“Slicing” is Star Wars jargon for hacking, and in Star Wars OutlawsOur heroine Kay Vess is the kind of scoundrel who spends a lot of time happily trying to get her hands on other people’s property which – you guessed it – is often protected by electronic terminals that are perfect targets for a bit of hacking.
Over the years, many video games set in the Star Wars universe have put their own spin on slicing. In Outlaws, it takes the form of a fairly standard hacking mini-game with a little twist. Instead of connecting a series of tubes before time runs out, you’ll play a game that looks a bit like Wordle, but which true veterans will recognize as a variation on an old-school code-breaking board game called Mastermind.
Still confused? Don’t worry, because we’ll explain Star Wars Outlaws Cut-Out Puzzle more details below.
Star Wars Outlaws Cutting Mini-Game Explained
The cutting puzzle in Star Wars Outlaws is actually a guessing game: you’re presented with a grid with three squares per row (or four once you unlock advanced cutting later in the game), and you have to figure out which symbol belongs in each square before you run out of answers. Hence its resemblance to Wordle.
After submitting a guess, a correct symbol in the correct location is displayed in bluean incorrect symbol is displayed in redand a correct symbol in the wrong place is displayed in YELLOWSymbols that turn red can no longer be selected in the list of possibilities, which helps you track and refine your subsequent guesses.
Blue so the symbols should be kept in the same space for your follow-up guesses, while YELLOW the symbols must be moved to the remaining squares until you identify their correct location.
However, unlike Wordle, there is no pre-existing set of rules (like “five-letter words in the English language”) to help you refine the model; it’s completely random, although you are helped by the fact that unlike Wordle (or Mastermind, for that matter), the same symbol cannot appear more than once in a solution.
Star Wars Outlaws also has an accessibility option that lets you replace abstract symbols with numbers, which could potentially help you visualize the problem better.
For more on Underworld transactions in Star Wars Outlaws, check out our guide on whether or not you should sell Gorak’s Ring, or our explanation of how to earn credits quickly.