Solving `UK Passport Application` with Haskell

Summary

There's a trend at the moment of solving online games with programming, let's do one from the UK called Passport Application, which is developed by "His Majesty's Passport Office" or HMPO. It's a cultural phenomenon in the UK: despite being quite expensive (about £100 just to start) for the standard online version (a masterpiece of minimalist design, entirely text-based), most British play the game, and do so every 10 years or so. It's an adventure puzzle document collection game. The premise is to collect enough artefacts, scattered throughout various bureaucratic institutions, until you can prove the statement "Applicant is British" according to an extremely complex set of rules, written in arcane language, in various texts called "acts of parliament". The prize for winning is a little booklet with a date inside that indicates when you can play again. Hardcore players opt for an entirely paper-based version that relies entirely on postal mail. The puzzle-sheets for that look like this: There are various instructions for what collectibles need to be gathered, presented in game instruction manuals such as: The game starts easy enough, you just need to enter basic facts about the applicant, and take a photo of them. But things get tougher from there, with various side-quests, all designed to be fun: HMPO sometimes decides to send you on an "identity confirmation" side quest. This involves finding someone whose job/status is one of a finite list, things like "accountant" or "civil servant", but they also have some fun ones like "chiropodist", "funeral director" and "airline pilot". Once you've managed to track down such a person, preferably one who knows you, you must socially engineer them into filling in some webforms. The main mechanic of the game involves sending in "original" documents. Documents that are not in english need to be paired with an "officially certified translation", which triggered some cool side-quests in my case like "how to get a certified trans...