Open forum for those who completed or nearly completed the book. Ask a question, give feedback, say hi, whatever!
Hello, really enjoyed the book. Very well made and a lot of fun to solve, I think I've completed it. I figured out vaguely what was happening when I did the palindrome puzzle, which I solved fully before moving on to 8. Then after seeing the word list in nine I figured out the flipped words trick and then i went back to solve all the previous ones (before ever seeing 11, so I thought the theme for 2 was just animals and struggled for a while). Only after solving 1 fully did I realize what the numbers at the bottom meant. Then I struggled on 11 for a while since i thought the 12 theme started with l when it actually starts with L and I had forgotten the A from 6. Also that trick in 1 is absolutely genius. Do the page numbers end up being used for anything, cause I've completed it but I didn't end up using them.
This was incredible! I had so much fun solving the word searches and I’ve been recommending this to my friends.
In terms of order of solution: after getting to and solving 0, I solved 3 (which helped me understand the bottom-left numbers) and 2 (which helped me understand the format of the given words). Then I went in order from 4-11, used the information from 11 to help me with 1, and finally solved 12 (which felt like a lovely bonus lap!)
Very fun! I solved up to 7 naively, then got suspicious when I found other palindromes in the grid. Fully solved 7 and 8. After 9 I went back and re-solved all the earlier ones.
I think I have a mistake on the final board though: https://i.imgur.com/xtb99aY; the letters extracted seem to be in the wrong order?
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. : )
thank you for publishing such an excellent and unique puzzle! my partner and i just spent three hours puzzling through it and we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly!
we figured it all out without any of the hints from the bottom of the page, left or right, only to be extremely skeptical of the final message telling us we were done, especially since we'd already previously been fooled by the initial (lack of) instructions. we had all this information we hadn't decoded and figured there must be one last puzzle. dunno if there's any way to fix that, but it was a little frustrating having to peek into the spoiler forum to figure out that no, actually, we were, in fact, done; the game was not lying to us, for once.
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
Amazing work! I love how everything was so cleverly crafted to hide the many twists in this puzzle, and it was very coherent and elegant overall. You really subverted everything I knew about word searches!
I naively solved until 9, when I noticed the other planets and fully solved it. That is when it clicked for me and I turned back to try and fully solve the rest of the puzzles.
Really big fan of all the small details. Shoutout to puzzle 1 for the excellent category choice that presented seemingly unrelated words, the blue corners catching me off guard even on the second solve, and the cute gingerbread man hinting the category all along. Love the thematic puzzle titles, the thematic puzzle shapes, and even the words being bent thematically, like THREE, CLOCK, SPACEBAR, and QUESTIONMARK.
Can't wait to try more of your puzzles!
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.
This is a great puzzle book! I usually don’t like word searches or word puzzles that much but I enjoyed this a lot. I didn’t do anything special until I got past 0 and saw the clues on 12 that led to everything having 12 words 😂
Number 2 was actually one of the first ones I figured out being a category. I wasn’t able to complete number 1 until the end cause I don’t know that category too well. But otherwise I did 2-11 pretty much in order and then was a little embarrassed because 11 could have helped a lot with the other ones.
I don’t know if I’ve done 12 correctly though, since the last part of the message at the end doesn’t make sense to me (I have DYOWON after “MISSED”) and I also can’t find the last word in the word search - is it just the blue highlighted part, since that’s the right number of letters?
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.
whew, that was fun!
solved in about 2.5 hours over 2 days. the only thing i don't get are the final messages. are the messages from the 12 puzzles meant to be read together? i get that some of them have to be flipped, but the whole thing doesn't really make coherent sense.
in case it's just my fault, are the messages: [rot 13]
ynpxvat nal
qenjre (znlor erjneq)
v pbhyq
erivyrq (qryvire?)
v jvyy tvir
n
zrffntr
sbrpnegba (ab genpr bs?)
chmmyr erznvaf qb abg
nalguvat
abjhblqrffvzfnj (jnf zvffrq lbh jba?)
and i don't get what "sire?" means in puzzle 9
thanks for the hints at the bottom too, they helped me for puzzle 1! i found the theme but couldn't figure out most of the words until i realised what the words at the bottom of each page meant. i also don't get why there are 2 "zodiac" in puzzle 11. sure, it works but it's not that creative imo
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)
This was excellent! I actually downloaded this a month ago, so even though I just solved it, I was on 1.11. But now looking through 1.12, I have a couple comments on your changes:
- Puzzle 0, I'm not sure you've made it any less ambiguous. For example, I gave my gf the link (so she's working on 1.12), she's just "finished" puzzle 0, and she has the FIN in FINE going straight down, then the IS intersects its I. This runs into the same problem of being not unique until you realize the rules it's trying to tell you.
- Puzzle 12, the bottom blue squiggle seems to be nothing? AH, I just realized that's supposed to represent the answer to puzzle 12 being found. Was confusing. I'm also disappointed that you've broken the backwards sensible-ness of answer 12, since you used to have all the even answers in puzzle 12 work out to some sort of words backwards, but now the last one doesn't anymore.
Anyway, hoping your other stuff is as wonderful as this was, will check it out!
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.
Stumbled upon your game after someone shared a recommendation on Reddit. First of all, thank you! I just finished solving the puzzles, and I'm honestly amazed at how brilliant the design is. Nothing is left to change, everything has a purpose and the way you see the puzzles changes so much with the information you get along the way.
