Part 28: The Four Houses

[Music: Future British Gentleman ~ Luke's Theme] (if this sounds weird and out of place compared to the french violins from before, that's because it's from the movie )



Sometimes I'm not sure how people solve these things. This is one of those times.










This one's just a matter of simple pattern recognition. Of course, you're told there's a pattern in the question. The issue is figuring out what it is.










There's presumably consistent tricks that work for figuring these things out a glance; I know someone posted one that works in this case, but I dunno if that was a nice coincidence or what since I've never seen it before or since.






I always just do these the hard way by counting them all manually. Like the game does here. It works, even if its not all that quick.





I... I fell for the trick in this once. Just the once, but still.






I'll hand in my puzzle badge later.





Until I saw the solution to this, even with the hints I could not figure out the pattern. Like, at all.






It's not a particularly obvious or intuitive pattern, in my opinion. I don't see a string of numbers and go "calendar." Maybe I'm the crazy one.





There's an actual proper method to this that the game uses for its reasoning.






Personally, I'd just add 14 and it will always give you the same answer.





1. Your first priority should be to get all the balls switched over to their matching zones. Once you've moved the balls to their correct zones, you can worry about arranging them in the proper order.
2. You are going to have to be a little methodical in your approach to this puzzle. You can stumble upon the answer by just moving things around, but the puzzle is much easier to finish when you create rules for yourself to operate by. Make sure you aren't just repeating the same unsuccessful moves each time you start moving balls around.
3. It's easy to move balls around without thinking, but that'll get you nowhere. Remember to stay focused on your goal when moving things around. The truth is that experimenting with the puzzle is more useful than any hint you could get, but since you paid for it here's one more. You have very little room to work with. As you've probably figured out, there's a single spot in the center where you can stash a ball, so make good use of it.



This is probably the easiest of the three sliding puzzles we're dealing with this time. I think so anyway, though I have a good reason to do so as you might guess.






Also it is patronising. Thanks, game!





This one's just simple maths. Nothing too complex, but it can be tricky if you're not paying attention or something I guess.










I guess this is like a slightly more complicated magic square or something. Only it's not a square. And it relies on multiplication.

so its actually not really that much like a magic square, huh



Incidentally, in this case the 2 must be in the middle otherwise it's not solvable. This means all the other "correct" answers are basically just reflections or rotations of this one. Funny that, huh.





1. You need to make the balls change positions with each other, but the actual act of guiding individual balls to the right hole shouldn't prove too challenging. Make your moves carefully and keep track of what you're doing. This problem requires you to shift things about a great deal, so just be warned that hints alone won't get you through this one.
2. The shortest solution for this problem involves less than 30 moves, but in order to solve it that quickly, you need to manage the movement of multiple balls at once. If you're having trouble, swallow your pride and try the easier solution where you only need to guide one ball at a time.
3. For puzzles like this, your best bet is to clump as many of the open spaces together as possible to give the ball you're guiding a larger space to move about. Just don't get too obsessed with consolidating space or you might actually make things harder on yourself.



This one is actually kind of tricky, especially if you're after the best solution.




As a result, I do the obvious thing and finish it in less than a minute. I realise I'm not making a good case for "no, really, sliding puzzles suck" right now.










Serious question: does this layout look familiar? It should. This is the solution to Too Many Queens 4. It works here, because they are basically asking the same thing only this one doesn't have any pre-placed.



So, instead, let's solve it "properly" and use something other than the one we're handed on a silver platter.










Now, we get a fun one. Since we need to ID 1 weight out of 12, with only 3 moves this is gonna be a bit... different to before. We'll start by weighing the first 8, since we don't know if it's lighter or heavier. 5 on each side means we could get it on the second if we're lucky (the first 10 are balanced, and the 11th is off somehow) but that's a crapshoot. 6 on each doesn't help at all for obvious reasons, and 3 or less doesn't tell us enough information most of the time.



Since we now know that 9-12 are all the base weight, we can take one side of the original weighing and split it to put 2 on each side. We also have to include one of the other side to keep it at 3 on each side; by including one from the known "base" set here we can guarantee that we know where the weight we want is. In this case, we also know that it's lighter; these 6 are balanced leaving the weight thats off as either the 6, the 7 or the 8 which were on the side that raised previously. No matter the result of the next weighing, we now know the weight we need.



Since the 6 and 7 are balanced, we're left with the 8 by process of elimination. If the scales shifted, then the one that raised would be the answer instead.






But that's just how things turned out this time. What if the set of 6 on that second weighing weren't balanced? What if the first 8 were? These are just two of the other ways this could have progressed that we didn't touch on. How would you solve this issue should they or something else we didn't see happen?





1. You might think you'll get stuck within moments of starting this puzzle, but as long as you aren't repeating the same moves over and over, you'll get that block out eventually. Sliding puzzles like these don't lend themselves well to hints. So here's one more hint: don't bother purchasing Hints Two and Three for this puzzle.
2. Since you decided to spend a hint coin anyway, here's a small tip that might help you out. Try to move the long purple blocks out of the way by getting them to the upper-right or lower-left corners of the box. Once you've done that, the long blue blocks will be easier to handle.
3. Move one of the blue blocks out to the right of the big red block. Once you've done this, your next goal should be to maneuver both blue blocks so that they are at the very top or bottom of the box. That should clear things up a bit.



The last one of the final three here is quite possibly the hardest. I make it look easy, because I did the long version for the easiest of these types of sliding puzzles. I'm not going to bother with the uncut version here, because it wouldn't be that interesting. What doesn't hurt is that, as you might already have figured out from the naming scheme, it's not the last of these either. I'm getting a bit ahead of myself though.






Now, we have one last thing to worry about with all of these dealt with...



[Music: The Veil of Night (Live)]



More of the DLC, of course. There's still plenty of this to go, so let's get some more of it out of the way now!



1. Because you're going to add a match to the bunch already on the table, it's fair to say you won't be physically making the E any smaller. Since you can't shrink the actual size of the letter, you'll have to think of another way you can make it small.

Since the DLC has rather variable difficulty, there's no real consistency to what to expect. So you sometimes get ones like this that are a complete joke.





1. Reconstruct the flattened hatboxes in your mind and you'll immediately see what's different. Pay special attention to the hat patterns on each box.





1. The bell will ring 12 times, and there are five seconds between each sounding of the bell. It sure sounds simple, but there's at least one step everyone overlooks at first. Think about what needs to happen in order for you to realize it's 12 o'clock.





1. Look extra closely at the routes B and C must take to move between their houses and docks. Those are the key to solving this puzzle.





1. You too may have bested this foe in battle. Your answer should be eight letters long.

I have words about this one. They are not nice words.





1. No matter how you arrange the coins on the screen, you won't be able to cover the tower completely. Why not try covering something else with the coins?