Mikalye's 21th 2016 Puzzle - An Event - Mikalye's Riddle Dungeon - Ended - Solutions Posted

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I have promised this for a long time. I have published a number of puzzles (21 or 22 this year) on Steamgifts, but I have never really written an EVENT puzzle. I look with some awe at Jeffhowe's Food Pyramid, with puzzles, that lead into puzzles that lead into puzzles, and I have always wanted to try that. And so now I have. This is the most intricate set of nested puzzles that I have ever written. They are at various different levels of difficulty, and they lead to different giveaways, so everyone should be able to get some, many will get most, and a few will get through to the end.

There are more than 100 puzzles of various sizes (mostly very small) in this thing. I have tried to include and honour every form of puzzle that I could. You want a crossword puzzle, I put one in here. You want a wordsearch, I got one. You want logic puzzles, I've got two, You want a sudoku, there's even one of those in there. There are dozens of hours of work in this so I really hope that people enjoy it.

There are 14 giveaways and it all ends on 1 July at the now traditional time of 11pm GMT.

The prizes for this event are:
Hitman Collection,
Amnesia, the Dark Descent,
Middle-earth:Shadow of Mordor GotY edition,
Dungeons - The Dark Lord ,
Risen Franchise Pack,
Cities: Skylines,
The Talos Principle,
Double Dragon:Neon,
Mini Metro,
12 Labours of Hercules II: The Cretan Bull,
Skulls of the Shogun,
Thief Collection,
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 - Uprising, and
Altered Beast

That's all you need to know really. The event takes the form of a Game of sWords Level and I call it Mikalye's Riddle Dungeon

A few notes on Game of sWords rules that don't get used in most GosW levels and I should reference here. These are NOT specific to my dungeon, they are part of GosW, but most levels don't need them and so it is important to emphasise them.

Doors and Chests in GosW that ask questions can have a penalty EP if you get the answers wrong. Most Doors and Treasure Chests in my dungeon have an EP cost of 10EP. That means that if you get an answer wrong, you will lose 10EP. If you get the answer right, you will lose nothing. However, if you do not have at least 10EP, you will not be able to attempt to open the door.

GosW have the concept of clues, pieces of paper that you can pick up and store in your notebook. However, every single [expletive deleted] bit of wall in my dungeon has a clue on it. There are hundreds of them. As such your notebook can quickly be overwhelmed. A clue can exist in only one place. If you pick it up, then it disappears from the wall where you found it, and appears instead in your notebook. If you drop it from your notebook, then it will reappear at wherever you originally found it. You can highlight any clue in your notebook, hit delete and save your notebook and that clue is gone from the notebook (and back at its original wall). Sadly, you will not normally get all of the clues for a particular puzzle together, you might get puzzle 1 clue 1, then puzzle 1 clue 2, then puzzle 3 clue 4, then puzzle 1 clue 3, so learning how to manage your notebook can be useful. Alternatively, you can take your own notes on paper or electronic paper.

Finally, I use ROT13 extensively in the dungeon, and I realised after I had published the dungeon that I had not explained ROT13 in the dungeon. Most readers of this will know it, but for clarity, you simply shift each letter forward or backward 13 characters in the alphabet, so all A's become M's and vice versa, B's become N's and so on. I use ROT13 to define a clue that is not needed to solve the puzzle, but is there to provide an in-game hinting system. So if there was, for example a rebus, with a picture of a Jersey cow, then a big plus sign, then a picture of a desk lamp, then a big minus sign and then a picture of a boy scout camp with tents around a bonfire, you could solve as COW+LAMP-CAMP = OWL (Note, there is only one rebus in the dungeon and it is easier than this one). You could probably do that without any hint, but I could include a ROT13 enciphered hint to say something like "the third picture is of a CAMP" (Gur guveq cvpgher vf bs n PNZC) or even "you are looking for a three-letter type of bird" (lbh ner ybbxvat sbe n guerr-yrggre glcr bs oveq). I would advise against deciphering the ROT13 clues unless you are stuck on that particular thing, but it is of course your dungeon to play with.

Do note, that I do get to see how many treasures people have encountered and where. If you enter a givewaway for a treasure you cannot possibly have reached yet, then I will be cross and call for a re-roll. Please do not cheat.

