Uranium Fuel Cell

How to read this puzzle

A guess can look mostly wrong and still provide an unusually useful ingredient clue. Nuclear Fuel preserves exactly one Uranium-235 while ruling out its own machine, unlock stage, and Rocket Fuel input.

Start this worked example with Nuclear Fuel. The six signals below show what that guess tells you about the answer.

From the clues to the answer

1. Save the exact ingredient

   The Intermediate products tab matches. More specifically, Uranium-235 ×1 is an exact ingredient match. Rocket Fuel does not occur in the answer’s direct recipe, and the answer has more input types than Nuclear Fuel’s two. Keep that uranium amount while looking for a different recipe.

2. Leave the centrifuge behind

   The Made in clue has no overlap with Centrifuge. The answer also takes less than 90 seconds and stacks to more than one. Nuclear ingredients do not imply that the final item is made in a centrifuge: the recipe for the finished item determines this clue.

3. Check a fuel-cell recipe

   Uranium Fuel Cell uses 10 Iron Plates, one Uranium-235, and 19 Uranium-238. It has the required third input, keeps the exact uranium amount, and excludes Rocket Fuel. Its Assembler recipe takes 10 seconds, stacks to 50, and unlocks on Nauvis, which also explains the mismatch against Nuclear Fuel’s Space unlock.

Take this into your next puzzle

Treat ingredient matches as evidence even when several other columns miss. Then use the machine mismatch to distinguish processing a material from assembling the item that consumes it.