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Part 5: The Ace of Wands and The Star Okay, so let's solve the magic square. The middle "C" doesn't move, so we need to come up with two three-letter words that have "C" as the middle letter. None of the other four consonants - N, S, D, or W - would go into a three letter word with "C" in the middle unless you're misspelling SKA, and this was 1986 and the ska revival wasn't until the late-mid '90's, so it's unlikely to be a valid word. Given that, the consonants go into the corners, and the four vowels - A, I, E, and E - become the first and last letter of the middle words. That's pretty clearly "ICE" and "ACE", so now it's just a matter of adding in the consonants around the vowels, and with some trial and error we come to:  The "S" is flashing, so it's important, but not in a way we understand yet. We click the screen to get the next part of the story. The Ace of Wands   I appreciate Johnson taking some artistic liberties and not making it a wand held out in the air by a giant hand, that would just be weird. Anyways, that's the end of this particular thread. Time to choose one of the other Major Arcana and see where it takes us. The Star   One thing about early 20th century occultists, folks, is that they're massively into their ceremonies being performed by nude women. There is a lot that can be analyzed in that, but this isn't the right LP for me to dwell on it.  Now this, I'll over-analyze. The Fool very specifically refers to the Star as a "Pentacle," which is correct for the Tarot Deck where the suit is called "Pentacles." But in every other description of the Pentacle, they're referred to either as "star-shaped flowers" (see the first few updates with the Maze of Hedges) or as "coins" (coming in future updates) and I don't think they're ever directly referred to as Pentacles except in the titles of cards. Which means either that The Fool is wiser than he appears, perhaps having meta-knowledge of his place in the Tarot; or that Cliff Johnson, writing without an editor on a giant solo project, hadn't crossed-referenced all of his writings to crazy-fanboy levels of detail. I know which one of those I believe. Okay, so, puzzle time. We click the "?" and get:  No need to cut and paste this one - just tell me the two words that this sorts into to get your official no-prize. skeleton warrior fucked around with this message at 05:07 on May 12, 2020 |
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May 9, 2020 04:11
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MYSTICAL CHANT I guess being able to play tetris in a warehouse allows me to solve that type of puzzle with relative ease.
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May 9, 2020 05:03
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The Suit of Wands The Wands, as a suit, correspond to the "Clubs" of the deck we know more readily. They're also associated with the element of Fire, presumably because wood burns nicely. Also notice that these "wands" are quite sizable, as befits something we re-rendered as clubs. They're more like a staff than a magical stick. Yeah, you in the back, giggling because your inner 12-year-old is suggesting other meanings of "staff" and "wand" there? Is there something you'd like to share with the class? Because your inner 12-year-old is absolutely correct. Wands are also the suit that most directly represents the masculine principle, with an emphasis on strength, steadfastness, as well as nurturing and growth. Every Wands card in the Waite deck has the wands sprouting leaves from them, and this is intentional, representing the masculine principles of germination. It's also worth noting that Waite was writing just about exactly a century ago, and that gender roles at the time were such that growth and raising etc were straightforwardly coded masculine. ManxomeBromide fucked around with this message at 20:55 on May 11, 2020 |
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May 9, 2020 05:10
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Nicely done, berryjon! You're absolutely right! And ManxomeBromide - I greatly appreciate you picking up the hint where I said I wouldn't go into the symbolism of the Tarot, I was hoping that someone else would. Outstanding stuff!
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May 9, 2020 05:29
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That 'hidden below' bit is indeed both 'oh, that's clever' and 'oh, I hate that'. Certainly a strange but interesting game so far.
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May 9, 2020 09:28
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Oh man, The Fool's Errand! This brings back memories of playing on my great uncle's Amiga as a kid. I played it recently so I won't be solving puzzles, but I picked up A Fool and His Money because of this thread. Thanks for showing it off!
