Roguelike is more complex, there's no governing body to decide on a proper definition, but I think the consensus that was reached long ago includes elements like turn-based, grid-based, non-modal, playable in an ASCII terminal. I think the last one is outdated, but the rest are significant components of what makes roguelikes... roguelikes.
Modality in games is a particularly interesting aspect when you start looking at various other games, and something that matches up with things I dislike in games. One fun example is movement in FPS games, which can be built either on universal mechanics or a predefined moveset - some games will allow you to perform a vault move when next to a low obstacle, other games might let you crouch, jump, and crouch while jumping to get over low obstacles.
One thing I'll say is that Chants of Sennaar is, to my knowledge, usually compared to metroidvanias, part of a subgenre sometimes called "metroidbrainia", also known as knowledge-gated/rule-discovery puzzle games. Though it's a bit debatable in terms of how much of it is gated by knowledge, and how much is built to be mechanical progression, but the general idea holds.
I'm also not sure if you can really bruteforce your way through it, but it's been a while since I've played it.