unique way. first, a quicksilver is debonded from it. This debond removes all the quantum bonds keeping the iron attatched to the quicksilver, so it can be attached to one end of the core. Then the remaining 3 quicksilver are used to project 3 of our bricked lead from earlier. 9 lead does not make 3 iron, but 3 tin and 6 lead does! Once we've projected, we just wait for everything to purify, and voila! Our shape is made!

This puzzle was an interesting challenge to solve! 1 output per every 18 cycles is the minimum rate, and that's the rate of this solution! It feels good to have min primary in a metric that isn't designed to be a secondary race, like height. However, it stands that people are cracked at this game. While the threes are truly beautiful, it's a beauty that's easy to spot once you have the right numbers. People are bound to get min rate with cheaper cost and better geometry while using this exact tech. Therefore, my prediction is that this will be my first top 10, but top 5 shall elude me for now. Good luck to those placing above me!

Signed, Trixie Kagami: The Cheshire Alchemist, Getting Min Primary For Real Since 2025