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.
