Jul 01, 2007 One Word Wonder Puzzle

yarr! i hope ye enjoy me puzzles tonight!

# It took you 4 minutes and 43 seconds to solve this puzzle.
# You were the 1st Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

Arrrr, shiver me planks and walk the timbers! I be the king o' this here puzzlement, aye!

Hm. Well, I've got a couple words, but I'm having trouble with figuring specifically what they refer to...

[2] nice job. the average test solve time was close to 12 minutes

does this one at least have points?

It took you 8 minutes and 32 seconds to solve this puzzle.
You were the 2nd Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

Got enough of them to figure it out.

yar! we be pirates!

Do I need to know who it is in the woodcut, specifically?

[8] It is vitally important.

Clues were quick, Google Images did the rest...

# It took you 9 minutes and 40 seconds to solve this puzzle.
# You were the 3rd Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

[9] That's what I was afraid of.

[8] itll help a lot, but it can be solved without it. ill say that he relates to the image to the left of him.

helmets + vitruvian man = ?????

[13] on the right track...you have all you need in what you said

A Wikipedia search for the image on the left should lead to a link that has info on the guy on the right.

Yarrrr-g... 11th....

Knew the "answer", just not the answer! GRR!

Part 2 seemed a bit too obscure...

It took you 17 minutes and 43 seconds to solve this puzzle.
You were the 18th Tanga member to solve this puzzle.
Average solve time: 12 minutes and 27 seconds.
Median solve time: 12 minutes and 56 seconds.
29.032% of Tanga members that have attempted this puzzle have solved it.

Wow! That's the best I've ever done (rank-wise)! But usually I get her about 4 hours after the newest puzzle was posted, so that doesn't typically help my rank...

[17] how so? i thought all of it was pretty straight forward...unless we are thinking of different part 2's...

Hrm...I think I got the first part, but stuck on the second, as I'm pretty sure it's referring to something I don't know and am having trouble finding. :(

Same here [20].

Edit. Just got it after clicking on about 25 different pirates to stumble across the correct one. I don't care for puzzles that lead you to a vague clue.

* It took you 8 minutes and 23 seconds to solve this puzzle.
* You were the 25th Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

Not too bad figuring out the clues, but the last step definitely took some research. I'd never heard of the answer, but got lucky with my initial Googling, so it "only" took 8 minutes.

[19] I think he means the woodcut picture. Without google images as suggested by Verve, I wouldn't have got it. And then, one has to use the right search terms. I like a challenge though, yarr!

[20 & 21] Look up the flag on wiki and that should lead you were you need to go.

the woodcut isnt necessary, but helpful...the flag is essentially all you need.

EDIT: all that is needed for the next clue that is

I think the toughest part of this is trying to figure out what to do after you get the clue from the first part. You definitely need help from Wiki to solve this one. I'm not really a fan of puzzles that require research.

Wow. After going through a half hour of wiki stuff finding someone I've never heard of (the man pictured top right) and then reading biography info to find the other person I've never heard of (the puzzle solution), I'd have to say that I agree with 17's statemt of 'obscure'. I'll see the "obscure", and raise it with a "ridiculously obscure".

You will have to wiki this with reference to the picture

Has anyone else been watching that stupid Pirate Master show? :)

[29] i heard about it and it broke me heart...i cant bring myself to watch it. but i hear it is stupid

[17], [27] i dont see the obscurity...take the answer from the clues and apply it to the images in the top right and you get an answer. any googling or wiki-ing should take only a few seconds...you dont even need to scroll down on wiki to find the answer.

My favorite commentary about Pirate Master comes from my beloved TelevisionWithoutPity.com:

"You know, once you get past the initial shock of how stupid this show is, you realize that it's actually kind of boring. "

[31] It was a little obscure for me, not having that particular pirate trivia at hand. I went on a wild goose chase for Bartholomew Roberts and Francis Spriggs, who were listed as the source of the name Jolly Roger in Wikipedia. The page on Roberts in particular has a wood-cut image which I thought was an alternate portrayal of the person in question.

A nudge for anyone stuck. This isn't just any ol Jolly Roger.

[33] ill agree that the Black Bart woodcut is similar...but you just scrolled down a little more on that wiki page, you would have seen the particular jolly rogers i used listed first.

[31] Are you sure about that?

[35] about the scrolling? yes. if you have the correct person you dont need to scroll to find the answer.

EDIT: and assuming we are still talking about wikipedia

...after finding the answer, I'd still say a little too obscure as well.

Hint on figuring out the pirate - besides searching for just the item next to our mystery man, notice the particular brand of their calling card. Much faster.

Kinda neat, although you can't do it without wiki, or you'll bust an artery.

Very fun puzzle!

[10] How do you do a search for an image? That makes no sense to me

[41] For this puzzle the best search method will be on Google and just type in "pirate flags" I think the flag used in this puzzle is the first (or one of the first) ones that shows up.

The website that flag is displayed on should have the name of the man in the wood cut.

Put the name of that man into wikipedia and read somewhere on the first page (no scrolling down needed) to find the info required.

shiggins: if the puzzle gave a directive to use wiki, that might be justifiable. SOme people would consider having to resort to an enyclopaedic resource to be cheating, and that's a sure sign that either they're overanalyzing the puzzle or that the puzzle was crafted as more of a scavenger hunt than a puzzle.