When I realized how the codes on the bottom left of each page worked, I feared it would be impossible to solve as a non-native speaker, but then understanding how each page is themed (including the penultimate and last puzzles which self-reference) made everything make sense. Even the final message is brilliant, each of the even pages has a snippet that works forwards and backwards. Having one of the puzzles be a palindrome really is fitting!
Again, thank you and I hope to see a full puzzle game from you, I'll be lining up to buy it!
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 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!)
I also found the game from the same link on Reddit. I really loved the aha! moments – they reminded me of games like Chants of Sennah, Outer Wilds, etc. It's amazing that you were able to accomplish the same kind of feeling with something as minimal as word searches. Especially cool was seeing two different puzzles themed around different zodiacs!
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.
Solved 1-11, got to 12 and had zero idea what to do.
Came back several days later and it suddenly clicked, solved all of them in one sitting, ending at 3am because I couldn't put it down.
The only thing that confused me a little was the very last puzzle, with the N15 that I assumed was supposed to be the word completely covered by the line. Were we supposed to actually know what that word/phrase is?
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.
Like one or two other commenters, I tripped up at the end with the interpretation of the final message. Is the note "Go back?" intended as a hint for this? If so, I mistook it as an instruction to revisit the previous puzzles and didn't give it any further thought at the end. It's unfortunate because at that point there are no more inroads to work at if you don't see the trick. I honestly don't know whether making the final clue make sense forwards would make this easier or harder (I started suspecting I'd made a mistake as it wasn't legible.)
Echoing the general praise for the game - the closest comparator I can think of is the treetops area in The Witness. Two separate laugh-out-loud moments of epiphany on puzzle 11. The first puzzle was the most difficult owing to a divergence of cultural knowledge, but that wasn't a showstopper.
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...
I enjoyed this! I went forward filling in the visible ones, and only went back after reaching the rules. I only figured out the hints after solving everything, which made for some difficulty, especially for #1, but google/wikipedia helped.
I forgot to save after #12, and wanted to quickly fill it in again, but the final leftovers were a bit wrong. I realized I filled in f8 a bit differently the second time - with one end up instead of down.
(v1.17)
This was beautiful. I knew something was up early on - I saw numbers begging to be marked in puzzle 5 - but it wasn't until puzzle 8's little drawings (and of course puzzle 7 making it clear we're solving Angle Searches now) that the true nature of the puzzles was clear to me. I promptly went back to solve all of them properly before moving on; I did of course get the remaining-letter messages right away (in part because I subscribed to Games magazine in the 80s and always check for those, and in part because of the 'foe carton' XD). I promptly saw the mirroring of the right-side clues; I didn't realize the significance of the letter/number pairs at the bottom of each page until puzzle 11 (the 'foe carton' was an especially nice way of confirming that), and it was only after catching that did I realize all puzzles had exactly twelve entries (despite solving ten of them already) and that their ordering around the blue line matched the bottom (except where duplicates were involved - the way that was subtly clued with the two Zodiacs was sublime)... which is exactly what I needed to find 'leftovers' in there to finish it! I saw puzzle 0 was labelled "Rules" and utterly refused to look at it any further than that (checking it afterward confirmed it told me nothing I didn't already know, although the full 150 mentioned on the back page clearly counts the six terms there) - if I were to present this to my friends, I'd omit that page entirely, as it breaks the flow of the rest of the puzzle set and feels like a slap in the face ("All that clever stuff you figured out? Wasted effort, I was gonna tell you all along."). But maybe that's just me being a professional puzzlesmith. Anyway, puzzle 12's assembly handily redeemed any bad blood from the previous page, laying bare just how genius all this comes together, and the self-reflexive final answer reveal is one of the most satisfying things I've encountered in any puzzle ever.
Also, yay, dwarf planets! And I wonder how many people knew of 'lengua de gato' right off the bat (I certainly didn't) and caught a theme immediately. (Cookies being "little warm-ups" is a TOP-TIER fridge-logic hint and I'm guessing most solvers never realized it at all!)
The only criticism I could levy is that some of the puzzles technically had multiple solutions with how the letters in the grid are apportioned to the words (such as the 'ra' at the start of 'rat' and 'rabbit' in puzzle 2), but none of the remaining-letter messages are affected by that (and of course puzzle 6 is that way unavoidably and hilariously) except of course for needing to choose the right 'a' in puzzle 11 (which is obvious enough). I also really wish there was no puzzle 0, but I understand why it's there - I can't fault that.
For the record, I solved this entirely on paper, with the "for printing" edition of the file. I used a highlighter to start, inspired by how 'eclipse' is pre-marked in puzzle 1... which proved to be an unforseen boon, as it didn't interfere with when I used a pencil once I started actually solving the puzzles XD
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.
This was a truly excellent set of puzzles, thank you!
Some things I appreciated beyond the more obvious ahas:
Just finished this, it's a GREAT puzzle and I loved every moment of it. Managed to solve everything perfectly with the slow progression of putting all the hints together. I think it strikes a perfect balance of every little piece of each puzzle being a hint to the other puzzles. I also loved the little trick of how Puzzle 11 had two identical words, I was laughing when I realized that. The shapes of puzzles and words are also very fun. Overall just extremely well done!
There was only one time I ran into an issue: The leftover letters in Puzzle 1 seem to be giving me the word "ARCKINGANY" instead of the seemingly intended "LACKINGANY". I'm not sure if I'm somehow doing it wrong or if it's an actual issue with the puzzle...