Open forum for those who completed or nearly completed the book. Ask a question, give feedback, say hi, whatever!
Glad you enjoyed it, and thanks for the feedback! Hope the L/I confusion wasn't too frustrating.
The numbers in the bottom-right corner are clues, similar to the numbers in the bottom-left. But I guess you didn't need them!
Thanks! It's interesting to see what order people choose. I hope that solving 2 before 11 was an fun challenge!
Glad you enjoyed! Sounds like you pretty much did the intended "hard route" through the book -- puzzle 7 was the earliest intended place to start solving. If you solved the first 10 without using puzzle 11, that's pretty impressive!
Regarding puzzle 12: Nope, it's correct. Common mistake! You just need to highlight the 12th word. : )
i'm not sure that changing the text of the final message would've actually helped us? since we were already assuming both that there was another layer, because we hadn't figured out what the hints even were, and also the game established that it was willing to mislead us. so "you're done! you've solved it! there's nothing left!" reads as though there is a cheeky wink afterwards (and naturally, we were greedy for MORE PUZZLE).
we can't really think of any way to actually solve this? it's probably fine as-is, but we still wanted to share our experience so you were aware.
the only thought i actually had about possibly fixing it, was revealing (one of?) the A hints, but that might also make their hintiness too obvious
Thanks! The category and hidden corners of puzzle 1 were actually the very first things I came up with... and then I realized I needed to make a bunch more levels in order to help players solve the first puzzle. One puzzle, followed by 11 tutorials. : ) Though it didn't end up exactly like that of course.
Thanks! I'm kinda shocked how many people have solved puzzle 2 first... I was in a rush when designing that one and didn't put any work into ensuring it was solvable without knowing the category.
For puzzle 12, you're right that the last word is the highlighted area. To fix the errors in DYOWON, you probably just need to look at ICOULDELIVER and the circle of ink. You almost have it.
Yay, i got it! Thanks! The slight part I could see in the blue highlighted word was clueing me in that the letters were wrong but I didn’t know how.
And for number 2 I had figured out the backwards thing after solving number 11 naively so I had gone back to figure out what the words were. At first I thought it was just animals but then realized they were the zodiac.
You almost have the final message right. It just needs punctuation, the flips you listed, and the message from puzzle 10.
Do you know the theme of puzzle 11? That should explain the duplicate word. Aside from that, I thought it would be funny, and that using canonical lists of 12 would reduce frustration, especially for people from different cultures.
yeah puzzle 11's theme is "category" right?
i'm just confused because i thought puzzle 10 would be "astrology" or smth
and i just figured what FIREDNOW means. (i think i forgot to include it in my previous message for some reason)
i'm just confused about the messages from puzzle 1 to 9.
i know puzzle 10 to 12 mean "wonder if anything was missed? you won!" (or i think so)
Thanks! I might rework puzzle 0 again then. As for puzzle 12, the solution used to be "NOW WON", and then just "WON". But it felt too predictable and anti-climactic, so I went for a longer message, and couldn't find a suitable semi-palindrome. Do you think just having "WON" would've been better?
My other stuff is definitely not as good (don't expect 10 Puzzles to be comparable), though I am quite happy with how Educated Guess turned out. If you haven't yet, I recommend checking out Linelith and LOK (and Abdec), the inspirations I listed for this game.
Ah, I think you do have a point on anti-climactic, as when I got it, I was kinda thinking, is that all? For predictability though, I don't think that's a problem here, as the process is the whole point, more so than finding an answer.
I'm not sure which way is better, that's a tough call. More satisfying to have a sensible backwards answer, but also more satisfying to have a significant final answer.
Glad you enjoyed! I'm especially happy I succeeded in making it solvable for non-native speakers. I tried to design it that way by avoiding difficult and random lists of cultural items (with the exception of puzzle 1, which is [edit: almost] solvable with Wikipedia).
(I saw the Reddit post this morning thanks to itch.io's bulk statistics on "referrer" URLs, so I figured all the new folks are from there. 190 downloads today!)
