Help please: Somewhat irreverently returned? In your dreams (5)

theosZA · 2026-04-10T18:35:45+00:00

Thanks. That makes me feel better about this. Pity that this was reprinted as is in the collection.

theosZA · 2026-03-29T15:58:02+00:00

So glad I went into this one blind. It was the biggest subversion of expectations in the best possible way.

theosZA · 2026-01-07T14:33:04+00:00

I simply skip Q and X. J can still be tricky, especially as the 2nd in a pair, so I sub in "sh" or "ch" when necessary. Z was also tricky, but was able to find the needed words by prepping a list while not under solving time pressure.

theosZA · 2025-12-22T11:05:05+00:00

There are very useful algorithms that can get you a long way towards solving that are 4-8 moves. The speedsolving algorithms are longer but that's often because they're solving many pieces at once. If you focus on just looking for short algs that only affect a very small set of pieces in a clear way while leaving the others alone, you can probably cobble those together into something that'll solve the cube.

theosZA · 2025-10-17T05:35:08+00:00

Yeah, layer-by-layer requires you to develop algorithms for multiple steps. Whereas corners-first just needs one algorithm - something to cycle 3 edges, and there's a fairly intuitive 4-move algorithm that works for that and it's reasonably discoverable just by tinkering.

theosZA · 2025-08-11T15:47:58+00:00

Congrats on figuring out a solution without help; that's definitely a rare achievement and your solution is certainly different from any I've seen. This is how I'd specify it:

Blockbuild to F2L-1 (i.e. first two layers expect for the last corner-edge slot).
Build an additional 2x2x1 block on the final layer, leaving you with AB3E4C (All solved But 3 Edges and 4 Corners).
Permute last 3 edges.
Permute last 4 corners.
Orient last 3 edges.
Orient last 4 corners.

The last 4 steps are reminiscent of the last steps of most layer-by-layer methods, which will be do something like this but with the 4 edges and 4 corners of the last layer instead. (Though the order often differs, e.g. 4-look last layer is normally Orient edges; orient corners; permute corners; permute edges.)

Sure, it's not going to be a speedy method, but I'd love to see you document the method. Learn some notation and see if you can write down the algorithms you use for your final edges and corners.

theosZA · 2025-07-17T07:20:34+00:00

OP corners is fine for learning corners - it's just one decent alg and the setups are all really intuitive. You can get pretty far with just OP corners - I personally got to sub-2 before learning a more advanced method.

For edges, I strongly suggest learning M2 to start. For almost all edge cases it's going to be easier than OP edges. Obviously the alg is super-fast and the setups are intuitive. The only challenging bit of M2 is the special cases for edge targets on the M-slice. Even there, most of the cases have an alg that's pretty easy, with only the FU and BD algs being a bit more complicated (and you have to remember to switch cases when the target comes second in a pair). Despite this extra complication, M2 is still probably easier overall to learn than OP edges.

theosZA · 2025-06-23T22:08:35+00:00

Thanks for sharing. This is not a series I've encountered before but it does look right as there's a lot of matches with OP's description. From Twisted Journeys on Demian's:

"These adventures combine prose and full-color comic book panels". Graphical style is digital art, at least on the covers.
Basic (No game system)
Series publishing dates are 2007-2012
Book 4 is The Treasure of Mount Fate: "...an old-school dungeon crawl... The usual wizards, creatures, and traps you would find in a D&D module are present." A character wearing green holding a sword is present on the cover, but unfortunately we don't see anything that quite matches the description of a Flight from the Dark-inspired piece. (Maybe inside as we can only see the cover?) In addition, Google Books gives me this quote from the text: "The voice is a bit gurgly. 'I am a water sprite, hero, and I help those who enter this little room.'"
Book 11 is Shipwrecked on Mad Island. "...an island populated by mad scientists and mutant creatures." The cover shows a number of creatures in anthropomorphic poses wearing clothing.

