i understand why it was a part of the game, but i personally find it aggravating that in kinematics testing 8 the thing "punishes" you for collecting the first cog. i do get that this makes you think instead of just zooming in for the first gear every time, but it still bugs me.
nifty little challenging game. it doesn't have the arcade-style dressings that attract a really high rating from the more childish members on kong, but solid enough gameplay to definitely earn a good score. i personally found it to be quite good for a 30-45 minute diversion. very nice tactics, although level 18 is definitely the logical extreme for difficulty, as the opening hand HAS to win, which is easy for that to be impossible.
if your solutions cannot handle any possible permutation, then it is possible to build one which can. but, of course, that would require THINKING through the algorithm instead of just solving towards a specific pattern. it shouldn't matter which ones show up. all of them can be constructed into open-ended machines that will accept all correct (and only correct) answers. you are correct that good puzzle games are not trial-and-error based. this one is algorithm based and becomes trial and error when you try to solve for the specific patterns instead of the algorithm behind it.
i've waited over 15 mins. nothing.... rating dropped two stars because of poor playtesting to catch this glitch.... it's stupid that you have to watch your cat's weight on lvl 13