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May 9, 2020 18:30
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Part 6: The Eight of Wands, The Moon, and the Eight of Pentacles And as was identified by berryjon, here's the answer to The Star's puzzle:  Once we've gotten that, we move on. The Eight of Wands   I know we're supposed to interpret The Fool's dropping of the question as him being, well, foolish, but given that we're nowhere near a point where that clue is meaningful, it's actually the right decision. That's the end of this puzzle trail, so we get to choose another Major Arcana to start a new one. We've looked at The Sun, The World, and The Star, so we might as well finish out the celestial theme and see what's going on with The Moon. The Moon  I just want to point out that this card has always amused me. Face in the moon? Sure. Dogs barking at the moon? Yeah, makes sense. A lobster?   Wait, what now? The Sun gave us a map and it shows us only the places we've been? Let's go re-check the Sun's puzzle.  Huh. That's more diamonds than there were before. But if that's true, then we can't solve this puzzle anyways until we've done all of the other puzzles, so back into the pack this map goes. So let's check out the Moon's puzzle.  Um. What are we supposed to do with this?  Okay - what happens when we press a button?  Got it. Each of the buttons puts a mark down on the main board. If those marks overlap, the overlap area becomes white again, and if a third overlap occurs, it becomes marked again. So, for example, pressing "I" gives us:  And pressing "S" gives us:  But having both of them pressed together gives us:  I find the best way to solve these puzzles is to divide the board into thirds, choose one of the thirds, and then press every button that activates something in that third. Starting with the right third gives us:  Okay, that line on the bottom likely should be either solid or not there at all - it shouldn't end with a weird twist on the left. Fooling around to figure out what gets that line either solid or gone tells us that one of the "M" buttons should be left unselected, and that I and S from the example should either both be in or both be gone. With this new position we take the ophthalmologist approach of flicking each button and going "better or worse?" until we get to something much much cleaner:  And then we can move to the middle third and it's much easier to see what makes that right-hand letter cleaner. Only a few toggle flips later we're at:  And then it's a pretty easy set of trials to get to the solution:  The Eight of Pentacles   Clicking on the "?" gives us a new puzzle. In the game itself, you get each of these crosses one at a time, and when you solve one, the next one pops up while leaving the solved one on the screen. I don't want to spend nine updates on this one puzzle, and I don't want to give you six pre-solved puzzles and three puzzles to solve, but with some MS Paint and some time I can give you a reasonable facsimile of the game. If it looks awful, blame me and not Cliff Johnson.   
skeleton warrior fucked around with this message at 05:41 on May 12, 2020 |
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May 10, 2020 03:53
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Part 7: The Five of Pentacles Here is the solution to the Blacksmith puzzle. Because the screen cleared once each set of three was done, I wasn't able to do a capture of the first two sets, but I do have the answers. Set 1: Brown & Crown Merry & Sorry Quick & Quill Set 2: Scowl & Growl Bliss & Amiss Worth & North Set 3:  The Five of Pentacles   Okay, let's see what we have here:  It's a jigsaw! Time to test out this weird free site that claims to make jigsaw puzzles out of any picture I want, so have at it and please let me know if it worked! Or if it gave you like fifteen viruses before jumping to "Never Going To Give You Up." https://puzzel.org/en/jigsaw/play?p=-M6pChh__bu49fvvx1X6
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May 10, 2020 04:02
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Unfortunately it cut the picture into jigsaw pieces and not even rectangles, including the game's title bars. And it jumps to Caramelldansen.
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May 10, 2020 04:05
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Part 8: The Three of Pentacles And one more short puzzle to round this out. But first, the solution to The Cathedral for those who didn't bother with the link (it's okay, I wouldn't trust it either):  The Three of Pentacles   I mean, you'd think he'd sketch it first or mark it or something. But no, cool, just start carving because you know you're right. Anyways, let's check out the puzzle:  Huh. Okay, not real clear on what to do here. Let's check the instructions.  Well that's SUPER HELPFUL Cliff, thanks so much! Good luck to the rest of you, I guess?
