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.)
