Mystery Hunt 2012 Recast: COMPLETE!!!

[Lepton*]

I think this refers to the Lewis Carroll collection of math "knots", A Tangled Tale. Using GOOD for the seventh clue word, the seventh word before the second GOOD in Tangled Tale is RELENTED. Using OPPORTUNITY as the seventh clue word, I find ENUMERATE. ENUMERATE seems like a likely solution for a puzzle hunt puzzle.

We could do a weak check on our result by checking words near 11502. Apply the solution (find the seventh word before the second usage in Tangled Tale) and look at the result. The two checks are:
1. the seventh clue word must appear in Tangled Tale at least twice.
2. the resulting word must not appear in Looking-Glass. If the word did appear in Looking-Glass, there would be no reason for the puzzle author to switch to a different book for this final step.

ENUMERATE satisfies both of these criteria, and none of the other words from 11496 to 11506 does, so I think you've solved it, Suspence.

CALL IN ENUMERATE

[Scurra]

Yes, I looked at that clue (which someone else derived) and immediately said "well, A Tangled Tale is Lewis Carroll's collection of puzzles." If you haven't read it - or tried the puzzles - then you should. The commentaries he gives on wrong approaches and answers are very instructive at times. (There's a good on-line version here: http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/c/carroll/lewis/tangled/)

I don't necessarily agree that the answer word shouldn't appear in Looking-Glass. But it's probably true that A Tangled Tale itself didn't contain enough words to make the puzzle challenging enough.

Great work, novice and Suspence.
_________________
_{still Quiz Olympiad champion. Must get a life.
New definitions: COFFEE - someone who is coughed upon}

[Suspence]

Thanks for finishing that out Lepton. Wouldn't have gotten that without Googling "TANGLED TALE", since I'd not heard of it. Nicely done.

One down, 106 to go!
_________________
I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[novice]

[Lepton*]

Hey, I'm over in Latvia! Maybe we should credit the ridiculously low levels of sunlight? The real work here, as Scurra indicated, was on the backs of Suspence and novice -- kudos, indeed.

[LordKinbote]

ENUMERATE is correct.

Puzzle 2: Blackout (by Scott Handelman [me!] and Alan Fetters)

I'm going to start keeping meta answers...somewhere. Maybe my second post.

[Suspence]

Does this work for the Nurikabe? EDIT: Nevermind, it doesn't
_________________
I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[LordKinbote]

Okay, yeah, all collected answers will be found in the second post in this thread. I'll also put the most current puzzle there so people don't have to look for it.

Commentary on 1207 1370: Scurra says he doesn't necessarily agree that the answer shouldn't be found in the book. Unfortunately, the word ENUMERATE does not appear in "Through the Looking Glass"...the original answer the puzzle was assigned did, but we felt that the puzzle was inappropriate in that round, and this answer turned out more thematic anyway. Luckily, the work required with "A Tangled Tale" was much simpler than the work done with enumerating "Looking Glass" so it didn't have the "We have to do this all *again*?" factor to it.

[Suspence]

I'm sure this is wrong too, but I can never spot my own mistakes in these:

_________________
I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[novice]

Lower left 9 is only 8.

[Suspence]

See, I told you. Fixed above. At least that was a simple fix.

For Thermometers, I'm assuming the lines with no indicators mean that the information is withheld, not that there are 0 filled sections in those lines. I'm making slow progress on it, I've never seem this puzzle type before.
_________________
I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[Lepton*]

That assumption is forced on us by the column with 10 and the two numberless rows. I'm doing terribly, but will plug away. The answers look like Braille, but are not: Suspence's solution provides either L (three vertical dots) or no-character, and either no-character or B (upper two vertical dots), but not both.

[ralphmerridew]

Susp's grid isn't unique. For example, move R4C5 to R2C6.

[novice]

[Suspence]

Wouldn't this work too, changing the highlighted portion? If so, there must be a way to deduce the needed solution, perhaps only once some of the others are solved.

_________________
I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[Lepton]

This certainly isn't unique, but it seems to work.

[Lepton]

[novice]

[Suspence]

Yeah, somehow I went back to a version where I had that issue in the top left corner. I resolved it in one of the above ones, and I think my solution directly above could work if you swap out one upper left for another. I should stop trying nurikabes.
_________________
I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[Zag]

I know that in an MIT hunt in the past, they had one set of normal-looking puzzles, including a Sudoku, that did not have unique solutions. The trick was to color in the part that you could lock down, and leave white the parts that could have more than one value. The colored in squares formed letters.