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May 10, 2020 04:09
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Hwurmp posted:Unfortunately it cut the picture into jigsaw pieces and not even rectangles, including the game's title bars. Eugh. The only other alternative I found was one that cut the solution into squares, but only squares so it left off the left and right edges to make the whole picture square. And that one jumped to Prager U "lessons". I'll keep looking. and i was unfamiliar with caramelldansen before and now i think i hate you
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May 10, 2020 04:14
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The Suit of Pentacles, and Hite on the Tarot Ah, Pentacles. Some decks call this suit "Coins". It's associated with the element of Earth, and the suit of Diamonds in the 52-card deck. Generally speaking, the Pentacles cards represent stability, protection, and wealth. Not necessarily "wealth" in the sense of "being rich" -- though it can be that -- but in the sense of having what you need to accomplish what you hope to accomplish. Meanwhile, one of the cornerstones of my own library of strange things is, of all things, some collections of RPG supplements from the late 1990s. Kenneth Hite was and still is absolutely your go-to writer for well-researched occultism, old-school conspiracy theory, and general Charles-Fort-style mayhem in the RPG world (and occasionally other venues; his Where the Deep Ones Are is a pitch-perfect pastiche of both Where the Wild Things Are and The Shadow Over Innsmouth). Here he is, in a footnote to one of his "Suppressed Transmission" columns (specifically the July 23, 1998 column "Two-World Minimum: Bisociation and the Art of High Weirdness"), laying down the groundwork for this particular deck: Kenneth Hite posted:The Tarot, like the Grail, has produced plenty of shelf-eating madness and mania in its short existence. Created, almost certainly, in the 1440s as a local version of a popular bidding card game, the Tarot spread across Europe as army after army invaded Italy and took this curious deck home with it as a souvenir. The Rider-Waite deck is the one being used to illustrate the cards in these posts; the Pictorial Key is what I've been consulting here. Kenneth Hite posted:Bill Butler's Dictionary of the Tarot summarizes the various interpretations of the various Tarots. Stuart Kaplan's magisterial three-volume Encyclopedia of the Tarot is hands-down the best reference on the topic, although A Wicked Pack of Cards by Ronald Decker, Thierry Depaulis, and Michael Dummett is the first volume of a comprehensive academic exploration and demolition of the occult Tarot. And no mention of the Tarot can go without still another recommendation on my part for Tim Powers' superb Grail-Tarot-gangster Vegas novel Last Call. And this post wouldn't be complete without me seconding Hite's recommendation of Last Call. ManxomeBromide fucked around with this message at 04:06 on May 16, 2020 |
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May 10, 2020 04:31
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I'd like to solve that letter puzzle, but I have to deal with this computer that won't boot properly. Seems there's some sort of missing partition or some such.
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May 10, 2020 05:47
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I'm pretty sure I've seen a playthrough of this before, but I can't remember where, or any of the puzzles, for that matter. The Chapel puzzle: All the letters are in the picture except for E, F, and I. The only three letter word I can think of that would be appropriate is FIE.
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May 10, 2020 07:46
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Chapel puzzle: All three look like they’re holding some kind of BAG?
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May 11, 2020 02:40
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Part 9: The Six of Pentacles, The Four of Pentacles, and Temperance Thanks as always to ManxomeBromide for more backstory on the Tarot deck and its symbolism! If this LP is archived, I'd like to copy your posts into it as interesting context, if you don't mind. Ad for the puzzle - pumpinglemma had a very good guess (I hadn't noticed that, and it's very sound logic), but Jade Rider had the correct answer. There are twenty-three letters in the background of the picture; E, F, and I are missing. They spell only one three letter word - FIE.  With that solved, we move on to the next step in the story. The Six of Pentacles   Christ, what an rear end in a top hat. Anyways, let's check out The Humbug's puzzle.  Huh. Well okay then. What is this fresh hell? Let's see what the instructions say.  Eeeugggh, a couplet. All right. "If two become one." Well, there are obviously two Eyes of Ra here. Can we interact with them?  Not the one on the right.  Oooh. But this does something. As I move the mouse closer, it moves up along whatever trail or track that is. And if I follow the trail with the mouse...  The button moves along with the mouse. In this way, we can push it up the track... as long as we can figure out where the track is, given that it loops over itself every once in a while.  Carefully, steadily...  CRAP Like a spring, the Eye jumps back to the beginning if I let the mouse get too far away from the track, which is easy to do when you're making a loop or when you can't see where the track goes and/or make a mistake about which track to follow. The good news is that when the Eye moves, it makes a new trail, which means if we screw up, we can see the right path to follow. The bad news is that this means that the Eye overwrites other tracks, so we're making things more confusing for us later. Nothing to do but to try again. Half a league, half a league, half a league onwards.  The good news is that as you go forward...  ...you pass checkpoints that the Eye will fall back to when you screw up. So it's not like you have to start from scratch every time. Just the first dozen or so, until you figure out what you're doing. With a little trial and error, some luck, and some minor carpal tunnel, we hit the end point, and finish the   I MEAN SERIOUSLY WHAT THE gently caress  OH, THANKS FOR THE HELP CHRIS SORRY THAT I'M YELLING IT JUST FEELS REALLY LOUD IN HERE MAYBE WE SHOULD JUST CLICK ON THE ONE THING THAT ISN'T FLASHING?  MAYBE WE SHOULD DO IT AGAIN?  Okay. Whew. Sorry about the yelling. We end up clicking four boxes and get this, our "solution." And then we get the end of this story set. The Four of Pentacles   I mean, it's fair logic. Okay, with that set done, time to move on to another Major Arcana. After all the extremes of The Humbug puzzle and what followed, maybe we go for something more moderate? Temperance   I mean, that's pretty much the way things go, right? The people most willing to tell you everything are usually the ones who have nothing to say. Anyways, Temperance has a puzzle for us. Once again, it's a series of word scrambles, which I've cut & pasted into a single screen for you. 
