MafiaVamp

It’s solvable. If you have the old crossword, I think you can just go to the link to get your updated crossword file.

What I did was put all the letters together in notepad, then try different configurations by pulling out one word at a time and trying to arrange the rest of the letters into something coherent.

I can give you a couple of hints:

It took me one and a half hours to solve. 45 minutes with a wrong letter, and another 45 minutes with the right letters. I’m not good at unscrambling letters… I ended up pulling out around 20 words to try and work with, each of which seemed like its own puzzle to solve in case it was the right one.

Yay this was a fun event! I’m really glad I was able to get through it at my own timing.

I liked the hexagon game too, but it seemed way too easy?

I’d love to see the Mistermind game be a regular one, too :) I think I have my best/luckiest game of that too.

my MM board

Chicken

Not sure if the chat mentioned these, but here’s some I saw in case it helps:

The final page is a game I cannot play, I just do not know how it works. I’m sobbing.

Ended games until I got a simpler one my dumb brain could grasp. @@ oh lord.

I have to say that raid game might be my favourite yet (the Captain’s word games aside, because i love word games) but the scavenger hunt is stumping me over TnT
the bottles aren’t hidden in individual players’ or pets’ pages, are they? I’d cry probably if those are locations I need to check too :0

I apparently got unlucky in what games I was given? I saw no Mastermind puzzle. Would’ve loved to have played that. The Risk-esque game was quite fun as well. Seems half the puzzles are word games for me, which I’m not particularly a fan. Especially with the unscrambling puzzles. Got the crossword done but the highlighted letters don’t seem to make any sort of sense, and the last sound-it-out puzzle has got me stumped. Wouldn’t mind getting some help on those. Past that, been enjoying the event. Pirate theme is cool, and the puzzles have been fairly challenging, though word scrambles still aren’t my favorite thing. Took a bit to get lucky with the dice too, but ah well.

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The scavenger hunt is all in places that are fairly easy to access. None of them are on the forums/on pet profiles/user profiles/echoes.

polygone I can’t be sure if your sound it outs are the same as mine (or the same across the site?) but here’s a clue that I hope helps:
edit: no they are all different okay nevermind >_< my answer probably isn’t correct then.

[@Frey] Yeah they change between players. Mine would be as follows:

polygone This is a longshot but is a ship-related phrase…

I can definitely see how the “sound it out” game could be tricky or near-impossible, since it only works if you say them out loud in a very specific American English accent, and is pretty-specific jargon. For example, the word “car” is pronounced very differently depending on whether you’re in New York, Georgia, Australia, England, Hawaii, etc.

Might it be possible in future events to have a “Cycle” button, for people who are unable to complete certain puzzles for reasons beyond their control (disabilities, colourblindness, language barriers, etc)? There seem to be enough games in the “pool” now… and really, if someone wants to do 9 mazes, I don’t know if it really matters in the long run. It’s sad to see people frustrated :(

I really enjoyed these puzzles except echolocation (and am sort of keen on what seems like a three-way split between “timer” events, “puzzle” events, and “creative” events lately), and I think it would be awesome if there were ways we could “free play” the ones we like, at least for the duration of the event - and also give us a chance to play ones we may have missed out on due to RNG.

[@Frey] That got it! Thanks! <3
Now to stare at the crossword while doing spellstones for the kid. xD

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A sort of cycle puzzle option would be nice. And I would love to get to play the mastermind game, since rng decided I didn’t get it as a quest. Probably one of my favorite puzzle types.

e/ Ah! The mastermind puzzle is after the sound-out ones, so I didn’t just miss it. Still, would like to replay it after the fact! :P

I am now Fat Harold’s biggest fan. We shall be good friends. Too bad he is too tall for the avatar box. I would have him watch over my forum posts forever.

_{is there a reference to the seagulls’ names? i love them so much}

I think it would be awesome if there were ways we could “free play” the ones we like, at least for the duration of the event

I would find this much more fun. I’d love to have just played the Risk game for all the points… It’s fun! And I really do not like word unscrambles. Playing an actual game is a lot more fun for me, too, than digging through the item lists or clicking on every page on the site. (I’m not a big fan of scavenger hunts. Though the bottles one wasn’t awful. The item ID one was a lot of boring clicking for me though.)

Unfortunately I must agree with Raja that some of it is upsetting. Especially when you’re putting in the effort but it’s taking you forever. I started to get upset at the dice game… I thought my mind was playing tricks on me and I was doing something wrong, because even reading the description, I saw no indication that the NPC would cheat. I’d played what felt like twenty games and was wondering half the time if I was wasting my time because I skipped a task somewhere. And the crossword with word unscramble… I knew I was good at things, I’d done everything else, but it took me an hour and a half to unscramble an anagram. 45 minutes with a mistake I couldn’t check, and 45 minutes with the right letters. It wasn’t fun and I was about ready to cry. The dice I could understand, I won eventually before too long, but the anagram? I’m no good at anagrams. My brain turns to mush. I preferred it with previous events, where anagrams were Mycena words, therefore limiting them to, say, 30 terms.

And I know lots of people aren’t great at Spellstones or don’t like it… I know it’s not an obligation, but sometimes it’s just fun to have an option, you know? I couldn’t bear to get 3000 points in the wasp game or cave in in a single day… it could take me hours. While Spellstones takes me 10-20 minutes most days.

Each challenge awards 2 points. What if you could solve the games multiple times each, with a max of, say, 6 points per challenge? That way someone could get the whole thing by playing only three of the games. Obviously I can see this not applying to the crossword one, but I think this would open things up a bit more by giving people options. Or don’t cap the points per challenge—just the event cap of 18—but offer a +2 bonus for completing all challenges? Or keep the free mushroom as a bonus, but for people who want to collect both plus grab each item, I wonder if that might still feel restrictive.

