Home / Puzzle / Mischievous Goose
Mischievous Goose is a free online puzzle about causing trouble in the right order. You are a goose with a list — get the rake into the pond, steal the gardener's hat, bring the washing line down, flood the shop doorway — and a village that is mostly paying attention. Every action you can take has conditions: you cannot take the hat while the gardener is looking, and he only looks away when something else happens. The catch is that the things which distract him are finite and are often the same things on your list, so the puzzle is the order rather than the actions. The goose has one beak, so it carries one thing at a time, and an action that will not work says why instead of going quiet — the refusal is the clue. Four gardens, each with a par that a breadth-first search proved is the shortest possible run, and every action on every list proved usable and every task proved reachable before the garden ships. Undo is unlimited and nothing can be lost. No download, no account, no timer.
How to play Mischievous Goose
- The list at the top is what the goose has to get done. Tick every item to finish the garden.
- The row of buttons is everything the goose can try. Press one to do it.
- Nothing is hidden and nothing is greyed out. An action that will not work right now still tells you why.
- The refusal is the clue. "He is looking straight at you" means the job is to make him look elsewhere first.
- The goose carries one thing at a time. Picking something up means putting the last thing down.
- Distractions are limited. A honk works once, a bell works once, and most of them are used up the moment somebody turns around.
- Some things on the list are also distractions. Dropping the rake in the pond ticks an item and sends the gardener wading after it.
- The log in the middle is what the goose has actually done, newest at the bottom.
- Undo takes back the last thing the goose did, including the state of everyone watching. Restart puts the whole garden back.
- Par is the shortest possible run of actions. Three stars is matching it.
- On a keyboard, the number keys press the actions in order and Z undoes.
Tips
- Read the refusals before you read the list. Every action that will not work names the thing standing in its way, and that thing is the next puzzle.
- Count your distractions before spending one. Most gardens have exactly as many ways to make somebody look away as there are things to steal, so a wasted honk is a restart.
- Look for actions that do two jobs. The best move in most gardens ticks an item off the list and distracts somebody at the same time.
- Remember the beak. Half of the failed attempts in this game are the goose already holding something, and putting it down costs a move you may not have.
- Work backwards from the hardest item. If one task needs the most conditions, everything else has to happen in an order that leaves those conditions standing.
- Undo is free and unlimited. Trying an action to read its refusal costs nothing at all — refusals are not counted as moves.
- Par is genuinely the shortest run, found by searching every order the actions can go in. It is meant to take a second attempt, not a first.
- When a garden looks impossible, it usually means one action has a second effect you have not noticed. The log line for it says what it did.
FAQ
Is Mischievous Goose free to play?
Yes. It runs in the browser with no download, no sign-up and nothing to buy. All four gardens are included and unlock as you clear them.
How do you play it?
Work down the to-do list by pressing actions. Each one has conditions — somebody has to be looking away, your beak has to be free, something has to already be blocked — and the puzzle is finding an order that satisfies all of them in turn. There is no movement and no timing; it is entirely about sequence.
Why will the goose not do what I told it to?
Because a condition is missing, and it says which one. "He is looking straight at you. Give him something else to look at" means the theft is fine but the moment is wrong. Refusals cost nothing and are not counted as moves, so trying something to read its answer is a free way to learn the garden.
Can I get stuck?
You can run out of distractions, which makes a garden unfinishable from that point. That is why undo is unlimited and free, and why restart is one press. Nothing is ever lost and there are no lives.
Why can the goose only carry one thing?
It has one beak, and that constraint is doing real work: it means picking something up costs you the thing you were holding, and half of every garden is deciding what to be holding when the moment comes.
Where does par come from?
A breadth-first search over every reachable state of the garden. A garden is a set of facts that are true or false, so the whole space is a few thousand combinations and the search is exhaustive rather than an estimate. Par is the true shortest run of actions, and the test suite re-derives it and replays it through the real game.
Are the gardens random?
No. All four are written by hand, in order of how much there is to do, and there is no randomness anywhere. Every action is proved usable at some point and every task proved reachable before a garden ships — so a button that only ever refuses is a bug, not a red herring.
Is there a timer or anything to lose?
No timer, no lives, no failure. The only cost of a mistake is a move on the counter, and undo takes even that back. Stars are about matching par, not about surviving.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes. The list, the log and the actions are a single scrolling column with large tap targets, and everything is a tap — nothing to drag and nothing to time.