If you have electrical experience then the first level is simply wrong. Your instinct should be to parallel relays' outputs where possible (less delay, less relay wear, fewer glitches, more similar to TTL logic), but the software does not support this.

My advice is to treat it like a puzzle: "how do you implement NAND in relays _if_ you can not do any parallel connections". When formulated this way, it is pretty easy to solve.

(The relays disappear in level 2 and we switch to digital logic, so "cannot parallel outputs" limitation makes much more sense there. I am guessing they didn't want to make up a new mechanic just for a single level, but I wished they'd explain it better)

Author here. Yeah, the first level is special and perhaps half-baked. It felt like cheating to start with the NAND-gate as the atomic component since transistors are not NAND-gates. So I start with electric relays (since they logically correspond to transistors but are easier to visualize). But I didn't want to get into realistic simulation of electronic circuits with all the complexity this entails.

May I ask how you would have preferred to solve the first level if the game didn't have limitations?

Two relays' outputs in parallel (A.K.A. "top half of CMOS NAND cell"): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Relay_nand.svg

(In real life, I might put a diode OR + single relay-based inverter, but that's too far into analog logic for the essentially digital game)

One option might be to search the web for "nand gate using relays". That will give you the answer, which might be a little spoilery, but you can try to puzzle out how it works from the solution.

I found this[0], which is nice in that it's interactive (you can click the inputs to change their values and see how the current flows), though I think the visuals are a little harder to understand. Would be nicer if it had clearer delineation of the relays, and their inputs and outputs labeled with more than just their voltages.

[0] https://everycircuit.com/circuit/4954026060021760/relay-base...

> for the life of me cannot see how to get to a single output from all of the components I have placed on the screen

That should be a clue that you're up the wrong alley. A single output means a single output...

Well, unless it's a relay, in which you can easily connect multiple outputs together with no ill effects.

(or a 3-state buffer, but I don't think that'll appear in the game)

Sure, but the game doesn't let you do that, and so that's your hint that joining multiple outputs is not the solution.

And thus, something will have to happen in series in order to end up with just one output.

Is your problem with the user interface, i.e. how to connect wires from input to output, or is is with the logical problem of getting the correct output?

yeah, there's something missing in the instructions regarding the first Nand gate. I understand how a NAND Gate is constructed but I can't figure out how to combine the outputs of the two relays in this tool

A nand B = not(A and B)

One of the relays gives you "A and B". The other gives you "A and not B". "A and not B" with A = 1 is just "not B".

The components that are available is usually a hint. Have you used both types?