Directive 7: Name a Planet (Hints & Answer)

Hint first (no full spoiler): The Committee recognizes exactly eight of them, and the one you are sentimentally attached to is not on the list.

Directive 7 requires your password to contain the name of a planet: mercury, venus, earth, mars, jupiter, saturn, uranus, or neptune. Case-insensitive, embedded substrings count. The Committee acknowledges receipt of your Pluto appeal and has filed it under Closed.

Eight options, sharply different prices. This is Act I’s first real purchasing decision after the weekday.

The full solution

Type a planet into your password.

• Friday9!mars (12 characters; mind the prime, see below)
• Friday9!venus (13 characters, prime, our running build, APPROVED)
• marsFriday9!! (13 characters, also fine; word order is not regulated, yet)

The price list, in letters:

• mars: 4 letters, no repeats. The budget option.
• venus: 5 letters, no repeats. The other budget option.
• earth: 5 letters, no repeats, but it spends an a, and your weekday already bought one.
• saturn, uranus: 6 letters; uranus repeats u.
• mercury, jupiter, neptune: 7 letters each. Mercury repeats r, neptune repeats both n and e. Premium pricing for no benefit.

Venus and mars are the veteran picks because neither repeats a letter, which keeps them cheap under the Act III letter caps. One curious census fact: every planet name contains an e or an s. There is no way to buy a planet without one, which matters under directive 27, where every letter is capped at four appearances. In September Directive 16 hands you rebmetpes, which spends three of your four e’s before the planet spends anything, so neptune and its two e’s are already out. Plan accordingly, or play in October, where rebotco costs a single e.

Remember the standing tax: adding a 4 or 5 letter word almost certainly broke your prime length from Directive 6. Recount and pad with specials.

What breaks later

The planet itself is stable; its letters are what get audited:

• Directive 27 caps letter counts. Mars and venus, with zero repeated letters, are the safest holdings. If you bought jupiter early, the Committee thanks you for your generous donation of letters and regrets nothing.
• Directive 26 forces vowels uppercase and consonants lowercase, so venus becomes vEnUs. The rule 7 check is case-insensitive and unbothered. You may be bothered. That is permitted.
• Directive 21’s Scrabble scoring prices letters individually, and short common-letter planets score low, which in that context is what you want. Another point for mars.
• As with the weekday in Directive 5, later repair work must never break the planet’s spelling. vnus is not a planet. It is a clerical error, stamped DENIED.

If you are rebuilding your password from scratch at this point (a legitimate strategy), the compact core Friday9!venus clears directives 1 through 7 and, not coincidentally, Directive 8 as well.

Stamp: APPROVED. The solar system thanks you for your compliance. Pluto has been notified separately.

Stuck on a different directive? Browse all 30 rule guides or return to the vault. Fern believes in you.