Puzzles in FF

[CharlesX]

I've always been very into puzzles both within FF and generally, and I'm normally pleased when FF has one or more puzzles. However, I think either I'm dumb or the FF writers are maths geniuses, because some FF puzzles seem to me to be very difficult, Tower Of Destruction and Deathmoor being stand-out examples, other puzzles can be difficult as well (Knights Of Doom). Like probability theory difficulty level in some FFs I suspect puzzle difficulty level was not playtested (or considered even) for many FFs. I particularly like it when an illustration is part of a puzzle, such as counting the coins in Return To Firetop Mountain. But OTOH sometimes a gamebook will present you with an illustration and ask you "who was the bad guy?" without any clue either in the illustration or previous paragraphs .

   Is there a distinctive style of puzzle unique to FF? I guess, like good illustrations, one or more can provide flavour to gamebooks if they're well-written, I think it more depends whether the author is into puzzles if that will be so (I would say Livingstone and Chapman are quite good at puzzles and mysteries). Merging puzzles and mysteries as I just implied, and crossing genres into CYOA, Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey? was a great example of a CYOA which has\had a fun concept although execution was sentimental and simplistic like many CYOA.

[kieran]

Yeah I don't get the puzzles in Tower of Destruction at all. I can just about do the Deathmoor one but how any 10 year old could be expected to is beyond me.

Some puzzles are a bit too open to interpretation - the door in the ship in Island of the Undead is way too vague as to what the reader should do for instance. The coloured button sequence in Space Assassin would be another example. Unless you're on the author's wavelength, you're pretty much stuck.

To his credit, I think Ian is generally good at puzzles. They tend to be simple maths equations with little grey area to them.

[misomiso]

Yes Ian's puzzles are surprisingly ok.

I think puzzles work best if they are a kind of 'bonus' content, as not being able to solve them is very frustrating.

[petch]

Mar 10, 2023 15:52:44 GMT kieran said:

Yeah I don't get the puzzles in Tower of Destruction at all. I can just about do the Deathmoor one but how any 10 year old could be expected to is beyond me.

Yes, I think this is the main problem with how puzzles were implemented in many of the books. As an adult reader, I enjoy the puzzles now, for the break in the narrative and that little eureka moment you get when you successfully solve one, but the problem was way too many of them were pitched too far beyond the capabilities of the target audience. I can remember lots of times as a kid being stuck on a puzzle but not wanting to give up on a book, and flicking through every reference until I found the right one.

And then some of the tricksier books took measures to try to cheatproof even that method, the language code in Creature of Havoc being one example. Only one of the kids in my primary school class was able to get his head around how to decipher it (even with the in-book explanation), and I can remember a bunch of us taking our copies over to him to translate it for us. Of course none of us were able to beat the book even then!

[Pete Byrdie]

I'm dreadful at puzzles, and I don't enjoy them one bit. Being stuck on a puzzle not only takes me out of the narrative of the book, but just frustrates me. So, not a fan. But each to their own

[Gabe Fandango]

Mar 10, 2023 15:52:44 GMT kieran said:

Yeah I don't get the puzzles in Tower of Destruction at all. I can just about do the Deathmoor one but how any 10 year old could be expected to is beyond me.

I solved all the ones in ToD except the music score one when I first played, although admittedly I was 13-14 years old at the time, not 10. Deathmoor was the one that stumped me. In fact, I think I'm just not on the same wavelength as Robin Waterfield in general. Deathmoor (final puzzle), Masks of Mayhem (which reference to turn to identify traitor), Phantoms of Fear (the pixies' rhyme and the Trial of the Ghosts), and Rebel Planet (the picture puzzle) all had puzzles that stumped me forever and forced me to read a walkthrough. Some of them still stump me now, mainly those that I can't find in walkthroughs because they're not on the optimal path (Phantoms of Fear).

Mar 11, 2023 8:47:51 GMT misomiso said:

I think puzzles work best if they are a kind of 'bonus' content, as not being able to solve them is very frustrating.

Yeah, a good example is Mask of Belthagor shrine in Moonrunner, or the chest containing Siegfried's armour in Vault of the Vampire. Solving the puzzle wins you a useful bonus quest item, but you don't need it to win. And just as importantly, you can just give up and leave if you can't solve it (unlike the ones in Phantoms of Fear, for example. Those are not on the optimal path and technically not necessary to solve, but if you stumble upon them and can't solve them, you are stuck.).

[CharlesX]

Mar 11, 2023 15:11:11 GMT Gabe Fandango said:

I solved all the ones in ToD except the music score one when I first played, although admittedly I was 13-14 years old at the time, not 10. Deathmoor was the one that stumped me. In fact, I think I'm just not on the same wavelength as Robin Waterfield in general. Deathmoor (final puzzle), Masks of Mayhem (which reference to turn to identify traitor), Phantoms of Fear (the pixies' rhyme and the Trial of the Ghosts)

I think we both know this but Trial of Ghosts or whatever its called has no special rhyme or reason\logic about it, as well as there being many potential paths through it, so it's completely natural to feel it's unfair, because that's just what it is. It's like saying "I'm thinking of a number from 1 through 5. Guess the same number as me, and you win!"  .

[Wilf]

Mar 11, 2023 15:24:37 GMT CharlesX said:

Mar 11, 2023 15:11:11 GMT Gabe Fandango said:

I solved all the ones in ToD except the music score one when I first played, although admittedly I was 13-14 years old at the time, not 10. Deathmoor was the one that stumped me. In fact, I think I'm just not on the same wavelength as Robin Waterfield in general. Deathmoor (final puzzle), Masks of Mayhem (which reference to turn to identify traitor), Phantoms of Fear (the pixies' rhyme and the Trial of the Ghosts)

I think we both know this but Trial of Ghosts or whatever its called has no special rhyme or reason\logic about it, as well as there being many potential paths through it, so it's completely natural to feel it's unfair, because that's just what it is. It's like saying "I'm thinking of a number from 1 through 5. Guess the same number as me, and you win!"  .

