The past couple of days I've been playing one of Shockwave's free online games, Mind Tree. There are a lot of mental subgames, some I'm better at than others. I'm decent at Arithmetic and Memory games (when I have a computer that can keep up with the graphics), and I'm best in Awareness. One of the trickiest there is a ball & cup game, by the end of the Easy level I'm tracking balls under three of six moving cups.

The logic games, on the other hand, are a struggle. I know there's got to be tricks to them, win-formulas I'm missing. One in particular, "Roll Out the Barrel", gives me headaches at the easiest level. I'm lucky to get two or three correct out of ten.

There's a grid (9x9 in Easy mode) with a pump in one square and a barrel in another. The barrel has three possible positions - on its side, red end down (upside-down), or green end down (green's the tap end that connects to the pump). You can move in four directions (no diagonals). If it's on its side it'll stay on its side (rolling), or you can flip it from side to end or vice/versa. Each round gives you a set number of moves - and a time limit - to get the barrel from its start position onto the pump with the tap side down.




Sometimes I luck into a configuration that works, but most of the time I get the barrel onto the pump the wrong way and run out of moves before I can fix it. Any idea what the trick to this one is?