Puzzle 1 was indeed the hardest one, that had us going through lists of all the types of cookies. On the bright side, got lots of ideas for Christmas too 😁
Thanks! Glad you liked the zodiacs, I mainly included them just to have clear sets of 12, and wasn't sure how fun they'd be. (Though I was happy with the duplicate z6 clue.) I haven't finished Sennaar or Outer Wilds yet, since Outer Wilds gives me motion sickness, but I hope to eventually! I mostly play pretty minimalist games.
Thanks! I was definitely going for the feel of modern discovery-centric videogames... though I haven't played Tunic yet because it's very laggy on my current computer.
I haven't really made other good puzzles yet, but I hope to at some point. I think my best game other than this one is Educated Guess (https://playcebo.itch.io/educated-guess) which is less puzzle-y and more based on... well, educated guesses.
Awesome! Glad you enjoyed it.
You're right about n15 being covered, but there's another way to find it. It's possible you found it without realizing it, because it sorta breaks an implied rule:
[rot13.no] Nygubhtu a15 svgf gur pngrtbel, vg vf ab zber bs n jbeq guna Bgntrqnhtary.
You may want to write down a proper word list for puzzle 12, with the Divider Line and everything.
Hmm, what do you think about having "WAS" added to the 12th blank? https://imgur.com/a/AYQQM4A Or I could just do "W" perhaps. (You interpreted "Go Back" correctly, I was just telling players to go back and solve 1 - 11 properly upon reaching 12. I think I'll move that message to the top of the page.)
Another thing I might do is change the Ink Ring and/or the end of the message -- I purposely hid the U to set up NOW __OY as a red herring (since it seems like potential words), which I'm now realizing was just pointlessly mean.
I'm flattered puzzle 11 was reminiscent of the treehouse -- that area is one of my favorites.
Perhaps not WAS as this can be searched for and found in the grid & could become its own red herring. Having just the W would probably have worked for me, but I'm not sure if it could also be similarly misinterpreted.
It's currently the only puzzle where one of the leftover letters is hidden, so amending that might help (by that point I had come to assume this was one of the rules.)
I'm conscious that I'm just one person & a lot of players presumably got this without the nudge. On the other side of the coin, I figured out the letters and numbers in v1.12 without any need for the new hint. Is there a case for formalising the two-tier difficulty system introduced by having 1.12 & 1.13 both available?
(Re: the treehouses, I won't go into specifics as this isn't the venue for The Witness spoilers, but I mean the early puzzles allowing for an internally consistent yet incorrect understanding of the rules.)
Additional response as I hadn't actually noticed the second image in your link:
I think the ring has value and wouldn't like to bring about its removal - in addition to lending the final puzzle a striking aesthetic and making it look more daunting than it (perhaps) is, it acts as an initial distraction from the significance of the lower squiggle.
If you were going that route, is it feasible to instead re-jig the positioning on a couple of the words so the leftovers are visible? For example, supposing the first two rows were:
LANKOWREUYD CCUINGWNR
Perhaps not ideal due to the path taken by the first answer, but the first suggestion that came to mind...
Thanks, it's great hearing that all the little details were appreciated. I did try to avoid the RAT/RABBIT situation, but some puzzles, especially 2, were a bit too constrained. In fact, its only sheer luck that I was able to use "error" and "reset" there.
I've uploaded additional versions with Puzzle 0 omitted and a "__/144" total.
Oh, I get it now, so it was the first letter and the length of the word/string! That definitely would have been helpful haha
Thanks for all the feedback. Glad you appreciated the misdirect in 2, that was my favorite bit.
1. For what its worth... all blotted letters are actually there, under the blots!
2. Ah, good to know. It was meant to reference the previous puzzle's theme, astronomy. I'll see about finding a better name. Perhaps just "Signs".
3. Oh, right! I've been meaning to clue that a bit better. Any suggestions? I might add a second single-letter clue to a different blank, like the "A" clue. Or And I could add something to the last page like "Message received?" in green ink or "Message Received: [checkbox]" in an orange box.