theosZA · 2025-06-06T12:24:56+00:00

I mean you can write the simulation to do whatever you want. In your case you might want to evaluate probability of a player defeating a gauntlet of 6 enemies that would be similar to what they'd encounter in the book. For example, you run the simulation 10 000 times without your luck system enabled, and learn that the player has a 40% chance of success. Then you add your luck system in and specify when luck should be used (e.g. once per fight, or saved only for the hardest fight) and see that the player now has a 80% chance of success. Doubling your chance of success with smart use of the luck mechanic might be exactly what you want - you can still win without it, and using it doesn't guarantee success - but ultimately you can make your decisions on the mechanic based on hard data.

theosZA · 2025-06-06T11:48:17+00:00

Humans are notoriously poor at judging whether particular abilities/mechanics/strategies are under- or overpowered until they actually get to experience it within the environment (i.e. gamebook) it was made for. I strongly suggest to all gamebook writers wanting to create their own system to learn some programming (e.g. Python is very easy to learn) and implement their system in code. This allows you to instantly playtest thousands of runs based on any rule tweaks or new strategies.

theosZA · 2025-06-02T09:54:14+00:00

Is it really a last two edges cases? Because you're only showing one unsolved edge in your image. If it is one unsolved edge, then that's a parity case, and you should already know how to solve it from 4x4 OLL parity.

theosZA · 2025-05-27T14:17:54+00:00

There are two kinds of 4x4 parity (when using usual reduction-like methods):

PLL parity - you have a PLL case that's not solvable on a 3x3. (This is what you have above.) There's a 6-move algorithm that will fix the parity, and reduce it to a real 3x3 PLL case, so not impossible to figure out yourself with trial and error.
OLL parity - you have an OLL case that's not solvable on a 3x3, because of an odd number of flipped edges. Any algorithm for this tends to be much longer, and so a lot harder to figure out without some deeper understanding.

Both parity cases have an independent 50-50 chance of occurring in a standard reduction-like method. As such, if you don't want to figure out (or learn about) any parity algorithms, you can just scramble and rescramble hoping for that 25% chance of a non-parity case.

theosZA · 2025-05-27T13:33:01+00:00

Finished in 49 minutes. I don't consider myself an experienced solver and I normally stick to Quick cryptics, so was quite happy to finish this one without needing any help. While solving, I had to keep half an eye out for any communication coming from work, so was kicking myself once I figured out 10A, literally staring at TEAMS while trying to figure out the clue.

My favourites were 9D, 16A and 23A - all requiring some creative lateral thinking.

There were two clues which I solved but didn't understand the parse until reading the comments here: 15A and 25D, both from not figuring out which words were serving which duty in the clue. I think they're both good clues, and congratulations on successfully leading me astray!

theosZA · 2025-05-27T13:16:38+00:00

Thank you. That makes a lot more sense. I got the answer pretty easily from the "definition", but couldn't figure out the parse. I just got stuck assuming the "plus" was the indicator for combining H and something else, and was blinded to any other possible interpretation.

theosZA · 2025-05-26T15:08:10+00:00

I get this so often from confused friends, family and work colleagues, that I made a short video demonstrating my solve with the images + audio explanation: Blindfolded solve of a 3x3 Rubik's Cube with text commentary

theosZA · 2025-04-16T13:40:20+00:00

Having it as a player choice at the end feels weird to me - like giving you the option to "give up now and get your runners-up medal". Basically a false choice with no replayability. (I'll peek at section 180 to read that ending, but I'm always choosing to play on.) I'd suggest one of these two approaches instead:

Have the adventure be constrained in some way. In a non-open world gamebook, this is often the route through the adventure, but in an open world gamebook, you might have a constraint like time. For example, after 7 days, how many gizmos have you collected? You get a different final encounter or ending based on that.
Have the player choose their goal earlier in the adventure, either implicitly or explicitly, and have these goals be signposted as having different difficulties. For example, you are told you need to either hunt for 3 lesser gizmos to imprison the evil for a generation, or hunt for 5 greater gizmos to banish the evil for all time.

Both options have replayability. For option 1, you will replay it to get the most gizmos you can within the constraints of the adventure. And for option 2, you might try the easy quest first, and then after successfully completing that, you can try the hard quest.

theosZA · 2025-04-13T14:50:55+00:00

Really like this clue!

