TAPECLERK
In 1936 Alan Turing described a computer as a clerk with a paper tape and a card of rules. TAPECLERK is that idea turned into a puzzle game — you write the card, the clerk works the tape. It can compute anything a computer can.
How a rule card works
The clerk stands on one cell of an endless tape, in one state — A, B, C… For every state and every symbol it reads, your card says three things: what to write, which way to step, and which state comes next.
| Rule | Meaning |
|---|---|
1RB | Write a 1, step Right, switch to state B |
_LS | Erase the cell, step Left, switch to state S |
0RH | Write a 0, step Right, Halt — job done |
Type rules fast or click them together. The cell of the card about to be used glows, and the one just used is outlined — you can watch the machine think, step by step or at full speed.
The jobs
| Chapter | What you build |
|---|---|
| I. First day | Stamp, erase, invert, count, bookends — the 8 jobs playable free above |
| II. Arithmetic | Binary increment and decrement, adding and subtracting in tallies, doubling |
| III. Checking | Multiples of three, palindromes, matching brackets, sorting |
| IV. Busy beavers | Make a 2-, 3- or 4-state clerk run as long as possible and still halt — the proven records are 6, 21 and 107 steps |
| V. Overtime | Reverse a word, copy a word |
Good to know
Proven fewest rules
Every job has a verified minimum card size, found by exhaustive search — the developer's own 13-rule doubler turned out to be doable in 4. Chasing those records is the real endgame.
No memorizing tests
Besides the visible test cases, every job is checked against 20 hidden inputs generated from its exact definition — hard-coding answers doesn't pass.
Free vs full
The first 8 jobs are free in the browser. The full 26-job version is a $2.99 download for Windows, macOS and Linux. Progress and best scores save locally.
Not the transcription tool
Tapeclerk is also the name of an unrelated podcast transcription service — this page covers the puzzle game by Proven Little Games, maker of TUBECLERK.