Directive 8: Digit Sum Perfect Square (Hints & Answer)

Hint first (no full spoiler): Add up every digit in your password; the total should be a number some other whole number can be multiplied by itself to make.

Directive 8 requires the sum of all digits in your password to be a perfect square: 0, 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, 100, and onward. The Committee finds square numbers reassuring. They have corners.

Every digit counts, wherever it sits. A password with 1, 2, and 3 scattered through it has a digit sum of 6, which is not square, which is a DENIED.

The full solution

Add up your digits. Adjust until the total is a square.

• Friday9!venus (digits: 9. Sum: 9, which is 3x3. APPROVED, and 13 characters, prime.)
• Friday45venus!!!! (digits: 4+5=9. Also square. 17 characters, also prime.)
• Tuesday88mars? (digits: 8+8=16, square. 14 characters, not prime: pad specials to 17.)

Because Directive 2 already forced at least one digit, a sum of 0 is off the table for now. Your realistic early targets are 9 and 16. Later, once rules 9, 10, 13, and 23 dump their mandatory digits into your password, you will be reaching for 25 and 36.

The professional technique is the adjustment digit: reserve a digit or two near the end of the password whose only job is balancing. Required digits elsewhere in the password are fixed; your adjustment digits are the dial. Sum comes to 21 with a trailing 5 as your dial? Turn the 5 up to a 9 and the total reads 25. Recompute after every turn. This is normal. The Committee provides no calculator, but you may bring your own.

Order of operations when anything changes: fix the digit sum first with digits, then fix the length with special characters. Specials never touch the sum, so they cannot undo step one. Digits always touch the length, so doing length first wastes work. Sum, then prime. Tattoo it somewhere administrative.

What breaks later

Directive 8 is the second-most-broken rule in the game, right behind prime length, and the two break in tandem:

• Rules 9, 10, 13, and 23 each force specific new digits into the password. Every arrival changes your sum, so every arrival means re-balancing with your adjustment digits, then re-padding to prime for Directive 6.
• Directive 19 exiles one digit from the password entirely. If the exiled digit was load-bearing in your sum, you rebuild the balance without it. Players who spread their sum across several different digits (see Directive 2) absorb the exile cheaply.
• Padding discipline matters here more than anywhere: pad length with specials only. One careless 0 costs nothing, but a careless 7 costs you a full re-balance.

Keep a running total on paper. The digit sum is the game’s slowest leak, and the vault has no sympathy for players who stopped counting in Act II.

Stamp: APPROVED. Your arithmetic has been notarized.

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