... I just wonder how many newbies stop attempting OWWs for good because some of the first few they tried were needlessly confusing.

(This is not unlike my worry that some would-be regular puzzle creators are scared away after their first puzzle [that they are so excited for!] triggers "Puzzle Rejected: Our moderators have decided that your puzzle will not be published on Tanga.")

I thought I should re-post my OWW comment here...

A few reasons for not including a convention:
• Not enough space.
• Sometimes part of the fun is figuring out which tanga convention is being used.
• Could possibly make an otherwise elegant puzzle look esthetically clunky.

But, again, I'm not saying that all (or even most) puzzles should include conventions.

First off: thanks Adam. I love those discussion topics!

I personally think the solve method shouldn't be spelled out for the sake of helping out the newbies.

As someone once mentioned (probably sonjahi), new puzzlemakers keep adding to their bag of tricks as they solve more puzzles. This turns out to be a fun learning curve, despite some harder times at the beginning. I think a puzzle which says at the bottom: "count the numbers of animals (n) in each picture and take the nth letter of the respective animal name to come up with a series of letters that will spell a word" (or even an icon depicting that method somehow) would just take the "puzzliness" out of puzzles.

To put it simply, imo, nah.

We have different levels of solvers. It seems to be generally recognized that OWWs can be much more difficult than HCs and Cryptos and most of us went through a learning curve to become (reasonably) proficient at them. I don't think it's in the best interest of the overall community to 'compromise' a puzzle for the benefit of the 'lowest common denominator' (term used for brevity, no value judgement intended). Salt has come to the point that anyone stuck gets guided through spots such as this anyways.

I think a more practical way to address conventions and 'beginners' would be to put another sentence in the Instructions that points to the Puzzler's Guide.

I agree with the responses so far. I mean, the instructions say that the answer is a word. So you get a series of numbers. Now what? It doesn't seem like a logical leap at all to look at your numbers and think, "I must need to convert these to letters somehow."

Some puzzles, a big part of the puzzle is to figure out what to apply the numbers to. So telling the person that information would take the fun (and challenge) out of it. Not only that, using numbers to index the alphabet is not a Tanga convention. You'll find it in all sorts of puzzles in many other arenas.

I continue to be amazed how often people lay their own problems at the feet of the puzzle/puzzlemaker/moderating process. They get stumped, frustrated, then angry and instead of considering that many others have solved it so they must still be missing something, they claim the puzzle is flawed. This happened twice last night in different ways.

First was a comment that said, in part: "There are just too many possibilities to make this a good puzzle, in my opinion." Despite being a regular, they didn't trust the moderators to guarantee a unique solution or consider that so many other people had solved it that they must be missing something.

Then the comment near the end: "This puzzle CLEARLY asks for the children's ages... But to solve it it is supposed to be a word? A puzzle that lies? that's not fair." This person (who has been around for a LONG time) didn't consider that they must need to convert those numbers to letters in order to get a word. Very basic. All OWWs need to result in a word. Most of them have you doing something else to get there. None of them have a note saying "when you are done tracing your paths or connecting your dots or drawing where the water goes or doing the math, make sure you use what you did to get some letters."

Long and short of it, AdamMcD, none of the people who failed to figure out to convert the numbers to letters were "newbies". If you try to appeal to the lowest common denominator, you will end up creating extremely dull puzzles.

[And please note if you were one of those people that I am not claiming you are always the lowest common denominator - just that you were the people on this particular puzzle that got stumped on a fairly basic point.]

Having solved a couple or more of AdamMcD OWW's where the answer was a number, once I got the ages I entirely expected the answer to be them concatenated together as "ninemilliononehundredandthirtytwothousand....etc". I felt surprised and deceived when that wasn't the case.

[6] lol.

[3] [4] [5] I agree with you guys -- I would never sacrifice a puzzle's quality to make it more accessible to a few people. I am just wondering if there are times when it is possible to make a puzzle more clear for newbies* without making the puzzle bland for the non-newbies.

*I say "newbies", but as [5] pointed out, this really includes actual newbies as well as non-newbies who should simply know better. Whatever -- I'm still gonna refer to this group as "newbies".

A not-yet-submitted puzzle of mine (that sonjahi has seen, actually) has this floating hint at the top of it. I chose to *not* put such a note in last night's birthday puzzle, but the reason didn't have anything to do with it making the puzzle bland. Would the addition of such a note had taken away from the fun of the puzzle for the "non-newbies"? Not in the least IMO -- the "guts" of the puzzle had nothing to do with {1=A, 2=B, 3=C, etc.}. (Instead, the reason I didn't add it was because I thought it would have been clunky looking and possibly confusing).

Also, this doesn't have to be an after-the-fact consideration. I actually have another not-yet-published example where I reworked the puzzle so that the phrase "Use the Nth letter of the Nth word" was at the bottom of the puzzle; and I managed to do this so that the phrase "fits" with the puzzle (Jeb, you modded this puzzle, actually).

Here's a living (public) example:
My very first scratch work for this OWW of mine involved getting a list of words and assuming the puzzler would know to take the 1st letter of the 1st word, 2nd letter of the 2nd word, and so forth. Instead, I ended up giving explicit instructions telling the puzzler to use the 1st letter of the each word. I actually think this made the puzzle better for non-newbies while simultaneously making it more accessible to newbies.

