I’ve watched a Super Mario Maker player by the name of ReflectivistFox play through a stage called Fermat’s Last Theorem twice now. It takes nearly eight minutes, involves an unthinkable number of perfectly calculated moves and jumps, and I can’t fathom the patience it took for ReflectivistFox to figure it out.
The level’s author, Mr_Enzyme, is the one who actually pointed it out to me.
“It’s the hardest puzzle I’ve seen in the game so far,” he said, “and I didn’t think anyone would beat it for a lot longer, but I underestimated the internet.”
One should never underestimate the Internet, but after watching Fermat’s Last Theorem, I can understand why he thought the level might continue to perplex.
“I’ve been working on and off for about a week on solving /u/Mr_Enzyme’s extreme puzzle level ‘Fermat’s Last Theorem,’” said ReflectivistFox on reddit yesterday. “Last night, I finally claimed victory! This puzzle is extremely challenging to solve even with the editor (which I used extensively).”
Mr_Enzyme estimated he spent 20-to-30 hours building Fermat’s Last Theorem, spread out over an entire week. It took several days for him up upload the course—Mario Maker requires creators to beat their own stages before they can appear—and ultimately had to remove several elements so he could beat it.
“I wanted a complicated, compact level with a lot of interconnected parts where you’d have to use a lot of obscure/advanced tricks to get through,” he said. “The name was sort of a joke based on how complicated it was and how long I thought it would take to solve.”
The title references a famous math problem that went unsolved for hundreds of years—358, to be precise. This Mario Maker stage only lasted a month or so.
If you’re having trouble following along with the solution, ReflectivistFox wrote up a breakdown of what they’re doing and how they did it. Here’s a taste:
Utterly ridiculous, and makes the levels I’ve complained about look like nothing.
You can reach the author of this post at patrick.klepek@kotaku.com or on Twitter at @patrickklepek.