3. How about extra hints and individual __s, to nudge players toward filling out the word list? https://imgur.com/a/VAZhG0Z The "D" and "N" on the right would hopefully clarify the proper orientation of words. (I specifically want the message spelled out via a two-column list because the canonical leftovers are, e.g. "reviled" (r7) not "deliver" (d7), as shown by the bottom-right corners.)
You still left the last slot in the list starting with A, though. As I already tried to explain, "the last message (which is the same as the puzzle 12 solution) is shown starting with A, and that's also the direction it's read, which breaks the pattern of messages on the right side needing to be read backwards." So replace the A with an N, or put the A at the end. The last clue on the bottom-left (under the smudge) also needs to start with 'a', not 'n', as the clues correspond to how the terms are read, aren't they? Or am I misunderstanding something?
Personally, I would only see those nudges as helping to confirm what to search for in the last puzzle. They wouldn't make me any more inclined to write everything out in the columns. And even if I did write them out, there's no guarantee that I'd realize they're meant to all be read in sequence. I still feel my previous suggestion is the best way to ensure players reach the intended ending. But that's just my opinion.
Regarding the orientation of the final "word" (n15), here's how my logic for how it works:
The trick with Puzzle 12 is that its 12 "words" don't need to actually be words, they just have to be the leftovers.
All leftovers are read top-to-bottom, so the canonical leftovers include nonsense like "foecarton" (f8), "reviled" (r7), and "nowevahwonuoysa" (n15). The leftovers are not the reversed versions like "deliver" (hence no "d7" clue). You can confirm this via the bottom-right hints, and also the bottom-left hints of puzzle 12. So for consistency, the bottom of page 12 must say "n15" just like it says "f8". *
The reason I did it this way is so that when the leftovers ( "reviled", "foecarton", "nowevahwonuoysa", etc.) get written backwards on the right side, the result is a perfectly-readable left-to-right message that's hard to miss.
Hope that makes sense!
*unless I changed the bottom of 12 to have hints like "n8" for "notraceof".
I think I finally get it. The reason it didn't click for me is that thus far, terms on the right column seemed to follow a rule that they always had to form a valid word or phrase when read from right to left. "nowevahwonuoysa" would be the only one not to follow that rule. Actually, more than that, it breaks the bigger, more important rule of these "word searches" always involving searches of actual words, not simply nonsensical letters, so long as you see right-column terms as simply being reversed.
I didn't notice that the puzzle 12 hints were all the same as the bottom-right corner hints, even for ones that go in the right column, which would indeed necessitate writing them backwards. I think I would in fact find it more intuitive if you instead switched up the puzzle 12 hints for the right-column terms as you say ("n8" for "notraceof"), so that they would get written the same as on the previous pages, and this would allow the final term to also follow the pattern of being valid when read backwards from how it's written. Then you could do one last page after where everything gets written out properly, with the right-column terms only reversed there for the final message.
I can see what you were going for, with the elegance of having the final puzzle also serve as the final message all at once, and maybe this isn't an issue most people would be confused by like I was. But speaking for myself at least, it almost made me miss the final message entirely, and I think my suggested approach would help ensure that people understand exactly what you want them to see at the end.
Oh, thanks for mentioning Xournal... when installing it I somehow hid the top menu immediately (F10?) and thought there was no preferences menu to enable right-click erase! That's what I meant by slow. After looking into it, I've updated the page to recommend it more highly.
The 3 points you got stuck were definitely intended to be the hardest, but for puzzle 1, looking up lists is absolutely expected/recommended. I think I'll add that info somewhere to the no-zero edition, since I put "using an encyclopedia is permitted" on page 0.
I'll also be pushing the latest updates to no-zero edition since lots of people seem to be downloading it. Though I'm not sure I recommend that version.
Thank you so much for adding those! Especially that an encyclopedia is ok in the no-zero version :) I personally enjoyed the no-zero version a lot, though I have no basis of comparison.
Ooh interesting, nobody else has mentioned starting at #4! I did purposely make all the words orthogonal on the off-chance somebody would. I wonder if anybody will start sooner than that... I suspect #3 is the earliest possible (with its small green hint in the printable version).
