Jan 02, 2007 One Word Wonder Puzzle

WTF?

You have already solved this puzzle.
It took you 2 minutes and 52 seconds.
You are the 1st fastest Tanga member to solve this puzzle.
You were the 1st Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

Very nice!

Does this one have to do with past puzzles again?
Sigh.
I'll log on later.

Nicer than yesterday....maybe because I got this one faster. But still among the first 10.

It took you 4 minutes and 53 seconds.
You are the 3rd fastest Tanga member to solve this puzzle.
You were the 3rd Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

You have already solved this puzzle.
It took you 6 minutes and 29 seconds.
You are the 4th fastest Tanga member to solve this puzzle.
You were the 4th Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

Nice and simple, thanks Ray.

You have already solved this puzzle.
It took you 3 minutes and 21 seconds.
You are the 2nd fastest Tanga member to solve this puzzle.
You were the 2nd Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

Right behind you, Projectyl!

I think this one won't need nearly the salt that yesterday's did.

hooded_paladin, no you don't need to know about past puzzles. This one's very self-contained.

You have already solved this puzzle.
It took you 8 minutes and 0 seconds.
You are the 6th fastest Tanga member to solve this puzzle.
You were the 6th Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

WooHoo! Got it fast tonight.

okay got it

I think a 2 minute solve is a bald faced lie
it took me that much time just to read it, let alone do the last step.

Perhaps he's the creator?

okay I take that back, I still haven't solved the last step...

grrr

bleh, ok now I got it

It took you 10 minutes and 24 seconds.
You are the 13th fastest Tanga member to solve this puzzle.
You were the 14th Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

It took you 13 minutes and 13 seconds.
You are the 18th fastest Tanga member to solve this puzzle.
You were the 18th Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

Wow that was a great one i just kept on checking out the letters over and over again and god did i feel like a square when i realized what it was...

bagherra:
It took you two minutes to read the phrase "Reflect on your dark and checkered past"?

Whew- got it. Went crosseyed trying to write it down and sort it out.

You are the 2nd fastest Tanga member to solve this puzzle.
You were the 28th Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

So, has anybody given any clues? I just don't seem to be picking it up like everybody else. :(

I was on the right track, but my dad beat me to it.

pretty well done. I thought it was a well-done puzzle.

(I still have no idea how last night's puzzle was supposed to be solved...)

[19]Josh, the link to see the solution is up now. Go back to yesterday and take a look. (I had to too.)

Josh, if you open yesterday's puzzle now, there is a link to the solution.

Meantime, maybe it's my head cold, but I got nothing on tonight's.

Ah ha. I had the right idea, just started in the wrong place. Finally figure out where to start, and it's pretty nice.

You have already solved this puzzle.
It took you 3 minutes and 50 seconds.
You are the 5th fastest Tanga member to solve this puzzle.
You were the 27th Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

I must have been distracted, thinking about those game controllers. This was a nice, clean puzzle.

Nice! I like that! Took me longer than it should have, but it was nice and manageable. No salt makes for healthy puzzle-solving - so I'm not going to ruin someone's enjoyable puzzle night by shaking out any salt on this one.

Pretty straight forward directions at the top

Oh please, feel free to ruin it for me.

:)

me too

Yeah those directions are pretty straight forward.

????????????????

=(

I found it useful to reflect in both dimensions

I think I got the magic eye in the background. Or it's time to quit . . .

Okay, this puzzle is taking revenge on me for my dark and checkered puzzle of yesterday, I can tell. I think I'm getting hung up on a wrong idea for the first step, and it's blinding me to everything else. :-)

Can the smart ones help out this idiot (me) tonight?

You have already solved this puzzle.
It took you 27 minutes and 58 seconds.
You are the 44th fastest Tanga member to solve this puzzle.
You were the 40th Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

I had the right idea from the start, but couldn't make anything from it and tried something else. The clue-in was sitting right in front of me. Nice one.

For those of you looking for salt, there's always BGG. The verbage up top says it all, both symbolically and literally.

...of course, it helps if you don't mistranscribe two of the letters when you're working on the puzzle. Oy!

BGG has nothing yet

Yeah, BGG has a tiny little hint that isn't helping us. Any more solvers want to head that way? Pretty please. =D

awesome, a puzzle i managed to figure out on my own! i liked this one.

Am I needing scissors for this one?

At this point, I might hurt myself with the scissors

Kudos to Raymond for a nice puzzle.

Once I got through my PEBKAC, this was a pretty good puzzle. For those who are noticing parts of patterns that aren't falling into place, I suggest a couple things:

First, pull yourself together. (If you can't find yourself, just pull together whatever's handy.)

Second, don't get short with yourself. Reserve that for words that are too long to use elsewhere.

Okay, I finally figured it out.

It probably would have been easier if I had printed it out and worked on the pattern on paper.

Thanks Raymond, cool puzzle!

For those looking for salt, two words in the instructions should just jump and capture any good puzzle solver. And a third should set you off in the right direction.

I said it for David, I'll say it for Raymond. I refuse to complain because it hasn't yet been my turn in the barrel.

Well done, sir.

No scissors needed
It helps to print out a couple of copies to mark up.
Don't forget to reflect

Thosw, agreed!

Raymond, Good Puzzle.
Even thought the bottom line anagrams to disaster this wasn't one.

Did it in the median time, without looking here.

Totally self contained, except for the last reference, and that is just something that you should check for yourself.

That was a fun puzzle!