The fact that your Jolly Roger was 'specific' was a detail that people would only make sense of in retrospect. For most puzzles, a needlessly specific image is used to fog anyone who wasted their time figuring out why that specific image was used when it is generally more loosely applied (see the use of an upright-oriented Jesus-Fish to convey the word 'fish' in a recent puzzle - people who tried to make use of the knowledge of the specific image rather than generalize it to common terms wasted a lot of time).

I just can't believe how you keep saying this isn't obscure! Were you told this story every night growing up? Or do you know the whole wiki front to back? This is a research project, not a puzzle.

Sure, it only takes a few seconds if you know where to look, and it must look painfully easy to you ONCE YOU KNOW THE ANSWER. But you understand that people who don't already know the answer are going to take different branches in solving (if they even resort to Wiki at all - if the puzzle doesn't tell me to, I'm loath to do so - if the puzzle crafter then tells me I should have, I tell the puzzle crafter he should have left me a clue ion the puzzle telling me it's expected).

I followed the same path as John above - tracked down info on Roberts, came up empty. Tracked down Spriggs, came up empty. Deciding I wasn't going to research every pirate on the page, I then sought out alternate routes - pirates in literature, for one.

It's not just that your hindsight is 20/20. It's that you don't even seem to be grasping that others don't have the benefit of hindsight to know how quick it ideally should take to solve this puzzle.

[43] I definitely see your point, but I think I have to disagree with you.

While I agree that the puzzle information and answer were a bit obscure, it is of my opinion that "having to resort to an enyclopaedic resource" is not anything we haven't done on any number of past Tanga puzzles.

In fact I could safely argue that the majority of Tanga Puzzles require some research (or use some kind of "cheating" method), whether it was to find out a pop culture image you may not be familiar with, or finding a sports reference that you don't know, or looking up a word in a thesaurus, or using an anagram program, or a crossword solver (though I admit that last one may be more on the "cheating" side).

Some puzzles used specific images that were needed to solve the puzzle, others used an image that was offered only as a generic version of the term. Figuring out which is which is part of the puzzle solving. That's what makes these Tanga puzzles both challenging and fun.

The point I am trying to make here is that every Tanga puzzle is slightly different from the one before it (and the one after), both in its solve method (or its key) and in its mechanics. That's what makes Tanga puzzles so cool. You never know what you'll need to do in order to solve a puzzle.

You are not the first to bemoan that the puzzle could not be solved just with the puzzle image itself. Many others have said in the past that they like puzzles that stand alone and need no outside info to solve. I too like those kinds of puzzles.

I also like puzzles that make me think outside the box, sort to speak, and if I learn something at the same time then more's the better. Some Tanga puzzles referred us to the keyboard, some referred us to images and phrases that existed somewhere on the Tanga site itself, heck, the entire Ze Frank week of puzzles required us to scour his entire web site to search for clues. Each one of those puzzles were both challenging and fun, what makes them any different than today's puzzle?

I have no problem using the internet to research a puzzle. The search is part of the fun. Deciphering people's salt is also part of the fun. There have been numerous times I didn't understand the loads of salt people offered in the blogs and on BGG until one particular piece of salt clicked with me and I had my 'aha' moment. Then ALL the previous salt references made sense to me, even the ones that I originally didn't realize were salt.

Remember, every puzzle is viewed differently by each person. Some people answer puzzles immediately because they intuitively grasp the "method" the crafter was thinking about right away. Other's struggle over something that most people would feel is common sense. Everybody has their 'aha' moment when they see the reasoning behind a puzzle. That's what makes these puzzle so great.

That was mostly just guessing stuff until you found the right answer. Didn't take long, but not very satisfying.

I tend to agree with [43]. This puzzle was a bit too obscure. I wouldn't have done it without all the salt given here.

[44] TLDR

*You really have to Rack your brain to find the right pirate.*

ok. I found the wikipage with the woodcut but I've tried all the different words I can think of, but none are right. Any salt??

[48] Apply the clue from the OOO's to the pirate.

[45] Hit the nail on the head. Not too hard, but not satisfying at all.

The clues were cool. Once I realized what the clues were looking for, I was surprised that I could not get the answer. Then I remembered my book by Captain Charles Johnson. Then I finally got it.

I really liked this puzzle! took me 9 minutes plus wikipedia ;) Great theme, by the way!

[52] thanks mate!

i stand by my puzzle and as [44] has said, it isnt anything different than what nearly every other tanga puzzle asks for...there is usually some bit of research. with mine, all you had to do was look up pirate flags, find the fellows name, and look him up. its that simple. i can remember back to a puzzle (i dont recall the puzzle maker) that involved all beatles songs. that is awfully obscure if the person doesnt have any idea when it comes to beatles music...but you know what, salt was used and a search of beatles songs was done. thats an example off the top of my head and im sure there are many more like it.

I too stand by this puzzle.. the clues were fun to solve and they gave me DIRECT directions of how to solve the puzzle.. I use wikipedia for so many tanga puzzles.. this was no different and definitely not harder than others.. also.. tanga should be fun.. not so tense..

nice job shiggins..

Slightly obscure, but managed to answer in an acceptable amount of time (but I thought it was the easy puzzle until I checked my time)

Just wanted to add... I didn't hate it. I just ended up with a mildly bad taste because I felt set adrift at sea for a bit.

In my boredom, I've been going back and solving old puzzles for practice and this is one of my favorites.
I stand by this puzzle. So many puzzles use wiki, and this one made good use of it. Frankly, the most obscure thing people have a right to complain about is the names of the crew members. After that, it's just a matter of looking up one thing, it's relation to something else, then applying the clue to that person. Really, it's not impossibly mind-boggling.