I agree that in the particular (public) example you gave, Adam, that telling what letter to use was good. It's hard to know how easily I would have gotten it with your original method. I think it's fairly natural to first try the first letter of everything and then try the 1st/1st, 2nd/2nd, etc. method.

I find it amusing though that you state you gave "explicit instructions" that made it "more accessible to newbies" in light of comments #13 & #15. Which rather goes toward proving my point that no matter how much help you try to give, there's still going to be people that don't get it.

I'm reminded of a hypercross of mine where "Hootie & the Blowfish" was one of the answers. I clued the ampersand with... an ampersand. But I didn't want people trying to spell it out so I pointed an arrow at the ampersand with the text "use this!!". And, yes, I still had people complaining that they didn't know they needed to type '&' instead of 'and' and they didn't like me using it in the answer (despite the fact that that's the name of the band and I told them to use it).

But I accept your point that if there's a way to include help that doesn't detract from the solve or aesthetics, it'd be nice to do so. (I would say that providing hints that turn a fun & challenging puzzle into a trivially easy one for more experienced solvers would detract from the solve, of course).

[9] Even [6]? Wow...

[6] You never know, he could have been trying to quote the lyrics to "Seasons of Love" from Rent (as one word...)

I am kind of a newbie. I started in October. I probably solve 2 out of 10 OWWs. I can solve 9/10 Hypers and 9/10 Cryptos. I'm getter better each week. BUT most of the OWWs are too hard for me. I wish there was a way to just know how to start. I love the work involved, but never know how to start. Once I get on the correct path, I will solve it. But I do agree a lot of the puzzlemakers just assume we know what certain characters or conventions are. Believe me, we don't. I don't know how you correct that problem or even if you should. You don't want to stifle the pleasure for the experienced. I do wish more people were like Sonjahi and would drop some hints. It doesn't have to be obvious Salt, just a hint, like, geez I thought that was an apple. Sometimes that makes all the difference. People like me keep going to the puzzle, lurking if you like, just to see if there is something said that will help. Most of you solve and leave. There's nothing wrong with that, but a lot of people will get discouraged and not come back. We need newcomers. The more the merrier. The comments are fun and I wish more would get involved. I usually go to the OWW the next night and look for a hint. Mainly because I want to learn. Most of the authors aren't even putting up hints anymore. It's only 3 points, put a hint in there. When there are no hints, I look at the answer for 0 points, but it's more fun to try and solve it. I don't want to have to TG someone and ask for help every night. Everybody is so nice to help, but after awhile you get embarrassed to keep asking.
I have enjoyed Tanga so much and will continue to do so. I DO wish the OWWs were easier though. There is just no way to please everybody. I recommend newbies work on past puzzles to learn some of the technology and methods.

[12] Well, I don't necessarily agree that I wish the OWW's were easier, but if a "newbie" (or anyone else for that matter) actually does figure out the guts of a puzzle and is only failing to get the correct answer because of some "in" convention on tanga, that can be a pretty big bummer. Also, the OWWs do get easier with time, but there will always be plenty you simply don't get (I know there are plenty that fall into that category for me, at least).

I mainly commented to say this though: I totally agree with your gripe about OWW hints ("Most of the authors aren't even putting up hints anymore"). What's up with that!? C'mon puzzler-makers ... use the hints feature!* This hints issue could probably warrant its very own thread (does an old one already exist?).

*Of course, I don't feel hints are needed for Cryptos, since they're always the same: "Hint: put the pictures together to form a phrase" (sorry, I've been in an anti-Crypto mood for the last year or so).

In light of [13], I went back and added & tweaked the hints in all my puzzles (yes all 4 of them). I saw that I had only left hints for half of my puzzles, and had one person complaining that my hints weren't, eh, hinty? enough on both of those.

[14] I know that helpful Crypto hints can exist, I was just being snarky.

PS. I'm so sick of adding words to my computer's dictionary -- it's underlining 'snarky' as a non-word; this thing is more behind the times than the OED is!

So speaking as sort of a newbie on this....joined back in June...Yes OWWs can be hard. But honestly that is part of the fun. It was not a great leap of thought to figure that when you get a numeric answer, that you should translate it into the appropriate placed letter in the alphabet. I know I have, as I am sure many of you have, a little piece of paper next to my computer as a cheat telling me what number corresponds to what letter.

From what I've seen, OWWs are more challenging and therefore force you to stop and really think about things from all different angles. I am still struggling with OWWs, but I wouldn't stop trying to figure out what the answers are. The OWW Puzzlethon last month was a GREAT way to get more practice at these as I was incented to really get them due to the high point values and the prize at the end....not to mention a cool badge. And worse comes to worse, if I really just can't figure it out I can always get the answer the next day and see how to get the answer which helps further my knowledge on these. Yes it's a bummer that I don't get even the 3 points, but come on...I really don't think I will be overtaking Philana anytime soon.

[14] [18] hahaha, it really didn't...
But what a great idea for a new puzzle type... the pixless crypto!

[18] I want to solve it now, but the third clue is tripping me up. Can't think of a more general word for butterfly that has 3 t's...unless that refers to the whole thing in which case I don't have those right either.