How Does Clearing the Neighborhood and other oddments Work?

Clearing the neighborhood is like making sure no one else is playing on your toy’s special path around the block.

Imagine you're playing with a big toy car that zooms around your favorite block, and you want to be the only one who can drive it there. To do that, you need to make sure all the other toys, like little cars or blocks, are out of the way so your big toy car has a clear path.

Clearing the neighborhood means making sure no other planet is close enough to mess up the path of a bigger planet around the Sun. It’s like saying, “I’m the main player here, and I want my special orbit all to myself.”

• Big planets are like your big toy car, they have more power and can push other smaller toys (like little cars or blocks) out of their way.
• Small planets might not be able to clear the neighborhood because they're too small and don’t have enough power to move all the other tiny toys around them.

Sometimes, even if a planet isn't big enough to clear the whole neighborhood, it can still be special, like how you could still be proud of playing well even if someone else is also on the block.