Final 16

Two weeks in and we’re closing in on the finish line of Puzzle Boat 3. What difference a little experience makes.

Last time around, our team of three took 31 days to complete the challenge. Now we’re on the final 16 puzzles and still rallying through quickly.

A lot of it is being able to recognize puzzle types. There are a few that I would have had no idea on previously, and I can easily recognize them now. Akari puzzles, Maysu, Battleship, Cryptic Crosswords- having a general idea for types of puzzles is the first step in getting through these.

It’s still a challenge sometimes making the leap to interpret what we have to do after the initial puzzle, but most of the time that involves spotting something unusual and taking the Xth letter from each clue or answer to spell something. So still not easy per se, but a lot easier than it was before.

I still have to commend the creator of Puzzle Boat, Foggy Brume, on continuing to find puzzles different enough to keep us excited. Even when the puzzles require outside knowledge, there’s usually just enough of a nudge to point us in the right direction.

I’m also happy to say that with only 15 puzzles to go (solved one since I started writing this post), we’ve used a total of zero hints. There have been a few puzzles we’ve “skipped” due to being able to reverse engineer the answer based on how the answers are grouped into metapuzzles, but it’s a valid way to tackle the challenge.

It looks like we’re on pace to finish within the next week. I don’t want to set an unbeatable precedent for when we get to Puzzle Boat 4, but it’s exciting to see the payoff from learning the ins and outs of different puzzle types.