The term cook means, due to the most recent action in either a level editor or during play, that a previously solvable level is made impossible to solve, hence being "cooked". This can be caused by as many methods as are involved in solving levels, such as lack of obtainable computer chips, Chip being stuck in a trap forever, destroying a necessary monster or pushing a block in an incorrect position.

Development of possible cooks thereby grew with complexity and difficulty of the levels and use of invalid tiles. Compositions such as Exit Chip, Same Game and Oversea Delivery are famed for provoking unintentional in-play cooks, often wholly caused by simply one wrong move and sometimes difficult to discover for a long time.

Tile World has a simple way to defend against some accidental editor cooks in a levelset update, which can either cook the route for the bold time or the level itself, due to perhaps different slide delay, incorrect monster order or an accidental erasure of a key tile. The Shift-Tab key combination will automatically test the stored solution by copying the recorded moves, and stop if Chip dies for any reason or the moves run out without exiting, then plays back the moves in whichever situation comes first at normal speed; the solution file is then deprecated and will be erased by the next completion. If Chip still exits the level successfully, only Chip in the exit is shown, the score is recorded and replaces the previous, should it be different if the time limit has changed.