The event with the Enchanted Stone dras, didn’t that do something like requiring only 10 out of 14 challenges to be completed to reach the end and get the free dras, but all 14 could be completed for points and/or a bonus? I liked that format as well. (No preference either way for “all available at once” or “one new prompt a day” though.) Something like that could have fit this event—you don’t necessarily need all pieces of a map to find your way somewhere.

I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining a lot. I really like how this event turned out as a whole, and the amount of effort put into it, especially for the variety of games. And I know completion isn’t required, but it’s a pretty obvious goal. I can appreciate these things taking time; I’m fine spending 40 minutes on a challenge. (I probably would’ve done so if all I did was play the Risk game.) But not every challenge will fit everyone, and while I have the time and ability to do things—and I did do them all—I would have rather spent that time having fun rather than unscrambling letters for hours. I’m lucky it wasn’t impossible for me, but at a couple points it felt like it was going to be impossible, and that’s when it turned from fun into a demoralizing chore that could be a waste of time.

Raja

We try to design our activities to be accessible, but we realize that in some cases one may be much harder than we intended. If you, or anyone else, is having trouble with an activity please feel free to echo myself or any other staff member and we’ll do our best to help you out! A lot of the community members have also been offering advice when other players are having trouble — spoilers are fine as long as they are in spoiler tags!

We try to give players a wide range of activities to perform so that even if they are unable to complete all of them on their own, at least some of the activities will be able to be done, and there’s always willing people around to help solve the rest!

Much like previous events there will also be a feedback form after the event is completed where players will be able to offer critique/alternatives to any activity they feel needs modification since this design and some of the activities are different from what we’ve done before.

One thing that I think works really well for this event is the ability for players to communicate with each other to give hints for certain puzzles, without having to directly state the solution or tell people who are still working on them on their own. I’ve especially seen a lot of people doing this for the sound-out game, and it seems to have helped a lot. However, you can’t do this for some of the challenges. While there are helpful tips and several alternate methods/playstyles for solving things like the maze or Mastermind (would anyone be interested in having a thread for sharing those?), there are a few puzzles where hints can only help so much.

I would totally support puzzle adjustments that could accommodate those with disabilities or language barriers, or those who can’t complete certain games because of the platform they play on. Or, like Jacq said, a “cycle” option/more flexibility for challenges could also help a lot. (e.g. if someone was struggling to get 3k nuggets from Spellstones, they could switch to another site game to get 3k nuggets from it instead.)

I really loved a lot of the event puzzles, and I can see why some are so popular among the community! A “free play” option would be pretty sweet, imo.

Chicken  I just sent you an echo with a hint to the location!

Jettisonius  No, the bottles aren’t hidden on any individual players’ or pets’ pages (or basically any list that would be super tedious to go through)! @u@

Myla laughing for a thousand years at our on the dot timing. A+

Thanks again!

And—if anyone is having issues with any of the word problems, especially if it’s because of a disability or similar, hit me up whenever, and/or hit the event chat! They’re really helpful there! I know it’s not ideal but—yeah. I figured I’d throw that out there. I live with an English major so if nothing else I can usually screech at her and we’ll figure it out together.
Wow I cannot not ramble right now I’m gonna go…be quiet over there. -tapes mouth shut-

Paradoxical I’m going to second Jacq and Cosmo here on how nice it would be to be able to cycle through challenges like that, and add a note from myself—it’s one thing for puzzles to be very difficult for those of us with disabilities, but when they’re actually physically impossible for us to do on our own, it goes from being merely frustrating to feeling almost demeaning. I know that is absolutely not how anyone ever intends to make anyone feel during any of these events, but that’s how it feels to me every single time I have to ask for help and/or accommodation with something that I can’t be assisted with without having someone else do the entire puzzle or challenge for me.

I get frustrated because this isn’t the first time I’ve asked for further consideration for people who have disabilities, and because I already have to deal with a lot of anger and heartache at work right now due to having to spend my day in a wheelchair in a very large building that is completely non ADA-compliant. I’m really not trying to sound ungrateful for everyone’s kindness, but I don’t want to be told every time how great the community here is at helping people when I already have to deal with asking for help to do the most basic things at work all day. I go completely out of my way to avoid asking for help for this very reason. :( It’s not something I want to have to struggle with when I get home and am just trying to have fun on my favorite pet site.

I know you all try very hard to make these events as fun as possible, and I love everything you do for us!! <33 I’m just asking if you could try to think about each challenge a little more carefully to make sure it’s as fun and accessible as possible for everyone, especially for those of us who have learning and/or physical disabilities. Two great things would be, for example, to avoid adding site games (specifically Spellstones and Echolocation) to events when they are known to be problematic. Thank you!! <333

Edit: Figured I should explain why the two games are problematic in case it’s not clear. Spellstones is a daunting game for many players, not just those with language barriers and/or dyslexia. Putting a requirement of 3k points in one day for that task is where the challenge becomes too difficult to be fun for some users. A lower score requirement and/or making it possible to earn the score over the time span of the event would make it a lot more accessible. As for Echolocation, could I maybe request to have the rules rewritten in a way that is less wordy and… Makes more sense? @_@ A YouTube instructional video in addition to that would be A+. That is a game that a ton of people either can’t figure out or just never bother to play. Not very accessible at all.

Raja There actually is a Youtube video! glitch made one back when the game was first released :)

If you have any specific questions about Echolocation, please feel free to ask me. It’s my favorite site game, and I’m always happy to help!

edit: If anyone wants some more specific ideas of where to look you can echo me. I found mine in some…. interesting places haha