101: HOW TO LOOK



If you are reading this, chances are you play the stone, the online puzzle game by Abject Modernity. If you aren't a player, then I suggest you become one, or this article will more or less be useless to you. That being said, let us begin the tutorial.

101 will deal primarily with what you see, or what you think you see, and ways of looking at things. I will use examples from specific puzzles, but I will NOT provide the answers. Subsequent articles will deal with using search engines and such.

The first thing you need to do, is get prepared. i recommend keeping a couple of things handy: a list of the puzzles available to you [ preferably hardcopy ], a notebook and pen/pencil, and a second browser window open to your favourite search engine. If you plan on making your stone session a long one [ and you probably will ], I would also suggest that you have a snack or a beverage nearby. Sugar or any other substance that makes you hyper is not recommended, as patience is a must for this game.

Now that you are nice and comfortable, select the puzzle you want to try. I'm not going to suggest one, because everyone has different strengths, and what was easy for me may not be easy for you. Once you have chosen your puzzle, the first thing you need to do is make note of everthing you see. You don't have to write everything down, but anything extremely prominent or deliberately obscured should go in your notebook, as they are generally the most important things. But not always. Identify as many of the different parts of the puzzle as you can. Make a note of the things you recognize, and make a special note of the things you don't, because you'll need to look them up later. If you think that there should be more to the puzzle, make your screen brighter, or change the resolution. This may reveal something you haven't seen before [ many said that happend with Daymaker ], or may simply clarify some of the images. Run your mouse along the puzzle. Can you click on anything? Are there rollovers [ie do things in you taskbar or in the puzzle change when your mouse touches something]? Do any of the parts move, or change colour? If it moves, move it. Do everything the puzzle lets you do. Examine everything. Does it limit the number of characters you can input into the answer box? If you have to, go through the puzzle pixel by pixel, or print the screen so you can work offline as well.

The next thing you have to do is try and decide how the various pieces relate to one another. Often they only relate in one very specific way, and that way is also very often the answer. And don't just think about what they mean on the surface. Could they just be metaphors? Could they be puns, or trying to force you to do word association? And you have to look beyond the objects themselves. What time frame do they imply, what part of the world, or aspect of life? And lastly, how does it relate to the overall theme of the stone?

On a final note, one way that we have been warned NOT to look, is by poking around the stone servers. But I'll talk more about that in the next article.

-fish sauce


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