Episode 13 of The Witness picks up in the tree fort, back at the white-sun grid Episode 12 left unsolved. Basket solves it in a few minutes and clears two more sun panels, then hits a grid with broken spots that takes up most of the video. It lights in the last few seconds.
Back at the sun grid
The video opens on a stack of magenta panels in the trees. The commentary first walks back down the solved ones "to catch up," then returns to the grid of white suns, orange squares and black squares. "And what I found out last time I played this was..." Every early line leaves an orange square sharing a section with a black one. The idea that works is "we need to keep the suns together," two to a section. "Aha! Okay, good."
Green suns, then a bigger grid
The next panel swaps in green suns, purple squares and orange squares. "So this is the same sort of rules, I think, where we need to keep the suns in twos and then not have these ones together at all." It goes quickly. So does the grid after it, five cells wide, with purple suns among green and orange squares. "Can we have more than two of these dots? I guess we'll find out." The line lights: "Oh, okay, good, so we can have more than two of the dots."
The broken grid
The next grid has the same symbols plus two short gray bars joining neighboring cells. Nearly every line fails on one of two complaints: "the orange and the greens are still together," or "too many suns together." Partway through, the commentary senses it is close: "I feel like I'm on to something."
Talking it through
New viewers arrive, and the commentary explains the rules out loud. "The suns need to be two per section," and "you can't have rounded squares of different colors within the same section." The only good shape it finds can't reach the exit. The broken spots are the problem: "If this wasn't broken here, I could just go straight up here and then over, and I'd be good." Hints from viewers are usually held off "unless I'm really stuck," and this grid gets there: "I would be fine if you had some hints or guesses for this particular one."
Where it ends
The tries keep coming. "So I do this. The oranges are hanging out." Then "too many suns. Okay, let's back up." A few seconds later a new line runs from the bottom, across the middle and out the top. It turns magenta and the view pulls back from the panel. "Got it." The video ends there, with the broken grid solved.
