Can I at least know which puzzle is for Mirror's Edge? I already have it.
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Duck puzzle. Instruction 22.
The duck, wanting to balance things out, will instinctively move a number of chairs to the left equivalent to the number of players in the room.It says about number of chairs. Is this how it is supposed to be?
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It seems to mix "chair" and "seat" in a fairly ambiguous way in some places...
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Actually, yes. In the same instruction:
Now every player should shift one seat to their right.The only way to do it is to shift chairs, so "seats" here mean "chairs". Getting a little confused :)
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Yes, it means chairs, or seats, they are interchangeable here.
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That is to say if there are six players seated at the table, then the duck will proceed six chairs to the left and end up where it started. If there are fewer players, it may not end up all the way around.
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I swear to the duck gods, I've been over this a zillion times, and I cannot find any error in my method, but the answer I get is pure gibberish (and doesn't work). :(
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You need to make a sacrifice! (e.g. feed ducks at some pond).
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Hazelmeade, I am happy to look at your work and see if I can help, but I have posted two hints in the hints section on those rules that seem to be causing the most difficulty.
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I sent you a message on Steam with a link to my results. (I'll probably post the Python code after this closes.)
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OK, I have only read up to rule 11 when I hit a problem with your work. It seems like it could be a common enough problem, so I have put a clarification into the clarifications section, and a hint into the hints section
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I specifically didn't do it that way because 35 actually specifies "sitting around the table"...
Results still don't make sense, though--it only changed one letter.
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Ahhhh... I see. Well, that was not meant to be tricky. I took hours and hours, and hours (and hours) to write this beast, and I had not meant that to be a problem. If I had to do it again, I would edit rule 9 to include that phrase. Indeed, I will adjust rules 9 and 11 now to be clearer.
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You are also right that there is an error in step 37 (despite 5 people having now solved it with that error in place). I will make the correction.
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I would really like to get some CV for the Witcher III and at present I have only one entry. What else can I do to get some more of you fine people past the duck?
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I've run out of ideas on the finale. Tried using capitalized letters to form words or anagrams, tried other references, nothing makes sense to me.
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Each of the 4 puzzles will contribute equally to the finale. Each will produce 1.25 of the answers on the finale.
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Yes, that was clear. Sorry, I just can't make sense of it.
"Swan tush" is a fun anagram, though.
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I solved them all except for the duck but I seem to be getting confused on that one earlier than everyone else. In Step 7, when a player shifts their chair, do they go along with it? What does the player do if the side of the table they are supposed to shift their chair to already contains a chair (and another player)?
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Yes, so for example at the start of step 7, player 3 is sitting in chair number 6 on the side of the table labelled 4. Side 3 is vacant. So player 3 will move with his/her chair to sit in front of Side 3. Player 4 is sitting in chair 4 on side of table 5, he/she will move to side of the table 4. What could be more straightforward than these basic game rules???
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Thanks, I see where I went wrong now. My brain is having a lot of trouble with the player numbers (in general), compounded by the fact that you referred to the players by letters in the setup examples you posted.
If you want more duck solvers, would you please consider posting more of the setups at certain steps along the way so that we can confirm that we are still on the right track at certain checkpoints?
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The player letters are to help us keep track of them. The player numbers swap each time we pass on to a new rule (in accordance with rule 2).
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Blead has solved the duck, and found some minor typos. (For example, instructions 28 and 30 have no periods after instruction numbers), I have edited the puzzle to remove the unintentional typos.
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tries duck with new clarifications
gets stuck at 25 ><
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How can I help? I will post a hint on 26 (which is one of the trickier ones).
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Well, the duck gods are not too generous with their blessing, so i am making some mistake before that.
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Hmmm..... Well maybe this will help. After step 10, I have the board looking like this:
After Step 10:
Table 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Chairs 2 6 4 5 3 1
PERSON B F D E C A
Duck D Will this assist?
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I've gotten lazy and missed so many puzzles... finally started this... and already I'm confused... But one down...
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Man, the duck in confusing... Does the table allow for more then one person to be at the same side? Oh, wait, I just noticed a mistake without which that question is not important (yet)... ARGH...
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No, there is only room for one person to sit at each side of the table.
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Maybe I didn't get this right because English is not my native language..
'31. ...and then the remaining returning players will fill the remaining vacant seats in reverse duck blessing order.
Does it mean the player who has received duck blessing most recently/more blessing sit on lower number of table side?
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Yes exactly. The most recently blessed player sits at the chair at the lowest numbered SIDE OF THE TABLE (not necessarily chair, though no chairs will move). Then the second most recently blessed player takes the second lowest side of the table with a vacant chair, and so on, until all six players are again sitting at the table. Obviously, if there was only one player away, then he/she sits in the only vacant chair.
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Okay, I give up... that's too much keeping track for my taste
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The duck game is driving me crazy. I did it with placeholders (even drawn a duck on one of them) but then i was not able to backtrack some stuff so... (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
The duck will be roasted and eaten for dinner. That is it.