skeleton warrior fucked around with this message at 05:11 on May 12, 2020 |
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May 11, 2020 04:26
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Part 10: The Four of Wands Okay, so the solution to Temperance's puzzle: are the traditional gifts given at certain wedding anniversaries.  The Four of Wands   I mean, to each their own. After the last decade, I'm not even sure if I'd laugh at a Transformers wedding any more, as long as the people having it were happy. ANYHOO, puzzle:  Another word search! 23 vegetables to find in here before we can move forward.
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May 11, 2020 04:34
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Part 11: The Five of Wands Okay, so here's the solution for The Canopy:  "Leek" was the one that took me forever the first time I tried to solve this, but I was a young kid who didn't know anything about cooking or food. Moving on, we get to another story and another puzzle: The Five of Wands   Yeah, this seems like a really stupid thing to get involved in. The Fool seems wise once again in getting away from these weirdos.  Huh. Okay, well this is a new thing. This game was written years before either Bush was president, so I doubt the "W" refers to him, even though we just had a story about a really stupid fight we shouldn't have been involved in. Anyways, what do we do with this?  Ah, okay. It turns out, pressing each of the buttons does something to the set of letters in the box. Specifically: 1: Reverses the order of the letters, so "FLY" would become "YLF". 2: Adds "N" to the left side. 3: Adds "G" and a space to the left side - so "W" becomes "G W". 4: Adds "E" to the left side and "U" to the right side. 5: Adds "N" to the left side. Once a button is pressed, it disappears. So in what order do we press the buttons, and what two words do we get? skeleton warrior fucked around with this message at 06:56 on May 11, 2020 |
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May 11, 2020 04:43
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qf9N7jbZ2BI Either 314215 or 314512, it's not clear which is correct here.
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May 11, 2020 06:40
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Kangra posted:
Well, crap. I screwed that up. For the rules as written, that’s a great answer! I’ll update the post to add in a rule I had forgotten to make explicit- each button can only be pressed once. It doesn’t be change your answer by much. also I would never have thought that a song with that title would sound like that skeleton warrior fucked around with this message at 07:14 on May 11, 2020 |
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May 11, 2020 06:59
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35142 or 32145, either way, you end up with a brand NEW GNU.
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May 11, 2020 08:06
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skeleton warrior posted:Thanks as always to ManxomeBromide for more backstory on the Tarot deck and its symbolism! If this LP is archived, I'd like to copy your posts into it as interesting context, if you don't mind. Sure, no problem. The way the current archiving mechanism works, every post linked from the OP ends up as an "update", so you don't have to worry about isolating posts or anything. I'll format the posts I've made to look more like posts, and I suspect I only have three more left along the way; one for the remaining two suits, and then one on the Major Arcana. I also own an Extremely Unusual Tarot deck, but I suspect I'll bring that one in as part of the discussion of the Major Arcana because they'll be pretty well tied together; if not that'll be a final post in its own right.
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May 11, 2020 20:54
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ManxomeBromide posted:Sure, no problem. The way the current archiving mechanism works, every post linked from the OP ends up as an "update", so you don't have to worry about isolating posts or anything. I'll format the posts I've made to look more like posts, and I suspect I only have three more left along the way; one for the remaining two suits, and then one on the Major Arcana. Outstanding, thank you! quote:I also own an Extremely Unusual Tarot deck, but I suspect I'll bring that one in as part of the discussion of the Major Arcana because they'll be pretty well tied together; if not that'll be a final post in its own right. I am intrigued and also terrified.
