Rewinda
verify by re-play - a replay token holds the board's seed and every move; re-playing it through the same engine shows whether the result is real, without trusting anyone's word
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Rewinda is a squirrel with a big bushy tail and bright, attentive eyes that never seem to miss a thing. She carries a small old-fashioned film reel, the kind that winds around and around, and when she is curious about something, she holds the reel up and gives it a little spin.
"Let's watch it again," she says. "From the very beginning."
Rewinda is the League's checker. Not a judge. A checker. And the tool she uses is called a replay token.
It began the day a young fox named Ember claimed an amazing score. "I cleared a Pro board," Ember announced, "with almost no wasted clicks! Best efficiency on the whole field!"
Some of the other players cheered. But a few of them muttered. "No way," someone whispered. "Nobody's that good. Ember's probably making it up."
Ember's ears went flat. It hurts to be doubted, especially after something you worked so hard on. "I'm not making it up," Ember said quietly. "I really did it."
Rewinda scampered over and sat up on her hind legs, reel in paw. "Nobody has to argue about this," she said. "Ember, did the League give you a replay token for that run?"
Ember nodded and passed her a short string of letters and numbers.
"This little string," Rewinda explained to the crowd, "holds two things. The board's seed, so the League can rebuild exactly the same board. And every move Ember made, in order. Every open, every flag, every chord."
She spun her reel with a flourish. "Now watch. We don't have to trust Ember, and we don't have to doubt Ember. We just re-play."
She fed the token back into the League. It rebuilt the very same board from the seed. Then, one by one, it re-played Ember's moves exactly as they had happened. Open. Open. Flag. Chord. The board cleared itself, step by step, just as it had the first time, until the last square flipped over.
At the end, the League showed the result: board cleared, clicks counted, efficiency calculated. It matched what Ember had said, exactly.
The muttering stopped. The doubters looked a little sheepish. Ember's ears slowly rose back up.
"See?" said Rewinda gently. "The run proved itself. We didn't need anyone's word. The moves did the talking."
"But couldn't someone just type in a fake token?" asked a young mouse.
Rewinda thought about this carefully, because she is always careful. "If you change the moves, the re-play shows a different result. So the fake would give itself away. The token has a check built in, so a changed token is easy to spot. It isn't magic, and it isn't a lock nobody could ever pick. It just makes the result something anyone can re-check for themselves, instead of something they have to believe."
Ember was smiling now. "Can I send my token to my cousin so she can watch it too?"
"That's exactly what it's for," said Rewinda, and gave her reel one more happy spin.
Rewinda feels most like Rewinda while a run re-plays in front of her, every move landing exactly where it did before. It is an absorbed, careful, satisfied feeling, like watching a favourite film for the second time and noticing all the little details you missed the first time around.
You have a bit of Rewinda in you whenever you check something by looking again instead of just believing or doubting. When a result matters, re-play it, and say it the way she does: "Rewinda re-plays every move, so the run proves itself."
Then let the moves speak for themselves.
The Sweep League ensemble
Rewinda is part of Sweep League's distributed-narrative cast. Each character embodies a different curricular primitive; together they teach the full subject.
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Surefoot
(Mentor, a mountain goat) - only steps where she is SURE; asks which square the numbers prove
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Bevvy
A bee who knows the fewest clicks a board could take - its 3BV
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Clicksy
A cricket who counts every wasted click - efficiency is 3BV divided by clicks
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Oddsley
An owl who weighs every arrangement the numbers allow - the exact odds of a mine
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Chordy
A crab who opens a whole ring of squares at once when a number's mines are all flagged
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Floody
A duck who knows a zero opens its whole empty region in one go
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Knowsley
A red panda who knows every board can be solved by knowing, never by guessing
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Samesby
A penguin who knows a race code gives both racers exactly the same board
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Sumsy
A hamster who knows the total number of mines shapes the odds of every hidden square
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Tickwell
A hare who knows your speed is shown only AFTER you finish, never while you play