Look at that innocent creature before it finishes in the oven...
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Any hints for the antonyms one?stuck on the last step,I've removed the 2nd char from the right but can't feel any energy ;_;
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Ok, bump for my shitty knowledge in english. Duck seems to be too difficult for me.
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Seems like I won't make it in time..
So it's a bump before bed.. ;)
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What a Pity. You sent me your work, and your error is at STEP 43. So very, very, very close to the end.
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Fuck the duck. I'm gonna murderd them all. ç_ç_ç_ç_ç_ç_ç_ç
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This will be the third time in a row for me to miss Mikalye's Puzzles. God forgive me.
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God forgives. I also will post more puzzles. But I will almost certainly never again post anything like the Duck puzzle.
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I hope so for our health,
and mostly for yours...
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Absolutely. It took hours, and hours, and hours, and hours, and hours to write that puzzle. I will not do that again.
[Of course I am writing another long puzzle at the moment, but it will not be this week's puzzle. More like next week's]
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Always behave like a duck - keep calm and unruffled on the surface but paddle like the devil underneath.
– Jacob Braude
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NOOO!!! The solution thread doesn't include the duck!
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Or the finale :(
And yes, he must include the duck! He has to suffer!
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It includes both. Given the time it took to type up the solution to the duck, I chose to save the solutions after each puzzle being typed in.
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Thank you for putting me out of my misery! Tricky step #26 tricked me. Although now that I look at it with your explanation, I'm not sure why.
It was really difficult to be confident in - and very easy to question - my findings without any positive feedback along the way. If you were to do another long, multi-step puzzle in the future, perhaps you might consider having an interim ITH question every 10 steps so that players can get confirmation that they are still on the right track.
I can't tell you how satisfying it was to fling all of my chair and player pieces into the trash now that it's over. I hate ducks now. :)
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I think I should thank Mikalye for this fine puzzle which I enjoyed tremendously.
And also for an excellent gift which was on my wishlist for quite some and which I intend to put to good use (play) in the near future.
P.S. "IKEA" was a hilarious finish touch (it was one of 'AHA' moments).
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And now I see why that made no sense to me...
I did notice they are all k, but I didn't bother flushing the cache and checking whether it accepted that as an answer.
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I completely accepted K. One solver wrote to me apologetically to indicate that they had hardly started the puzzle when they got the hint, then just put in K and found the puzzle solved without needing to follow the directions. For puzzle 2 I accepted either answer. Either "HINT" or what the hint actually was.
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Right, but when I was throwing things at the wall trying to figure out the answer to the finale, "IHEA" somehow just didn't click, and I had long forgotten the K part while trying to find the problem with the duck puzzle. Also, I still have no idea how adding the "thing you got or gave yourself" is relevant--that would be a grade, mark, or letter A, if you go by the itstoohard text, or maybe congratulations or a pat on the back or applause, and none of those are actually related to the answer. (Well, IKEA is a trademark, but really?)
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Huh, I've never bought anything from IKEA. I imagine that they sell assemble-it-yourself furniture or some kind of DIY stuff?
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Actually, they sell a lot of general housewares, including sheets (and pillows and mattresses), knives, glasses, light bulbs, candles, etc.--but certainly the part they're famous for is the DIY furniture. (And maybe the Swedish meatballs...)
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In my Guide to puzzle writing and solving I draw a strong distinction between a puzzle and a quiz. But in that document, I also note that certain tasks, while not inherently puzzles, can often take the form of puzzles. Having raised that as a theoretical concept in enimatology (the study of puzzles), I felt that I should try to make that work. This is my attempt to play with that concept.
The Prizes this week are:
Tropico 5 (http://store.steampowered.com/app/245620/)
Sir You are Being Hunted (http://store.steampowered.com/app/242880/)
Mirror's Edge (http://store.steampowered.com/app/17410/)
Hoard (Complete Pack) (http://store.steampowered.com/sub/11652/)
The Witcher III: Wild Hunt (http://store.steampowered.com/app/292030/)
One old puzzly trope, that is not actually a puzzle is the Following directions puzzle. You have probably seen floating around the web examples like this one:
Follow the Directions:
Please read all of the instructions before doing anything, you are allowed 10 minutes to complete this task.
The joke of course is that the instructions did say to read everything first, so you should know that instruction 20 tells you to skip everything after instruction 2. Very funny.
Other follow direction puzzles try to introduce a quiz element.
For example:
and so on.
So that is all you have to do this week. Just follow the directions. Do exactly as you are instructed, and it should all work out fine. There will be some puzzly AHA's, particularly in the Duck kerfluffle, and I hope you enjoy this ride.
The Geometric One
The Straightforward One
The Antonyms One
The Duck Puzzle
The Finale
For Mikalye's Second Tricksy Riddle - This is four
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