KissFromARose wrote:

Before I get started posting all of my theories and the like -- should I keep it spoiler free? or is this the area which we share notes?

Share notes, absolutely!    But when in doubt, use spoiler tags.  You might want to indicate which puzzle you're talking about, like so:

Revolutionary Girl Utena: [I'm pretty sure it's not a sudoku]

OnlyInThisLight wrote:

Awesome! Just give me ten years, Sat!

Bahahaha   It's not that bad, I promise.

Some good guidelines for dealing with puzzles that have no instructions:

- First, react to what you're seeing without thinking too much about it. Does this look like anything familiar? A sudoku? A crossword puzzle? Something else? If so, what happens when you treat it like what it looks like?

- Use words to describe what you're seeing. More than once I have figured out how a puzzle works by describing it to my brother.

- And in particular, if something specific is weird or unexpected, describe what is weird as precisely as you can.

- Some useful questions to ask may be:
-- Am I making the most of the instructions, if any? Does the puzzle have a theme that helps?
-- Are there clues I have to solve? Explicit clues, like in a crossword puzzle? Implicit clues?
-- Do I have to put some things in order? If so, is there a natural way to order these things? Alphabetical? Chronological?
-- Could there be a code involved? Morse? Semaphore? Binary?
-- If I have a list of words, can I take one letter from each of them? The first letter of each? A specific letter that the puzzle indicates?
-- Is there something that different puzzle elements have in common?
-- Does anything look Googlable?
-- Is there a hint?

- Recruit help. What is obscure to one person might be obvious to another.

- Finally, come back to it later. Something about looking at the puzzle with fresh eyes might trigger an Aha! moment.

I hope some of this helps!

I think Flah is right, [it could be latin names for a flower somewhere in there? But then what do the seals signify?] Hmmmm

Okay, okay, I think I have something: [if I take the rose seal as a stand-in for the word rose, there are several words not related to the flower, but containing the word rose, to be found. I entered several (prosecutor, primrose -not a rose , morose, prose) but that's not it. It's either a word I haven't found, or some word related to them all. Or something completely different]

Last edited by Snow (08-11-2015 03:06:17 AM)

Ooh, you're on to something here. Caught a few more:
[
microsecond
heterosexual
Pete Rose (seriously?)
Axl Rose (apparently seriously)
roseate (I had to look that one up)

Huh, let's put what's left in order... Holy crap!
]

Well done Flah! So sneaky, including a diagonal. And proper nouns.

I didn't fancy the [Excel] puzzle, but I managed to complete the [Evangelion] one. What will he throw at us next?

Third one complete! [Birches!]I like how you anticipated some almost-there hits, satyr.
[
Also that's enough of watching the Haruhi dance at 0.5 speed to last me a lifetime.]

Flah, a lot of those clues were pretty obscure, and I had to solve them with Google. The cheese was one of them.

For the [dancing stick figures], I assume you have to [watch the actual HHY dance frame by frame, and then arrange the stick figures in the order they actually appear, so that their associated letters spell something.] Don't got time for that right now.

Checking in to report that I didn't give up on this! I'm lagging behind and plan to continue puzzlecracking when I catch up with my studying.

I'm stuck at [Kino's Journey]. I have some vague idea of the order, but I want to avoid entering random letter combinations, so I'm waiting for inspiration to kick in.