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May 11, 2020 21:43
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Are you using a different version than the one on the linked site? Because I'm playing along and my Temperance puzzle had a different solution:
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May 12, 2020 02:45
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Darkest Auer posted:Are you using a different version than the one on the linked site? Because I'm playing along and my Temperance puzzle had a different solution: That took me a minute, but I love it. Edit: Okay, I've started a "fan solutions" part of the OP just to give that the honor it's due. skeleton warrior fucked around with this message at 05:42 on May 12, 2020 |
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May 12, 2020 03:24
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Part 12: The Nine of Wands Congrats to both Kangra, who got the best answer with the wrong instructions, and JadeRider, who got the correct answer with the correct instructions! The button sequence is 35142 or 32154 - there's no difference in result - and you get the following common, useful phrase:  I'm sure that will be very useful for the next part of this story. The Nine of Wands   Nod politely, then back away. Seems smart. Okay, so let's see what puzzle this guy offers up:  Sure, sure, this seems fine. What do they want us to do with this one?  Okay, welp, I've scanned the picture with the mouse and there's no hidden message, so this picture is all we get. I guess we just stare at it until the answer appears.
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May 12, 2020 04:05
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That wizard's clearly holding a drink and it's probably slippery up where he is, so I'm gonna go with SOT ICY.
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May 12, 2020 04:39
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Part 13: Death and The Knight of Swords I think that was a Dylan song from of Blood On The Tracks Ultrafilter slipping in with a good guess that's better than the real answer! But here's the real answer to that puzzle, and you will hate it. Hate hate hate it.  Yep. We choose one letter from each column, and spell the words that ostensibly appear in the picture, but I've never seen ivy just sprout like that and I brute forced every letter combination when I first solved it because who would think those things were goddamned ivy. Not bitter. Not bitter at all. Okay, you know what? That puzzle pissed me off so much, we're going to do the most dangerous challenge. We're going after the biggest badass in this deck. We're going after the top guy. We're going to pursue Lu Bu. We're going to challenge Death itself. Death  We are puzzle solving Gods, we are the smartest of the smart and we will kick Death's rear end We will punch him in his measly little skull and take his armor for ourselves We shall carry his banner and ride his horse alongside the other horsemen and they will quake in fear We will prove ourselves unmatched in wits and strength  well at least we didn't soil ouselves Okay. Well, hopefully the puzzle will let us feel good about ourselves. We just click the "?" and  WHAT THE gently caress What just happened there was a thing and it was there and it came at us and suddenly we were out of the puzzle Okay. Okay. We just weren't prepared. We know something comes at us when we click the "?", so now we're prepared, and we'll do this thing.  ahgodfuckshitauughcrapshit dammit Okay, try it again  GODDAMMIT I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT I'M TRYING TO DO HERE wait okay, okay, we don't know what we're supposed to do, that's fine, that's why there are instructions. Let's see if we can dodge the endless tireless pursuit of the black Eye of Ra and get to the menu.  Okay, cool, what does it say  The... the white button?  WHERE THE gently caress DID THAT COME FROM? I swear it wasn't there in the last few tries. Okay, fine, loving whatever. I dodged Death once, I can Dodge him on the way back.  wait what WHERE THE gently caress IS IT WHERE DID IT GO okay, hold on. Step back from the puzzle. I'm recording this, right? I have recordings. They have to show something? We can look at those, figure out what's going on, make a plan at a time when I'm not giving myself carpal tunnel trying to run away from a killer icon set by an emulator to run faster than normal. Okay, so a quick review of the previous gifs shows that the white Eye of Ra isn't there until I enter the menu. So I have to slip past the Black Eye to enter the menu to get the White Eye to show up in the first place. And now a quick capture of some frames from the previous gif shows:  When I leave the menu, that goddamned rat bastard Black Eye shoots the White Eye with a laser beam and it vanishes. This is all very in keeping with Tarot mysticism and symbolism. So what do we do? We need to get to the menu, and once we're in the menu, a little experimentation shows that we're safe from the Black Eye.  But when we leave the menu, the Black Eye scorches the White Eye and we can't solve the puzzle anymore. The drop-down for the instructions says we have to hit that button to wait it's a drop down menu  loving hell okay, let's see where it dropped us in the story The Knight of Swords   Yeah, after what happened with Death not really feeling super aggressive here So let's see what his puzzle is. Oooh! It's a cryptogram!  Let's see what secret message it tells! And then move on to any other puzzle that gets the taste of Death out of our mouths. 
