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Post by phraca on Apr 22, 2019 22:06:25 GMT -5
My group has solved this puzzle. I’m happy to help with hints. I think what's really needed here is an explanation of the logic your group used to solve this (in spoilers of course). As far as I can tell, this is a broken puzzle (phraca highlighted its issues very well) so I'm curious as to how you solved it. This is also one of the puzzles that made me give up Wilson Wolfe, so if a clear explanation could be provided, it might inspire me to pick it up again. I was very close to giving up after this and then a few of the other puzzles. We ended up using the hint page more than I would have liked. It’s too bad there are a few poorly designed puzzles, when on the whole, the experience has been a lot of fun. I am down to just the final meta puzzles for the silver level before diving into more of the gold and platinum content.
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Post by kite on Apr 25, 2019 14:18:28 GMT -5
Many/most of the other puzzles are enjoyable! (Except the pirate game. The pirate game made me angry, and I'm glad we didn't do much work before reading the solution.)
I was disappointed that more of a community didn't spring up around the game. We solved just about all the puzzles without assistance, but we never felt like we were really delving into it like we did with C&C. There's a little discussion here, there's a completely dead Slack, and that's the extent of it. Would they have gotten better engagement if they provided forums and/or didn't immediately release solutions?
They promised the moon, and ultimately delivered something only very good, but I'd be very interested to see if they do anything else in the future. I fear they might not, given how tough this ended up being to produce and how much flak they took for having delays and compromises.
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Post by packetloss on Apr 30, 2019 14:19:20 GMT -5
Hi - I saw this puzzle as a 'simple' chess puzzle. Mate in two moves is a relatively common chess puzzle and this is what I assumed to be the requirement. Once I had all the appropriate pieces mapped out from the original data I found it easiest to set the pieces up on a real chess board Assuming 'our' team is white then the black king is in check by the white pawn so black have to take the offending pawn with their castle This allows White Castle to move forward for checkmate. - Mate in two moves & leaves a definitive answer to the puzzle I refuse to check the hints until I have finished the game so the above is an assumed (lot of assumptions in this post) answer to the puzzle but the only one that makes sense to me :-)
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Post by phraca on Apr 30, 2019 19:49:37 GMT -5
Hi - I saw this puzzle as a 'simple' chess puzzle. Mate in two moves is a relatively common chess puzzle and this is what I assumed to be the requirement. Once I had all the appropriate pieces mapped out from the original data I found it easiest to set the pieces up on a real chess board Assuming 'our' team is white then the black king is in check by the white pawn so black have to take the offending pawn with their castle This allows White Castle to move forward for checkmate. - Mate in two moves & leaves a definitive answer to the puzzle I refuse to check the hints until I have finished the game so the above is an assumed (lot of assumptions in this post) answer to the puzzle but the only one that makes sense to me :-) I haven’t had a chance to try your solution, but it is completely incompatible with the info on the hint page, which states that the top 2 pieces are queens, not kings
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Post by dmikester on May 1, 2019 10:07:32 GMT -5
It's also perhaps worth noting that I reached out to George/Simulacra a week ago to ask about this puzzle and have not gotten a response. Par for the course with him in my experience (there's still an email I sent him months back that was never responded to). I have a feeling we're never going to know the true way to solve this, but I hope I'm wrong.
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Post by packetloss on May 3, 2019 5:25:16 GMT -5
Hi - I saw this puzzle as a 'simple' chess puzzle. Mate in two moves is a relatively common chess puzzle and this is what I assumed to be the requirement. Once I had all the appropriate pieces mapped out from the original data I found it easiest to set the pieces up on a real chess board Assuming 'our' team is white then the black king is in check by the white pawn so black have to take the offending pawn with their castle This allows White Castle to move forward for checkmate. - Mate in two moves & leaves a definitive answer to the puzzle I refuse to check the hints until I have finished the game so the above is an assumed (lot of assumptions in this post) answer to the puzzle but the only one that makes sense to me :-) I haven’t had a chance to try your solution, but it is completely incompatible with the info on the hint page, which states that the top 2 pieces are queens, not kings phraca - I was intrigued so just checked the hint page - I have only scrolled to the second hint but here it references kings not queens Not sure if the hint page has been changed since you last looked at it - or there is a contradictary reference further in the hint?
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Post by dmikester on May 3, 2019 16:00:47 GMT -5
I haven’t had a chance to try your solution, but it is completely incompatible with the info on the hint page, which states that the top 2 pieces are queens, not kings phraca - I was intrigued so just checked the hint page - I have only scrolled to the second hint but here it references kings not queens Not sure if the hint page has been changed since you last looked at it - or there is a contradictary reference further in the hint? Fascinating. The hints page definitely changed at some point, so now that major confusion has been cleared up. With that said, I think that while your solution is certainly viable, it requires assumptions on the part of the solver that I still think make this a strange and poorly designed puzzle, though it may not be broken after all. Packetloss, I'm not going to be able to have access to this puzzle for a long time, so would you be willing to PM me what answer you got? If you got the right answer from your solution, then I'll consider your method the right way to solve this.
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Post by packetloss on May 4, 2019 7:22:55 GMT -5
Hi dmikestar - I PMd you the answer I got - would be interested to know if it aligns to the 'correct' answer. There are a few of the puzzles that I thought were vague and ambiguous until I looked at it a different way and had a kind of eureka moment I also find that for a lot of the puzzles I read far too much into them and get led down a path of complexity that just isn't there - a fresh, more simplistic look at the puzzle has helped me out in a lot of them. The other related puzzle from 21st feb letter was a case in point - I looked at it the wrong way for far too long until I realised the correct way to solve it. Although the answer I got to that one was definitely ambiguous and requires some assumptions to be made to get an answer that 'fits'. If anyone has solved that one I'd love to compare notes - will check the appropriate thread. The poker chip was another I needed to take a step back on. For a long time I was convinced that the dots on the rim and the dashes on the face were morse code and needed to be correlated with the suits to give a message. On the whole I am still enjoying the adventure - although I am stalled waiting for family to catch up so we can discuss some of the ways forward. I'm not a fan of hints pages - as I think they tempt you into looking for help too soon and kill discussion boards like this. I am really disappointed that there has been no real follow up from the creators. Empty blog on the simulacra site & no creator led forum where they could chip in to discussions & gently lead the right path where required.
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Post by dmikester on May 4, 2019 7:47:01 GMT -5
To follow up, packetloss PMed me that their method indeed led to the correct answer, so I think we can safely say that this puzzle is solved. Phew!
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