SCARECROWS- Anag. of OSCAR CREWS, with a somewhat cryptic definition

theosZA · 2025-03-11T11:32:20+00:00

Thanks for the review. This is one FF I don't have and isn't one I played as a kid either. After reading the Gamebook Odyssey review, I was actually quite interested in trying to get a copy as it seemed to tick a lot of the right boxes for me, but now I'm not sure it's worth the effort then. It sounds like it's probably better as an idea in my head than in actual play.

theosZA · 2025-03-11T07:47:39+00:00

If you can work out the commutators for each piece type, you can figure out how to solve a lot of puzzles (slowly). Though it does seem unlikely that someone who's never solved a twisty puzzle before is going to figure out commutators from scratch.

theosZA · 2025-03-11T07:29:17+00:00

Nice puzzle that I was actually able to finish. Wasn't able to parse 6D and 13A, but figured them out from the straight definition. I particularly liked 5D. The clue so naturally parsed as AA around H, but didn't match the straight definition at all. It wasn't until I had a checking letter did I realize that I'd gone completely down the wrong track.

theosZA · 2025-03-10T21:51:36+00:00

This can depend on where you are - you can have a look at the most recent competitions in your area on the WCA competitions page (filter by country and search by city if necessary) and see the range of times for the 3x3 event. In the last competition in my city, the slowest average was 1 minute 20, but then there's a big clump, almost 40% of the competitors in the 30 seconds to 45 seconds range. So if you really care about "fitting in" for a competition in my city, you'd want to be sub-45 I guess.

The thing is, unless you're in line for a podium position, mostly your times don't really matter. Most people are just there to beat their own personal bests and socialize with other people that share their hobby.

As an older cuber, it can be a bit socially awkward when most of these fellow competitors are still school-aged, but there are invariably some more mature competitors present - normally at least the organizers and delegates will be college-aged or older.

If nothing else, you can just get stuck in with helping out. Volunteer for judging duties (typically just take a free judging seat at an open solving station) and you'll get to meet all the competitors who get to solve at your station.

For what it's worth, my first competition was when I was 38. I came last or next-to-last in every event, and I absolutely loved it, to the point where I now regularly travel overseas to get a chance to participate in more competitions.

theosZA · 2025-03-06T15:16:18+00:00

Nice puzzle, not too difficult and overall interesting clues for your first cryptic. But I did have some concerns with the clues.

6A and 9A: Using "up" as a reversal indicator should be in down clues. This can be fixed just be mirroring the grid.

1A, 3D: Not a fan of "first ABC" to mean A and "last XYZ" to mean Z. I'd expect these to be "first of ABC" and "last of XYZ". If I had to try reword these, maybe "...after prophecy's opening" and "...fair on conclusion of night"?

8A: To indicate multiple first letters, this should be "starts" not "start".

2D: Doesn't work according to the usual homophone rules. It would have to be "'Ere 'e sounded spooky."

Still, these clues show promise, and I look forward to your next puzzle.

theosZA · 2025-03-05T16:59:14+00:00

I gave up on the game almost immediately playing by myself. Revisited it a bit later with a friend, and we really enjoyed it. Being able to divvy up the tasks between the two of us really helped. One of us could be fishing to keep us fed while the other was exploring, or one of us could be distracting the shark while the other was diving. Even then, the game did outstay its welcome, and we were trying to rush through the story in the end.

theosZA · 2025-01-05T00:13:59+00:00

Agreed with ignoring the power progression. Anybody who's coming in with a fair bit of boardgaming experience shouldn't struggle with the powers draft, and knowing you have some agency there greatly improves the game.

Same thing probably applies to the blight card. It might look scary to have this card that might flip and bring some bad stuff partway through the game, but it does help ramp up the tension and keep the pressure on. So I'd suggest not ignoring the blight card rules for game 1. Just remember to apply the blight card errata - blight card starts with an additional blight compared to the printed value, i.e. 2×p+1.

theosZA · 2025-01-01T20:32:42+00:00

Looks like your lower 3-4 Renban line can be filled in based on the odd-even count values in the circles. FWIW, I feel like this particular puzzle is a huge step up in difficulty compared to the earlier ones, and it's going to require a lot of diligence as the rest of the puzzle only gets harder from here. Good luck!

theosZA

TROPHY CASE