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May 12, 2020 04:39
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Part 14: The Queen of Swords She made some... curds? Whatever. Here's the solution to the Knight's cryptogram:  And then we get the next piece of the story. Queen of Swords  The queens are nice, aren't they? Everyone else here is weird and wants to involve us in their weird shenanigans, but the queens just want to talk and maybe vent a little. Anyways, the queen happily gives us another magic word square puzzle, just like the previous queen did.  The "W" in the middle is locked in place, but all of the other letters can be swapped. Can you figure out how to place the letters so that you get three words reading across and three words reading down?
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May 12, 2020 04:49
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ManxomeBromide Is Posting In A Thread About Old Computers Again, Someone Fetch The Chloroformskeleton warrior posted:But when we leave the menu, the Black Eye scorches the White Eye and we can't solve the puzzle anymore. The drop-down for the instructions says we have to hit that button to Oh man, this puzzle. This is the puzzle that, when I hit it, made me wonder if anyone who ever played it under DOS solved it... or if they had to make a new solution to it for one of the other platforms. One of the most infamous properties of the classic Mac OS was that it was "cooperative multi-tasking", and it was particularly obtuse about it. What this meant was that the various programs you ran had to go out of their way to hand control off to one another as you worked with the system, or the system would hang. This basically stayed true all the way until OS X in 2001, and when Apple ran its "Windows 95 is Apple 84" campaign, the usual retort from the PC world is that Win95, unlike Apple84 and indeed Apple95 and indeed Apple99, was capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time. And the menu bar is a process that monopolizes the system completely while it's going on. The solution to this puzzle is to exploit this property of the Mac OS to paralyze the black Eye of Ra. It is the Macciest puzzle that could possibly exist. As I understand it, Cliff Johnson had basically no experience with computers when he made this game; he taught himself as he went along, and he only knew of the Mac world because the other systems seemed to distant and forbidding. (Given what it takes to make a solid Mac application compared to DOS or UNIX or the more "forbidding" systems, I'm genuinely impressed that he continued to hold to this while creating this game!) This puzzle can't have been intended to showcase a unique property of the Mac environment because he didn't know it. It must have fallen out of his experimentation with the system. I can't think of any similar examples of that kind of thing from this century. ManxomeBromide fucked around with this message at 05:32 on May 12, 2020 |
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May 12, 2020 05:04
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It's an amazing meta-puzzle, one of the first I recall seeing in computer games. When I first solved it, I felt like I had absolutely come up with a hack that wasn't supposed to be the solution and was tremendously disappointed when I found out later than, no, everyone solved it that way because that's how it was designed. As for other platforms - they kind of forced the same thing on the PC and Amiga versions; you could certainly use a mouse with the PC edition, and I believe you could open the menu with a keyboard command. It's well designed in that you have to open the menu to get any hint what to do, and make the white Eye of Ra available, so you're pushed in that direction anyways, and so it's less of a mental leap to "well how far can I push being safe in menus"? Like several other puzzles, I very much love it at the same time that I hate it.
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May 12, 2020 05:18
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The Suit of Swords The suit of Swords corresponds to our suit of Spades, and this, like Clubs, is really just a rephrasing. The gardening tools we call "Spades" are from a Latin root that basically means "bladed implement", and the Spanish for "sword" is espada to this day. They correspond also to the element of Air, both by process of elimination (since water is of course reserved for the Cups) and because it is the thing swords most often cut through. The domain of Swords is decisive action, in both triumph and defeat, judgement and execution. Pentacles represent the world, Cups nourishes it, Wands adds to it, but Swords shape it, generally against its will. This suit is more about mining than sculpture; violence pervades it, even when the meanings are not of battle. Restraint, coercion, deflection, and hostile negotiation are all within the Swords' domain.
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May 12, 2020 05:37
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That fact that he made this while learning to program it puts me in awe of his raw ability to teach himself. Not to rob him of his accomplishment, but he must owe a wee bit of the success of the game to just dumb luck. I love that sort of puzzle that uses the UI like that. I recall seeing similar sorts of things in the late-early days of the web, before Javascript took over and made interfaces non-standardized again. Uh, bee!