I didn't notice the first set of instructions until after I solved it, but the second set did the trick.

I guess there is a 50-50 chance of seeing the second set first...

Great puzzle! For once, I was able to solve it without having to look here (all all over the web) first. Please - more like this!

You better have some chess past too

Thanks red I thought I had screwed up my letters.

very nifty puzzle. took me a few minutes before it clicked.

nice puzzle! wish I could stop my timer when the children come calling, then I might feel a bit smarter...

On another note, its already January 2nd and I don't see any of my puzzle submissions yet! Color me impatient :D

yeah my first solved puzzle

How do you find out how fast you solved it or how many people solved it?

Thanks for the kind words everyone.

Note to other puzzle submitters: Enter your answer before running around the house to brag to your wife/husband/SO and kids when you get selected *sigh*

You have already solved this puzzle.
It took you 5 minutes and 0 seconds.
You are the 22nd fastest Tanga member to solve this puzzle.
You were the 30th Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

Scottmueller
If you go back to the puzzle, it show you your time, your current standing (changes as people beat your time).
Below the puzzle are more statistics, but the total number of people who have solved is not shown.

this was fun, but used the help of wheeler on BGG to figure it out. thanks for the help Wheeler.

Very nice, very solid. Well done.

You have not already solved this puzzle.
It may take you 72 hours 58 minutes and 34 seconds.
You will be the slowest Tanga member to solve this puzzle.
You will be the last Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

Wow, I've never seen a message like this before. Should I be worried?

Wow...that's funny, mrtyler. It is certainly how I feel on many of the puzzles! On the positive side, at least it didn't list months or years...

Nice puzzle! Here's a little grain of salt for the stuckies:

Just staring at the puzzle gave me nothing but gibberish, but when I opened Notepad and started copying letters as I looked at them, the solution became instantly clear.

Nice puzzle, but I was very slow. I had to leave it for awhile and come back (like most of them).

Fun puzzle.

Nice, not too rough

Man. After reading through this entire thread, and spending forever looking at various checkered arrangements, I still have nothing. I always seem to be the one chump who gets nothing from the salt. I've written it down, messed with it in Notepad. Nothing clicks.

TimothyP.. go to
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/1254478

for lots of help

TimothyP

more salt at
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/131250/page/97

Although I had a (very) checkered past, I had to first reflect on the lighter side of it.

Great puzzle Raymond.

i like it. very very straightforward.

what helped me to read it (because it does seem gibberish even if you read it the right way) is to think about directions.

Now _that_ was a good, fun puzzle. Excellent work, Raymond!

I just solved this puzzle using a bit of salt from one of the posts. Basically the post gave one of the words from the second step which I was then able to find in the puzzle and trace out the pattern from there.

The reason I was so thrown off by this puzzle is that one of the major words in the heading is a complete Red Herring.

Like leadfoot in [49], I also noticed disaster as an anagram. Probably because it was on the bottom line and therefore stood out. Then I thought I saw monsoon in the line above and got excited. Trying to make anagrams took up a bit more time than I care to admit.

Still, it was directions based, and not free association, so I got through it fairly quickly.

Fun puzzle.

[76] Nurdyguy: It wasn't my intention to have a red herring in the clue, and in fact, I'm pretty sure the major words apply (fairly) directly.

Maybe after the solution is posted we can discuss here if needed?

Thanks for a nicely self-contained puzzle, Ray. Took me longer than I care to admit, but I can blame that on my sore throat (that's my story, and I'm sticking to it!) ;-)

I am too new at this. Can anyone give me a clue?!

[79] Dave, I didn't have the final letters, but I had a goal. I knew I wanted the 4 starting squares of one of the pieces: rooks, knights, bishops, even horses or castles.

I just had to work on a pair of clues exactly 32 letters each, and massage the results until something popped up on the start spaces of the piece I was working with at the time.

First off, let me say straight out that I am a total NOOB! I have only solved 5 or so puzzles on this site and most have required substantial "salt" as you guys call it.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the puzzle. Now that the result is up I will tell you what killed me. The word "reflect" really threw me. I had the basic idea beyond that but trying to incorperate that word into the solving had me on the wrong path. A verb like that in the instruction can be a powerful thing and it completely preoccupied me.

[83] Nurdyguy: You really didn't explain too much as to why you considered "reflect" to be, in your words, a complete Red Herring.

I can only guess that "reflect" holds some personal / professional significance to you (maybe you're a Math major, or a physicist?) that led you to try to apply some precise scientific reflection to the puzzle.

You have to be prepared to go with loose associations and lateral thinking in some cases to deal with certain clues. So while 'reflect' might not immediately mean "read backwards" I felt it was closer to helpful than it was to a crimson fish.

You might Google for Lateral Thinking Puzzles and Cryptic Crosswords for some dastardly and intentionally obtuse puzzling fun!

[84] raymulford: Well, you hit it EXACTLY on the nose. In face I am a Math instructor at a community college with an MS in pure Math. I tried all manner of reflections in order to find some pattern build into the puzzle.

Being as new to these puzzles as I am, I am definately not (yet) in the right thinking pattern to solve these (or at least most of them). I have poked through a couple of lateral thinking puzzle books at the bookstore but quickly put them down as it was complete jibberish to me. Here's hoping things get better :-)

Hated this puzzle....too much work...inexact wording...."reflect" maybe should be "swap columns"? first step reading from bottom up instead of top down....and SW is actually going SE

All that for a measly 4 letter answer. Yuck!