Does it still cut if I stop partway?

Yes. It cuts along the straight line between where you started and where you lifted your finger, so taking your time to place the stroke gives the same result. Speed has no effect on the cut.

What earns a PERFECT CUT?

Five pieces of nearly equal width. The more the thick and thin are mixed together, the worse the record. There is no leaderboard; only your own best is kept, in this browser.

Does the Daily Dopa change the rules?

The cutting is identical, but for that day everybody in the world starts from the same material in the same shape. What is compared is the spread between the five widths — the smaller the spread, the higher the grade.

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Cutting

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Whatever line you draw is the line it cuts on.

How to play

Drag across the block and let go; it cuts along that straight line. Five pieces and you move on to the next material. Even widths give you a PERFECT CUT.

Notes on the feel

The cut faces drift apart by a hair afterwards. Left flush against each other, it does not read as cut at all. Soap, then sand, then jelly — the resistance and the sound change, so the same gesture feels like a different tool each time.

What is this, really?

Dividing a uniform block in a single pass is a job that survives in handwork everywhere. Soap makers drop a loaf into bars with a wire or a blade. Japanese confectioners cut *yōkan*, a firm sweet bean jelly, into slabs of matched thickness. Dried-goods shops chop sheets of agar. What they share is that the object is completely changed by the cut while the cut face itself stays flat. Any hesitation shows up in the surface.

Cutting feels good because effort and outcome line up one to one. There is no stopping partway, so the line you chose at the start is the answer you get. A thing that cannot be undone, where getting it wrong inconveniences nobody, is nearly impossible to arrange in ordinary life. This toy is the instant in which that line is drawn.

How it is done where it comes from

With a real blade, do not set it down and push — set it down and draw it towards you. Pushing makes the material run away from the edge; drawing follows the grain and releases. How much resistance you meet depends entirely on the material, and that is something only your hand finds out.

Here you work through soap, then sand, then jelly, in that order. Soap gives an even, slightly waxy drag; sand offers almost nothing and collapses at the edges; jelly resists at the skin and then lets go all at once. Each change alters both the resistance and the sound, so the same speed of drag feels like a different tool. Five pieces of matched width earn a PERFECT CUT. If you are aiming for it, take the middle with the first stroke and halve each side after that. Working from one end instead means every error after the first one is still in front of you, with less and less material left to correct it in. The cut faces drift apart by a hair afterwards on purpose: left perfectly flush, it does not read as cut at all.

Questions people ask

Does it still cut if I stop partway?: Yes. It cuts along the straight line between where you started and where you lifted your finger, so taking your time to place the stroke gives the same result. Speed has no effect on the cut.
What earns a PERFECT CUT?: Five pieces of nearly equal width. The more the thick and thin are mixed together, the worse the record. There is no leaderboard; only your own best is kept, in this browser.
Does the Daily Dopa change the rules?: The cutting is identical, but for that day everybody in the world starts from the same material in the same shape. What is compared is the spread between the five widths — the smaller the spread, the higher the grade.