Poetic considerations aside, "The word searches are done / _______" would actually be counterproductive since the checkbox is for the players who just found "as you now have won" and thought that was the whole message. I might revise the checkbox message to "Fill out 12th word list" or "Write 12th word list" or something. (I assume you found the full message since you mention the "meanings of the even-numbered leftovers"?)
(By the way, I reduced the listed total from ___/150 to ___/144 in v1.18 so that players like JoePlaysPuzzleGames won't worry that there's 6 secret words if they forget about Puzzle 0. And to give stuck players a hint that there are 12 groups of 12.)
I see what you mean I think, that extracting the final phrase and reusing it in a different context leads to more problems. I was thinking about the possibility of not picking out the final part of the message, but really I suppose it's more likely that someone would miss the full message itself (but I think in post 1.17 versions you've added more letters to the "notes" part which should make it clearer). I'm probably concerned about nothing. :)
(Yes, I had the whole message and was being unnecessarily cryptic about spoilers.)
My son finished this evening and found the final leftovers (then struck off the "extra" A). Interestingly he didn't go to highlight it in the grid, but he did write it in the final slot on #12. He also enjoyed it very much.
Fair enough on the 144 vs 150!
I do like the idea of somehow checking or requiring that the player gets the message, but I'm not sure how to do it.
I could perhaps make the blanks more enticing to fill in, at least for the printable version:
But this might tempt players to try solving it too soon? And it might be too helpful? (e.g. spoiling puzzle 6) And tedious when solving on PC.
Re the blanks on #12, I'm pretty sure my son didn't bother with them for the longest time because he could just go back to previous pages to refer to them, so had no need to write them down (and even then wouldn't have written them backwards in 1.17, but probably would have done with the newer hints).
How about this idea - 12 checkboxes on each page corresponding to where the words would be written, which may inspire the player to write each word down and then check it off. Checking boxes is satisfying and it's easy, and perhaps it encourages us to write in the thing that's being ticked off to make it more satisfying? So the simple thing with no details is offered, and paradoxically we spend more effort (writing the words to find) just to get the small dopamine hit of a tick.
(Whether the boxes are always to the left or always to the right, or always on the inside or always on the outside, I don't know.) Separating out the blanks like that feels unnecessary to me -- having the faint horizontal lines with letter hints (that I see in 1.19 vs the 1.17 I solved) seems to me a huge improvement already.
I also think a player doesn't care about the order of items (#1-#10 don't use any order; possibly the two zodiacs _could_ use one, but does that make the player look for ordering in the others that isn't there?) -- and they may fill in the #12 word list in the order they're solved! (I filled it in in puzzle order, but went down each column in turn instead of going row by row, which didn't help.) Possibly they respect the order in #11, where it does follow the ordering of the puzzles, but it's just as possible that (if they write the categories in at all) they write the first two above KEY where there's a big blank space. Having placeholders (lines and/or checkboxes) to show the word placement in #11 may encourage more careful placement in the word list, and thus help guide the player to correct placement in #12. (Again the new blanks with some letters on #12 helps hugely.) And does that mean it's needed on all puzzles, and does that add too much clutter?!
Oh right, I forgot that players don't care about the order! Thanks for the tip. That actually makes me more inclined to use the separated blanks, to give guidance on which word goes where... otherwise players might think the D clue is for REVILED instead of DRAWER. Plus, that'll help avoid the situation where you went down each column. I will keep the bottom hints uncovered.
I don't want to add blank lines to #11, as I want to officially reveal the 12 Words twist at #12, but I might add one green glyph to #11 to discourage players from placing word randomly at the top.
(By the way, every puzzle does have some sort of ordering, but sometimes its just alphabetical or has an arbitrary starting point.)
Thanks for the feedback! A few others were also confused by the ending, so I'm now planning to replace the circle and squiggly line with just a few normal blots [covering just 5-10 letters total]. Less fancy, but hopefully more clear and more satisfying.