Lastly, I had a new year's resolution to publish a minimum of 52 puzzles this year, and I am still on target, but not if I do not publish for the month that this is running, so I will also publish puzzles to pretty much the normal schedule while this is live. Seeing Nordhbane running PA7 and PA8 simultaneously told me that this could work.

Enjoy,
Mikalye

8 years ago*

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Should I try to create another Game of Swords dungeon level

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Yes

472 Comments

Mikalye

IMPORTANT ENGINE NOTE

As of 7 June, SErVER51 has added the most requested feature to the game engine, teleportation. From this date, if you click on an explored tile on the minimap, you can travel there instantly. Level designers can choose to turn off this option, but I have not done so.

Corrections/Errata

All errors have now been fixed in the dungeon as of 22:00 on 7 June 2015 (thanks a bunch SErVER51)
The previously missing 7th clue in The Recursive Riddle of Mikalye has now been added to a wall of the alcove just north of the odd stone wall.

Statistics

As the close of the dungeon, 370 people have entered the riddle dungeon and treasures have now been found by 88 searchers, so 24% of all entrants have found at least one treasure. The details are in the table below.

Number of Treasures	People with this many
1	31
2	10
3	9
4	7
5	8
6	1
7	3
8	2
9	1
10	1
11	0
12	0
13	0
14	15

Grand Champions

snrd3r, Chour, Jondox (scuazmooq), Tortoise(aquamarineyellow)**, redino, charlie (Valerian Steel), Avantyr, Zorglub, nickchanger, stubi (aapje), Mandrill, j2s SuM (sumyy), yukulele53, potvora, bellthecat