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May 12, 2020 06:11
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ROB AWE WEE Harder than the last word square!
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May 12, 2020 12:40
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Yeah, okay, the Death puzzle was actually clever. I mean, I hate it, but also I have to applaud it, I like outside the box things like that. I doubt I'd have managed to solve it myself though. So far there's been a really nice variety of puzzle types, which is good.
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May 12, 2020 15:41
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With those gifs, I can feel the frustration of an entire generation of Mac gamers. 
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May 12, 2020 20:05
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Sadly, none of his other games contain meta puzzles like this. “At the carnival” doesn’t even have an overarching puzzle like the sun’s map. Still fun games of course.
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May 13, 2020 01:58
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It looks like there are at least two valid answers to this magic square. R A W O W E B E E
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May 13, 2020 02:43
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Thanks all for the comments and discussion!Kangra posted:That fact that he made this while learning to program it puts me in awe of his raw ability to teach himself. Not to rob him of his accomplishment, but he must owe a wee bit of the success of the game to just dumb luck. It really is something. I consider it on par with Stardew Valley and Undertale in terms of auteurs creating a vision from scratch, though Johnson never did any music for his games, which is probably one of the more remarkable achievements of Toby Fox and Eric Barone's games. (Also, don't feel like you have to guess at solutions to be allowed to post here. Comments and chat are always welcome.  )Black Robe posted:Yeah, okay, the Death puzzle was actually clever. I mean, I hate it, but also I have to applaud it, I like outside the box things like that. I doubt I'd have managed to solve it myself though. Yeah, "I hate it, but also I have to applaud it" is a pretty good summary of the game. And while we've seen most of the puzzle types (though a few really unique ones are still coming up) we're going to see some interesting variation in difficulty (mostly getting harder). Bregor posted:With those gifs, I can feel the frustration of an entire generation of Mac gamers. Yup. I mean, it's no Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy where you have to have read the books to solve some of the puzzles, have to make massive weird leaps of game logic to solve others, and missing a puzzle in midgame meant being stranded without hope in the endgame, but yeah. Johnson said that he wanted to put a game together that could be solved in an afternoon, and I can't imagine any not super-genius doing that. Domus posted:Sadly, none of his other games contain meta puzzles like this. “At the carnival” doesn’t even have an overarching puzzle like the sun’s map. Still fun games of course. Yeah. 3 in three remains a nostalgic favorite of mine because the internal story was better, but also because it was only ever released for Mac so it was even harder to get copies of than The Fool's Errand which at least eventually had a PC version. Speaking of which: I have a place in my house where I display the games that I've deemed worthy of keeping through a bunch of moves and cleanings, and of course The Fool's Errand is one of them. Note that The Fool's Errand box is old enough to be for IBM/Tandy machines, back when Tandy were the big competitors to IBMs. gently caress I'm old. Inside the box are two ancient 3.5" floppies, notes from a previous play through, and of course the copy protection wheel, where you'd be given three tarot cards, a hieroglyphic, and be asked to select a 3 - 5 code hieroglyphic in response.  Okay, time to get the real update together!
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May 13, 2020 03:24
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| # ? Jun 7, 2024 04:58 |
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Part 15: The Ace of Swords and The Tower Before we jump in to new puzzles, of course, we should celebrate those who successfully answered the ending puzzle from our last update. Congrats to pumpinglemma and Vauron for the two separate solutions - because the answers can be read down or across, there are always going to be two mirror-imaged answers to the Magic Squares. Did I sound authoritative and like I knew that was the case going in? I hope so, because it was a complete surprise to me but it makes sense Solution to the Queen of Swords:  And with that, we move to the last bit of story on this track. The Ace of Swords   A little bit different from the picture on the tin, but sure, we'll run with it. Given that this is the end of a storyline, we'll have to choose a new Major Arcana to start a new string of puzzles with. Let's go with... The Tower   Okay, now we're lining up with the cards again. In this case, we get another jigsaw puzzle.  I still haven't found a better site than the one we used last time, so I guess we'll just do the weak facsimile until I learn how to program HTML5 and create my own website to do my own swap-piece puzzles. I'm not going to learn HTML5 and create my own website. Feel free to post loud concerns about my commitment to this LP's success. https://puzzel.org/en/jigsaw/play?p=-M7AtWqaV9dzffX0_Kfg
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May 13, 2020 03:40
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