I've been playing around with these
abstracted art puzzles for a few months now. I wanted to make a contest based on them, so here is one.
Unlike most of the abstracted art puzzles we've had, this puzzle will not be based on any previously made work. The puzzle depicts a somewhat complicated situation where a man is angry. You must tell me why the Angry Man is angry.
Clues for the puzzle will be gradually revealed in this
submission topic. Submission topics, by the way, keep any replies made hidden to everyone except the person who posted the reply and the original creator of the topic. So you can post your guess as a reply to that topic and just you and I will be able to see it.
Rules
1. You can guess as many times as you wish, but only the last guess you make will be evaluated.
2. I strongly recommend that you
don't edit any of your guess posts. If you do edit a post, I reserve the right to disqualify the entry--fair or not. Please just make a new post any time you want to correct a guess. Remember, that I will only look at the last guess post you make. If you want to delete old guess posts, that is fine.
3. Don't pose more than one explanation in your guess. Use more general language if you have to. Some examples:
WRONG: The angry man lost a hat or a scarf.
WRONG: The angry man lost a piece of clothing, perhaps a hat or scarf.
RIGHT: The angry man lost a piece of clothing.
WRONG: Either the angry man is angry at his wife or he is pretending to be.
RIGHT: The angry man is expressing anger at his wife.
4. Any questions about the contest should be asked publicly as reply posts to this topic. If I receive any questions privately, I'll just ask you to post them in this topic.
Winning
Sometime soon after the last clue has been given, the winner will be announced. Note that the winner may have supplied a correct guess much earlier, but the contest will continue after that time. I want to extend the drama a little bit, but also someone who posts a correct answer could end up losing if he posts a new answer which is not correct.
The winners are determined this way: from all the entrants who submitted one or more guesses, their latest guess is evaluated. From that group, all entrants who submitted incorrect latest guesses are removed from consideration. From the remaining group, the entrants are ranked by the sequence that their latest guesses were posted. The earliest guess wins first prize--100 rank points and an item of his choosing from
the Prize Pile. Runners-up receive 50 and 25 rank points. Rookie bonuses of 10 rank points are given to contest newcomers. Participation credit requires a guess that shows a decent attempt to understand the puzzle. If you spend more than 5 minutes trying to figure out the puzzle, then your guess should be fine.
Strategy
You can guess as many times as you want. It makes sense to guess early, and be prepared to replace your guess with a better one as more information becomes available. It doesn't make sense to post a lot of guesses in case one happens to be right. Remember that only your last guess will be considered. So even if you accidentally hit upon the correct answer in a series of wild guesses, you are likely to replace the correct answer with a later one that is incorrect.
A more useful way to guess is to begin with something general, like for example:
The Angry Man is angry because he forgot to do something.
...and then as more clues become available, refine your guess:
The Angry Man is angry because he forgot to pick up a tuxedo.
...and maybe later a clue suggests more specifically why that would make him angry:
The Angry Man is angry because he forgot to pick up a tuxedo to wear to his wedding.
A difficult problem is knowing when to stop refining guesses. Each time you post a new guess, your official entry time gets set to the time of the new guess. You want your last guess to be both correct and earlier than other people's correct guesses. So when you look at the puzzle, you want to be reasonably sure that your guess is being improved before updating it. How will you know when your guess is specific enough to be correct? Well, here are some clues about what the correct answer must reference:
* An activity the Angry Man himself performs.
* An activity that a different person performs.
* The relation between the two activities.
To give you an idea of complexity, a single sentence like the following could express the correct answer:
The Angry Man is angry because... (20 more words)
I'm not saying your guess needs to be exactly 26 words. I'm just saying that when I wrote out the answer succinctly, that's how many words I used. You could use a little more a little less, but if you are writing a terse phrase or a verbose paragraph, then you're on the wrong track.
The puzzle is not made of airtight logic that demands a single solution. It requires for you to consider how things often work in the real world by convention and not just necessity. You'll also have to consider that some elements of the puzzle are present to suggest certain facets of the situation, and aren't just coincidental. Finally, not every puzzle clue is important, but most at least serve to establish a setting and define the scope of what will be expressed.
Latecomers, don't sweat it. My feeling is that the first correct answer could be determined anywhere from the second week of April to the time when the last clue is revealed. You can jump into this at any time and still have a chance of winning.
So why is the Angry Man angry?
-Erik
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The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
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