Gift wrapping

In chapter 4, Festival Table, every dish arrives as a present. The whole picture starts wrapped in patterned paper with a ribbon on top, and you only see the dish as the ants unwrap it. Gift wrapping first appears in level 61, Pumpkin Pie.

The rules

• Boxes of the paper and ribbon colours have stripes in the tray. Their ants tear the wrapping off one cell at a time.
• The wrapping tears from the edges inward on its own: a cell can be torn when it is at the edge of the picture or when a neighbour has one layer less. It does not wait for the picture to be eaten.
• The ribbon lies on top of the paper. The paper under it cannot be torn until the ribbon is off.
• Blocks are still eaten from the outside in, but only once their wrapping is gone.
• The numbers on the boxes already include every layer, so the totals always add up.

What wrapping does to a level

Every level becomes two jobs that chase each other: unwrapping and eating. Unwrap too slowly and the colours in your slots have nothing to bite; unwrap too far ahead and the big striped boxes sit in the nest while the picture waits. The ribbon sets the level's difficulty curve: a ribbon around the edge makes the opening hard, a bow in the middle makes the ending hard, a ribbon ring makes the middle hard, and a cross ribbon keeps the pressure on all the way.

Tips

• The ants start unwrapping near the nest, at the bottom of the picture, so the dish appears from the bottom up.
• Look at what has been uncovered before sending a colour of the picture; a colour that is still wrapped only blocks a slot.
• Plan around the ribbon: the part under it is uncovered last.
• The Machine Gun tears every layer and breaks the block in one shot. The UFO on a wrapping colour only lifts that layer.