I can't go long without puzzles. It's not healthy. So, when I needed a break from work today (not on company time! The up side of working from home is a little flexibility for my work hours!) I cracked open Maze of Games, a puzzle book on the Puzzazz app that I'd picked up ages ago, but, realizing that the first cipher was broken on the app, I gave up. With COVID-19 and the need to take a brain break, I went back to it.
The book follows the story of two English teenagers, sister and brother, of the 1880s, as they are sucked by the skeletal Gatekeeper into the eponymous maze. To survive, they must make it through the maze. The very first puzzle, "A Flame in the Darkness" which is STILL broken, might I add, is the one to open the portcullises out into the maze from the central chamber in which the children find themselves. It's a series of tumblers, apparently meant to have text on them, but as I said, still broken, at least on the iPhone version. Thankfully, this being a book, you can still proceed into the Maze proper, if you dare.
Each level of the maze has a different suit, taken from cards, and a series of 12 puzzles (Ace-Queen), which are to be solved in the manner needed to proceed through the maze. Each of the 12 puzzles is supposed to provide you one, or more, keywords to plug into a 13th puzzle for the King of each suit, presumably freeing you from that level of the maze, or chapter.
Chapter One, "Diamonds in the Rough," presents the first level as a clickable maze, very handy to keep you going in what is hopefully the right direction. Of course, there are two exits from the center, and no clue which is the correct one, at least at the start. I flipped a mental coin, which had me running into the Ten of Diamonds puzzle, "A Giant Among Men," first. In it, our brave hero and heroine face off with Goliath, and have to solve an acrostic puzzle to open the gate and get past him before he comes 'round from their lucky shot with a slung pebble.
The puzzle itself is straightforward, and a bit of fun. I hadn't done an acrostic in a while, and had forgotten the name of the puzzle type, though thankfully not how to do it. The acrostic style is a series of clues of various lengths. Each clue tells you how long the answer is. Each letter in the answer has a different number. When you solve a clue, place the letters in the corresponding numbered box in the more standard looking crossword above. Thankfully, Puzzazz does this automatically for you - one of my problems when doing pen and paper acrostics was accidentally writing the letter in the wrong-numbered box and then getting entirely too perplexed as to where I'd gone astray. 13 clues in this one, and you can solve back and forth, which is often the case with acrostics - if you're stumped on a clue you can look at what you've solved so far in the crossword box and realize which letters make sense - a letter alone is usually 'I' or 'A', TH is usually followed by 'E', etc.
Once solved, the quote in the box turned out to be a biblical reference, in line with the David and Goliath story of the puzzle itself. However, there is no clear way at this point to know if I've gone the correct direction out of the maze. Skipping to the King puzzle reveals that the code word I have supposedly gleaned (I have?) from this quote or puzzle will then be put into a couplet, to produce ANOTHER code word. The couplet or second puzzle layer to apply depends on the order in which I encountered the puzzle. So, if 10 of diamonds really was the first one that I should encounter, I would look at one couplet/puzzle/transformation. If that doesn't make any sense, then I need to go the other way and see what I encounter there, and if there is a code word or phrase there that makes more sense with respect to the transform which is 'add T to (codeword) to gain a kindred meaning'.
I have no clue if I'm on the right track, yet. I love it. Now back to work!
The book follows the story of two English teenagers, sister and brother, of the 1880s, as they are sucked by the skeletal Gatekeeper into the eponymous maze. To survive, they must make it through the maze. The very first puzzle, "A Flame in the Darkness" which is STILL broken, might I add, is the one to open the portcullises out into the maze from the central chamber in which the children find themselves. It's a series of tumblers, apparently meant to have text on them, but as I said, still broken, at least on the iPhone version. Thankfully, this being a book, you can still proceed into the Maze proper, if you dare.
Each level of the maze has a different suit, taken from cards, and a series of 12 puzzles (Ace-Queen), which are to be solved in the manner needed to proceed through the maze. Each of the 12 puzzles is supposed to provide you one, or more, keywords to plug into a 13th puzzle for the King of each suit, presumably freeing you from that level of the maze, or chapter.
Chapter One, "Diamonds in the Rough," presents the first level as a clickable maze, very handy to keep you going in what is hopefully the right direction. Of course, there are two exits from the center, and no clue which is the correct one, at least at the start. I flipped a mental coin, which had me running into the Ten of Diamonds puzzle, "A Giant Among Men," first. In it, our brave hero and heroine face off with Goliath, and have to solve an acrostic puzzle to open the gate and get past him before he comes 'round from their lucky shot with a slung pebble.
The puzzle itself is straightforward, and a bit of fun. I hadn't done an acrostic in a while, and had forgotten the name of the puzzle type, though thankfully not how to do it. The acrostic style is a series of clues of various lengths. Each clue tells you how long the answer is. Each letter in the answer has a different number. When you solve a clue, place the letters in the corresponding numbered box in the more standard looking crossword above. Thankfully, Puzzazz does this automatically for you - one of my problems when doing pen and paper acrostics was accidentally writing the letter in the wrong-numbered box and then getting entirely too perplexed as to where I'd gone astray. 13 clues in this one, and you can solve back and forth, which is often the case with acrostics - if you're stumped on a clue you can look at what you've solved so far in the crossword box and realize which letters make sense - a letter alone is usually 'I' or 'A', TH is usually followed by 'E', etc.
Once solved, the quote in the box turned out to be a biblical reference, in line with the David and Goliath story of the puzzle itself. However, there is no clear way at this point to know if I've gone the correct direction out of the maze. Skipping to the King puzzle reveals that the code word I have supposedly gleaned (I have?) from this quote or puzzle will then be put into a couplet, to produce ANOTHER code word. The couplet or second puzzle layer to apply depends on the order in which I encountered the puzzle. So, if 10 of diamonds really was the first one that I should encounter, I would look at one couplet/puzzle/transformation. If that doesn't make any sense, then I need to go the other way and see what I encounter there, and if there is a code word or phrase there that makes more sense with respect to the transform which is 'add T to (codeword) to gain a kindred meaning'.
I have no clue if I'm on the right track, yet. I love it. Now back to work!
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