Hints

Additional General Hint: Sometimes it is a pattern or letters or sounds that is important. Sometimes it is the meanings of the words. Think about trying both approaches.
Additional General Hint: For additional thoughts as to how some of these puzzles work, may I recommend my Magic Guide to Writing and Solving Puzzles. Some folks have found the metapuzzles section to be particularly useful, though your experience may vary.
Additional Hint for the riddle on the European Yew door: There were two different answers accepted, but I really suppose I should have added a third which was the singular of one of the other two. If you have tried a 5-letter answer with an A as the third letter, then add an S to it, and accept my apology. I should have accepted that as well.
Additional Hint for the Riddle of All Riddles: The clue is in on the riddle chest, which says "You may have heard of clues to the treasure in your journeys around the dungeon." and on each of these clues it starts "The wall seems to whisper to you about the Riddle of All Riddles." Listen to these clues. Say them aloud. This is an aural puzzle.
Additional Hint for the Riddle of the Beast: The filename of the image provides an additional inadvertent clue. Also, the puzzle has nothing to do with hydras or with Hercules (Hydra appeared in the puzzle, this was an accident, but caused a bunch of people to waste a bunch of time. Sorry). Also, the answer to the puzzle is a type of beast.
Additional Hint for the Riddle of the Reds: The precise shades of red that are used are actually quite important.
Additional Hint for the Recursive Riddle of Mikalye: I have already posted a solid hint in one of the other comments on this thread
Additional Hint for the Ancient and Terrible Riddle of Tyre: Putting the fourteen clues into the correct order shouldn't be that hard.
Additional Hint for the Monumental Riddle of Jupiter: There is no monumental riddle of Jupiter in the game, but I was curious as to whether people would click on a spoiler for something that they could presume that they just haven't reached yet.
Additional Hint for the Mysterious Riddle of the Occult: The context is very important here. What is it that they are showing you, besides pictures?
Additional Hint for The Logic Problem of Tyre, Several people have now contacted me in chat stuck in the extraction step. 3 of them have struggled with rule 3. For the avoidance of doubt, one is not a number greater than one The answer you are looking for is an English word..
Additional Hint for The The Soothsayers Riddle of Divination: It is what they are doing that matters. Each soothsayer is using a different method of telling the future. None of them are using Cartomancy, that is reserved for the Mysterious Riddle of the Occult.
Additional Hint for the Ancient and Terrible Riddle of Tyre: This is on the radar of several solvers, though I know that there are many who haven't reached this level yet. There are several solvers stuck here, and I think it my civic duty to help them: Solving this requires something that some people have forgotten to record. If you have, contact me in chat and I will ensure that you have everything that you need. The order in which they were encountered was (LG/CI) in either order, RB, XW, JS, MZ, SL, KK, DQ, CG, WS, NG, SD, LP.
Additional Hint for the odd stone door: The runes may have been written in an unusual language, but the answer sought is in English, and only English answers are accepted.
Additional hint for the Mysterious Riddle of the Ourobourous: Inscribed onto the surface of the door is a carved relief image of a serpent wrapped on itself eating its own tail. How could that work with the words you have?
Additional hint for the Hunter's Riddle of Thebes: There is no Hunter's Riddle of Thebes.
Additional hint for The Overlooked Golden Riddle of Tyre: The key part of this puzzle is easily overlooked.
Additional hint for the Ancient and Terrible Riddle of Tyre: The meanings of these words are unimportant. Additionally one of the comments that one of the solvers made asked just how I was able to find these words given the constraints on what the answers had to look like. Do you think I would have come up with the odd answer to (say) the crossword puzzle if I didn't have some serious constraints on what the answer needed to be.
Additional Hint for the Mysterious (and Mystical) Riddle of the Occult: The folks are showing you fortune-telling cards. But precisely which cards are they showing you? This is a riddle where a search engine may help.
Additional Hint for the Mysterious Riddle of the Ourobourous: Putting the words into the correct order helps a lot here, and all you have to work with is a picture of a snake eating its own tale in a circle endlessly.
Additional hint for the Recursive Riddle of Mikalye: The solid hint in the comments is on the first page of the comments.
Additional hint for the Second Tricksy Riddle: The eleven clues are clearly listed as such. There are no obfuscated clues, nor any requirement to rescan slowly-loading wall text.
Additional hint for the Dreaded Riddle of the Bacchae: All of the words given (including in fact "dreaded" and "Bacchae" share an unusual property. In each word, one of these things is not like the others.
Additional hint for the Recursive Riddle of Mikalye: This riddle is a riddle of Mikalye. Well I am Mikalye. Hence this riddle is about me. Oh Joy. That is one of my very favourite topics for a riddle.
Additional hint for the Second Tricksy Riddle of Mikalye: This riddle is a riddle of Mikalye. Well I am Mikalye. Hence this riddle is about me. Oh Joy. That is one of my very favourite topics for a riddle.
Additional hint for the Prudent Rebus of Tyre: This one is curious as it was considered one of the easier puzzles by the native English speakers and brutal by the others. In order to solve a rebus like this you need to pronounce the words together. Sometimes in such a puzzle, each picture can represent a different word, so if the rebus showed a key, a green citrus fruit, and the mathematical symbol for pi, then the answer to the rebus would be KEY LIME PIE. Other times, words can run together, so if a rebus showed a picture of a toy doll, along with a shark's fin, then the answer could be DOLPHIN. In this instance, the answer to the rebus has something to do with prudence (hence the Prudent Rebus of Tyre).
Additional hint for the Riddle of the Egyptian Gods: When you are trying to solve a puzzle that turns on the meanings of words, as this one does, it can be helpful to use a dictionary or a thesaurus.
Additional hint for The Riddle for the King: A number of people have gotten stuck here in the same place. They have identified several words after studying the picture, but they do not know how to link them or what to do with them. A good piece of advice for any puzzle, anywhere, is that if you have a bunch of words that you do not know how to link, try typing them into a search engine and seeing if there may be an linkage that you did not see or did not know.
Additional hint for The Overlooked Golden Riddle of Tyre: Like the Riddle of All Riddles, this is an aural puzzle. Try saying these things aloud.
Additional hint for the Recursive Riddle of Mikalye: The word recursion suggests that it calls itself. So we can have a poem about poems, a riddle about riddles, a puzzle about puzzles, and so on.
Additional hint for the Ancient and Terrible Riddle of Tyre: This riddle turns on word structures, Look carefully at the 14 words and phrases and identify any unusual letter patterns that appear on your radar. Refer, if necessary, to the tenet of problem solving I set out in the discussion of pure metas in my magic guide. Then your solve will be remembered in the sagas, or at least by raising your level in the stats. (grin)

Solutions

https://www.steamgifts.com/go/comment/fkuXOtX

8 years ago*