It was brilliant, diabolical, and would have made my brain explode if I had actually been in the competition.

[Elethiomel]

[Scurra]

I had managed to wipe that one from my mind. I'm not great at these sort of puzzles in the first place, so running into one where the puzzles had multiple solutions was horrible. (IIRC the trick was that the number of alternate solutions gave a number = letter code. And I seem to recall that one of them had something like 20 variants! But there may well have been a version where you coloured spaces in to make letters as well.)

For this one, given all the strong hints - the 2x3 grids, the title - then it seems pretty clear that deriving braille letters must be part of the solution. And therefore the highlighted grids (at the very least) must contain braille letters somehow - which would seem to provide the extra constraint sought. But I am no good at solving these anyway, so I can't contribute any more.
_________________
_{still Quiz Olympiad champion. Must get a life.
New definitions: COFFEE - someone who is coughed upon}

[LordKinbote]

[Suspence]

In the nurikabe, the only possible configuration for the upper box, assuming we are looking for Braille, is for the letter E.

If this is a valid solution - and it's probably not, given my track record - it yields EVV.

_________________
I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[Scurra]

It's not valid - there's a 2x2 block of "sea" just below the 1 in one of the highlighted grids. Not that I can find an easy way to resolve that.

I think that it might be technically feasible for it to be a U as well, but I haven't actually tried to find out. The E certainly seems more reasonable to experiment with first.
_________________
_{still Quiz Olympiad champion. Must get a life.
New definitions: COFFEE - someone who is coughed upon}

[Lepton*]

Here's a first stab at thermometers. As with the others, this solution does not feel unique.

It struck me that we are using slightly different rules ("logical constraints") in each puzzle, and that the puzzles are all the same grid size. It doesn't seem like the four answers will be topologically the same, but what if the rules "bleed"? Specifically, the first two puzzles respectively prohibit "lakes" and "forts" of 2x2 white and colored squares. I think I could make the thermometer puzzle do that, and it does feel like a sufficient criterion to make the first two unique.

[Suspence]

[Suspence]

If my solution above works, then my assumption that E is the only configuration for the upper box is wrong. I think a K or a U might be able to be made there, as well.
_________________
I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[Scurra]

That revised solution seems to work. Which suggests that your conclusion may also be valid. In which case we are overlooking something more obvious, but I'm not sure what it is. (I honestly have no idea - I didn't do more than glance at this puzzle originally.)

I can't really comment on the Thermometers as I have no idea what's going on there...
_________________
_{still Quiz Olympiad champion. Must get a life.
New definitions: COFFEE - someone who is coughed upon}

[Suspence]

The other thought I had momentarily was that the darkened areas would have to be the same, either within puzzles, between puzzles or both.

I don't think it's right, because I don't see how that would lead us anywhere as a next step.

I think I'm at an impasse for the moment. Has anyone tried the Tapa or the Pentomino Minesweeper yet?
_________________
I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[Vagrant]

I've never seen one of those thermometer puzzles let alone solved one, but just looking at it I'd have thought the bulb of every thermometer should be red like a real thermometer.
[edit] Never mind. I found some and apparently not. [/edit]

[LordKinbote]

I haven't decided what my hint policy is yet. Obviously, we don't want to languish forever. What do you think?

[Lepton*]

I have no idea how we'll get through a hundred of these puzzles. We're a half-dozen puzzlers trying to find something to occupy our minds during spare minutes. Hints if we're clearly missing something, I guess?

For the record, you guys can see my solutions for Tapa and Thermometers, right? I think they're both valid, although probably not unique.

[Suspence]

[LordKinbote]

Braille is the right way to go. All grids are unique.

I personally think Round One gets easier after this one.

[Scurra]

[Suspence]

As I suggested above, here are two (hopefully) valid solutions with different Braille in the upper box.

We must still be missing the additional constraint that makes the correct solution unique.

I seem to keep coming back to trying to make the same solution work for each puzzle. I haven't really tried anything, but perhaps only the highlighted squares can differ from one puzzle to the next?
_________________
I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[Zag]

[LordKinbote]

[Suspence]

I think that is what I initially disliked about the first puzzle. The puzzle actually seemed harder after the "aha". The decoding process seemed so daunting/tedious I didn't even want to bother. Ultimately, I was able to see challenge of decoding as fun, but the puzzle seemed much more a test of my willpower than my acuity.
_________________
I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.