Here's my interpretation of the
United Lemur hints for
Puzzllotto. If you just want the solution, go
here.
Day 1:
"If you think you've solved Puzzllotto, you haven't. When you solve Puzzllotto, you'll know."Just because you got to the screen without
Ovay doesn't mean you solved anything. If you have to ask,
"Did I win?" You didn't. I believed this one from the beginning, but at first I thought I'd do something within the game. Later it became obvious that I'd know because it was external to the game.
Day 2: "Puzzllotto keeps returning you to the beginning because it makes the puzzle easier to solve."In hindsight, this is true. It's an indication that if you just focus on what you're doing, even on level 1, that you have everything you need to decode the ultimate solution. You do need to at least see the hidden screen after level 4 or be really good with iPhone screenshots to take one in between levels, but this was why when I was stuck I just kept playing level 1. It was supposed to help me figure out the pattern, and did, eventually.
Day 3:
"If the game were called Nunnllotto, the Fosa would be a ruler."It's a jab in the ribs to let us know that every time we hit a Fosa we were being disciplined for having done something wrong, and therefore had to start at the beginning again, metaphorically getting the ruler to the knuckles. More importantly, this is to let us know that the Fosa on the solution screen is a 0, or
None.
Day 4:
"Solving Puzzllotto doesn't require rhythm or arcane gestures. Think twice, tap once."This was to lead people away from rumors that you might have to shake or tilt or otherwise contort their fingers into odd gestures. You didn't. At the time, when I was still attempting to analyze the order of things instead of the state of things, I took this to mean don't press the same spot twice in a row, and I actually solved level 1 avoiding double taps, even found most efficient method of flipping bits (requires a double tap). In the end, you only needed to tap out the
phone number.
Day 5:
"The lemurs are there to help you. The butterflies are there to guide you."I was confused by this at first since on the official Puzzllotto site, it says when describing Lemurs,
"Let them be your guide..." Now we're being told that the butterflies are the guides. I didn't use this hint too much, but in the end, both butterflies and lemurs in the playing field are on bits and the absence of either is an off bit. On the solution screen, lemurs are the on bits and the butterflies indicate which direction the binary encoded digits should be read (this is also why, I believe, that level 2 and level 4 flip horizontally and why the butterflies line up from right to left on these levels).
Day 6:
"The order of the puzzles in Puzzllotto has more to do with playability than solvability."This is when most people started to think, if they hadn't already, that just solving the levels doesn't mean anything. My guess is that most people started thinking that they needed to find the right solution on the levels or that they had to be played a certain number of times each. To me it told me to stop thinking about the order of the taps. I spent the next day or two just looking at the solution screen trying to figure it out because I figured all the play had been completed, eventually deciding to map the state of the whole board instead of the order of the taps.
Day 7:
"Finishing Puzzllotto is not the same as solving Puzzllotto." This is essentially the Day 1 hint over again, but it does reinforce the fact that if it seems like there's no play left after level 4, you're right. It's time to take what you learned beating level 1 and apply it, but it takes some work to see what you're learning in level 1.
Day 8:
"The male lemurs are the ones with the wrist glands. This has no relevance to the puzzle whatsoever." My guess here is that because of the press event prior to Puzzllotto's launch where it was announced that David Lanham's artwork was so
"so detailed that you can tell the difference between male and female lemurs" OR because some people were uncompressing the Puzzllotto.ipa looking at the Puzzllotto.app Contents and asking if there was significance to there being both a Lemur-scared-female.png and a Lemur-scared-male.png, United Lemur decided to help us quit wasting time looking for armpits on scared lemurs when Fosa was found. Personally, I found the presence of male or female lemurs to be random after only 15 minutes of wasted time... admittedly.
Day 8:
(Portland time) 3:19 PM Oct 30th from web...Dave Hayden posts on Twitter he has solved Puzzllotto,
"for reals." This means he just got off the phone and everyone else is basically out of luck. It would be about another 21 hours until I finally figured out the solution and made the phone call myself. The first time, the phone rang and rang with no answer. The second time I called it I got the recording.
