Only a few people were able to connect the dots to solve this month’s (super-hard) puzzle. And as it so happens, “connect the dots” is the first step in getting the solution. It is possible to rotate several of the octagonal tiles so that each group of similarly colored pegs is connected (as shown in the photo).

The minimal amount of rotation (counter-clockwise) needed for the tiles in the top row is 1 one-eighth turn for the leftmost tile, 0 turns for the middle tile (as it has 8-fold rotational symmetry), and 3 one-eighth turns for the rightmost tile. In the next five rows the number of one-eigth turns needed for the left, middle, and right tiles is 1, 4, 1; 1, 7, 1; 1, 5, 4; 1, 6, 5; and 1, 6, 3. When the values 103, 141, 171, 154, 165, 163 are converted to ASCII as base-8 integers, they yield the letters C, a, y, l, u, s, hence the diagram is ASCII-ing (“asking”) the word Caylus, a highly-rated strategy game and this month’s answer. Congrats to this month’s solvers!