The Trial Of Ghosts does have a logic to it, difficult though it may be.  The idea is that whichever number you start from, there's a correct route, so you need to find a number that's achievable from every starting point.  (I didn't say it was a good one!)

Except it's broken in the execution of it, because one of the starting numbers won't make that total.

[nathanh]

I managed the music notes in Tower of Destruction after some effort, mainly because "try to turn it into letters" is always the thing to try with these puzzles.

The two I never managed to solve were the clock faces in Tower (very obscure, and as far as I can tell genuinely unsolvable in that there are many different clock arrangements that give the required number; fortunately all you need is the number), and the picture puzzle in Rebel Planet (because I found so many different plausible answers). I guess I never solved Pitch, Yaw, Roll either, because I read the solution on this board before I actually reached that.

[Wilf]

The clocks in Tower got me - had to get the answer to that one online. And then forgot it and couldn't work it out, so had to get the answer online again. Second hardest puzzle in all FF, IMO.

The hardest being Electron's riddle in The Warlock's Way. Still incomprehensible after all these years.

[CharlesX]

As Tower Of Destruction has been mentioned I might as well add that at least two of the puzzles in Tower including the Clock puzzle have errors affecting them only adding to their sometimes outrageous difficulty level .

[Pete Byrdie]

Mar 12, 2023 11:29:01 GMT nathanh said:

I guess I never solved Pitch, Yaw, Roll either, because I read the solution on this board before I actually reached that.

That whole pitch, yaw, roll thing falls into a strange little category of things gamebook writers think it would be cool to make you figure out that I think should be a test of your character's skill. A bit like the cyclops fight in Seas of Blood. SoB gets away with it because it's well done and entertaining. Sky Lord doesn't get away with it.

[Gabe Fandango]

I don't know if it's just me, I find the whole Pitch/Yaw/Roll to be even stranger for a kid's book that all the maths or text cipher puzzles. At least I know what the book was asking for even if I couldn't solve all of them. I had no idea what any of the terms even mean back when I read Sky Lord. I didn't even know the word 'Yaw' existed before that.

[kieran]

Mar 13, 2023 15:05:35 GMT Gabe Fandango said:

I don't know if it's just me, I find the whole Pitch/Yaw/Roll to be even stranger for a kid's book that all the maths or text cipher puzzles. At least I know what the book was asking for even if I couldn't solve all of them. I had no idea what any of the terms even mean back when I read Sky Lord. I didn't even know the word 'Yaw' existed before that.

I'm still not sure!

[nathanh]

I quite like that things like FF would just fling in words that kids have no chance of knowing, with no explanation. Like the first time something referred to a wizard as a "sage" I was so confused. Why are they calling him a herb?

[vastariner]

To add some spice?

[CharlesX]

I thought the distinction between "wizard" and "sage" was, a wizard specializes in casting spells, where a sage specializes in wisdom \ intelligence (e.g. you go to "sages" or "wise woman" for advice, you meet a "wizard" who either attacks you or perhaps teaches you). In fairness to FF I haven't often noticed them using the one word whether the other is more apt.

[CharlesX]

Mar 13, 2023 15:05:35 GMT Gabe Fandango said:

I don't know if it's just me, I find the whole Pitch/Yaw/Roll to be even stranger for a kid's book that all the maths or text cipher puzzles. At least I know what the book was asking for even if I couldn't solve all of them. I had no idea what any of the terms even mean back when I read Sky Lord. I didn't even know the word 'Yaw' existed before that.

I didn't think it had any meaning at all - I thought it was just one of the many 100% random choices in Sky Lord like "do you press the yellow, red, or green button?" or "do you <couple of random-sounding choices> or close your eyes and punch or press anything you touch?" (true path answer - close your eyes and punch and press randomly  ). 

[Wilf]

Mar 14, 2023 8:30:22 GMT nathanh said:

I quite like that things like FF would just fling in words that kids have no chance of knowing, with no explanation. Like the first time something referred to a wizard as a "sage" I was so confused. Why are they calling him a herb?

This.  I learned so many new words from Space Assassin alone...

[kieran]

Memories of reading a Sagard gamebook and asking my mum what 'diaphonous gowns' were...

[hallucination]

Recently played through Portal of Evil, and quite enjoyed the 'if numbers were letters' puzzle. Encountering it, I had a vague memory, but had to re-solve it, and doing so was neat. In my book it is kinda challenging since there's a little lateral thinking there, but also not impossibly obscure

[Wizard Slayer]

Mentioning Portal of Evil reminds me of a puzzle that I didn't come across during any of my playthroughs, only when I read through the whole book after completing it:

The staircase is lit by torches. You reach the bottom, which seems to be a dead end: a short corridor leads from the foot of the stairs to a blank stone wall. You wonder if a secret door is hidden here. On the wall hangs a handwritten sign, part of which appears to be in code:

TIDSIV FUUS!
KEY IS UNDER MAT!

It's not vital in any way to completing the book, but it took me ages to work it out. It's a classic FF word-code puzzle, and turns out to be a code almost as clever as in Creature of Havoc!

SPOILER: Click to show

The answer is APFIS NEV. The key is that the first words are SECRET DOOR (as hinted in the text). To convert English to code, each consonant goes to the next consonant, and each vowel to the next vowel; the password is UNDER MAT, so U->A, N->P, D->F...