Quantum Catch

1. He runs. Squeektoshi is a real hamster. Squeekchain measures his wheel every 10 minutes and settles it on-chain (Sepolia).
2. His run becomes a program. Each round tilts a quantum coin: a lazy round barely moves it, a sprint flips it.
3. The ghost. While he runs, the quantum hamster is a ghost spread over the ring of 16 spots: he goes left and right at once, and where his paths meet they add up or cancel out.
4. The chip looks. After his night a real IBM quantum computer runs his program and looks 4,000 times. Each look finds him on one spot: the ghost lands.
5. Your net. If the chip finds him on your spot in at least 1% of its looks, you catch that spot's hamster. Under 1%: he got away. A spot out of reach that night never catches: he could not land there, so any landings there are only the chip's noise.

The least-visited spot he could reach is Epic; if the chip's very first look landed there, it is Legendary.

His night

One coin tilt per step

Did the chip keep the quantum pattern?

The ring

Each of the 16 spots has its own hamster: the spot's 4 bits pick a party hat, glasses, a scarf and a grin. The ring turns with his night: he starts at his own spot, his total turns counted round the ring of 16 (the dashed ring on the wheel). Each step moves him one spot, so he can only land on every other spot, and on a short night only near his start: the rest of the ring is out of reach that night (greyed), and a net there gets away. Where he starts depends on his total turns, so nobody knows it before he runs.

A normal computer can simulate this small walk. What is real: his run is real, and the chip is a real IBM quantum computer with real noise.

Code on GitHub

Every number here is public. The night shown on the wheel:

The recipe in 5 lines

1. Read his turns per active 10-minute round from SqueekCore roundPage on Sepolia (12:00 to 12:00 UTC).
2. One step per round. Too many rounds: even groups, mean turns rounded half up (at most 16 steps up to 4 Nov, recipe v1.1; at most 10 from 5 Nov, recipe v1.2, which also runs with noise protection).
3. Coin tilt = π × min(turns, 700) / 700 (an RY turn of the coin qubit).
4. Start at his own spot: total turns mod 16. Coin (|0⟩ + i|1⟩)/√2. Each step: tilt the coin, then coin 1 steps +1, coin 0 steps −1, on a ring of 16.
5. IBM runs it 4,000 times. A spot is in reach that night if (spot + total turns + steps) is even and it is at most as many spots from his start as he took steps; out of reach: he got away. A spot in reach with at least 1% of the landings is caught; rank those by landings: the fewest is Epic (Legendary if the chip's very first shot landed there), the next Rare, the two after that Uncommon, the rest Common. The spot's 4 bits pick the looks.

All rounds of this night

Round	Your time	Turns	Step

Rebuild it

Proof stamp: the twin test

Each chip job also plays a card game with two linked qubits that cannot talk. Any fixed plan wins at most 75% of rounds.

Play it yourself: can a plan beat 75%?

Each round, twin A and twin B each get a card, FUR or HAT, and answer 0 or 1 without seeing the other's card. They win if they answer the same, except when both got HAT: then they must answer differently. Give them a fixed plan (tap an answer to flip it):

Play 20 rounds

A demonstration on one chip, not a lab-grade test.