The Password Game is painful. It requires so many mental gymnastics that it can really crack the brain matter. If you’ve made it to Rule 18, congratulations, I guess. Here, you’ll need to find some Atomic Numbers that add up to 200.
What are Atomic Numbers? Are you familiar with the Periodic Table of Elements? It hangs on the wall in basically every science or chemistry classroom. It shows each of the chemical elements, with each one being assigned a number based on the number of protons found in the atom’s nucleus. So, that Atomic Number is what we’re looking at here. Here’s the periodic table. Let’s take a look.
So, when you create a password, you’re invariably going to trip over some Chemical elements. It would be so easy right now if you could just plug in EsMd (Einsteinium + Mendelevium), but it’s almost guaranteed to not shake out that way. In fact, rule 12 has you use an elemental symbol, so you definitely have one in there. I had actually chosen Es, for rule 12, but by the time I got here, there were a lot more built up in my password.
What are the best Atomic Numbers for Rule 18 in The Password Game?
To echo my colleague who wrote the guide on Rule 16, unfortunately, this means that I can’t just give you a few elements to jam together to make a 200. It really depends on what you already have in your password.
In fact, I had Vanadium+Vanadium+Iodine+Iodine+Sulfur+Germanium+Einsteinium (23+23+53+53+32+16+99=299). Thankfully, the change I had to make was clear, I just needed to remove Einsteinium from the mix and everything was brought down to 200 while still satisfying the rest of my needs.
The difficulty here is that Password Game will match any Uppercase letter to an element, as well as any Uppercase followed by Lowercase combination that match a chemical element on the table. It will highlight the ones that are counted, but even then, it can be unclear. So, in my example, when I used V and I to make Roman Numerals for Rule 7 and Rule 9, I inadvertently added Vandanium whenever I wanted a 5, and an Iodine everytime I wanted a 1.
If the combination of all these periodic elements exceeds 200, then you can’t start subtracting, so you’re going to need to change some of them. This can be shifting a letter to lowercase, where it won’t be detected as a chemical element.
Hopefully, by telling you by explaining the goal, providing a periodic table, and telling you where things can go wrong, you can figure out how to get to 200. I’m sorry if your brain breaks in the process. I know that I’m going to reach for the Ibuprofen the moment I hit submit on this article.
