Thanks Betaveros for teaching me how to do spoilers better yay. Now you can just hover over the spoilered text to see it.1

After solving DP, I have realised I do have clear strengths as a puzzlehunter. A lot of the puzzles with little ahas and mechanics, I was getting fairly quickly. It’s just there were some usual blockers where I was struggling, mostly around learning about something new. So that’ll be a good place to keep working on myself! :D

I was mostly considering working on Hunt20, but decided I was a bit too spoiled/the hunt was slightly hard than my preference. So after consulting multiple wrap up links for “Hunts by Finish time”, I decided to slot in time for Darocaro just before Hunt20. So.. Here we are.

I also decided this time to at least “try” and be competitive, and time myself going through the hunt.2

Anyway, that’s that, let us begin with the hunt.

Darocaro Puzzles

World Wilde Web

This was a fairly easy puzzle, and I did it quite quickly.3 I don’t think the names at the bottom were even necessary. Most of my time was spent perfecting my Google Lens use and using MS Paint.4

You Dim Sum, you Eat Some!

Another easy puzzle. I guess that’s why they called it “Shorts”. Fairly quick aha, fairly quick everything else.5 The images in the puzzle page were super cute! I thought the entire “which of the two versions to use” felt fairly arbitary at times, but Nutrimatic bailed me out. After reading the solution, I realise that half of them were greyed out and I didn’t even notice. Sigh

A very early Arbitrary Break

Having discovered that the opening width of Darocaro was 15, I decided to… solve with an opening width of 15. Not a great idea, but I’ve decided to stick with it. Which means I spent the rest of the day making progress on a bunch of puzzles, but not really finishing them. Which… exciting.

…(Sleep Break) I seem to have lost steam by now, having worked on so many different puzzles, but I really don’t want to use up my hints. Let’s see how I pull myself out of this problemo. At least I’m getting myself the authentic “middling solver” experience, not blitzing through an easy hunt quickly enough.

Another thing I noticed was the “animation” (more like alternate drawings) for each of the puzzles on the puzzle page. It hella cute!

Fireflies

I know what to do, but the transcribing is going to be such a huge pain that I don’t want to. Plus, the font, while cute, is going to be super hard to read. So… Problem for future me!6

…(Sleep Break) Decided to finally get to this one. Transcribing was painful, as expected, but once the actual solving began, it was relatively nice. Almost relaxing even. I like having conditional formatting to assist me on my nonograms. They make life so much nicer.7 Took me some work, but finally did it. The extraction was also straightforward. It’s good to get my 3rd solve, even if it was 2 days later ;-;

Overall, nice puzzle. I like.

Must you Pile the Food Sky High

Solved both the Masyu and the Sudoku by hand. Usually I would go to a solver for this, but decided that goes against the spirit of 100%-ing a hunt. (That said, had I made my own solver, I’d not consider it against said spirit). A bit stuck on the extraction though, and have been feeling lazy to just “try things”. Oh look, a flashy different puzzle I could distract myself with….

…(Sleep Break) After solving fireflies, decided to come back and look at this again. Some transcription later, it was instant. It was a fairly easy extraction, just one I was running away from simply because I was not able to think “How does this not short circuit the Masyu”. Turns out, all the Masyu had to do was to give the ordering.

Nice puzzle, and one I enjoyed. I just wish I hadn’t shied away from hard work so quickly.8

Ocean Exploration

I will avoid this puzzle until I cannot. This is a fine puzzle and all (cute idea for sure), but fun fact… The sight of fishes makes me nauseuous.9 You could say this puzzle is custom built against me. So… I shall avoid it. Eventually I will come back to this puzzle, but let’s see.

…(Sleep Break) After 2-3 days of avoiding this puzzle, I finally went back to it. And the nausea hit me exactly as bad as I feared ;-; Took me a long long time and lots of breaks, but I did it. I solved the puzzle! Unironically one of the hardest* puzzles I might have had to solve, just from that alone. Not necessarily a fan of the answer. I kinda see what they’re doing with the answer (and it’s kinda cute), but I personally like my answer phrases to be actual words that mean things. Maybe I’m a purist. Hm

Familia Tunes

Not a fan of the singing personally, but it’s cute :p Actually all the puzzles I’ve seen so far are cute in some way or the other. Made steady progress with lots of break for sanity’s sake.

…(3 Sleep breaks) Yep, the puzzle was exactly as I expected, I just didn’t want to listen to the singing so avoided it for far far too long. Way longer than I expected. I did have way too much fun with the Singing submission10 though. Not my greatest work, but not too shabby either imo.11 I’m happy.

Having read the solution doc, I love going through the list of songs they collected! Link

We’ve had Arbitrary Break, But what about Second Arbitrary Break?

At this point I’ve been chugging away at these puzzles for 4 days, on and off (more off than on, but still) and only got to 6/15 of the feeders solved. Between some puzzles just kicking my ass, and just plain being dumb for others, at least I have gotten my expectations way down. I have no clue how these supersolvers do this in 2 hours flat, but someday I will reach there. Until then… Keep chugging along I guess.

Meta : Where’s Sporky

Transcribed it. Left it. I think this’ll be fairly straightforward, but that also means I need more answers. I wonder how the supersolvers (Read: Tiralmo) cracked it in so few meta unlocks. Maybe the answer-phrase is guessable? Either way, it does not pop out at me yet, so more answers it is.

…(3 Sleep breaks) At 6/16 solves, I look at this again, this time with more letters. Try to guess a few of the possibilities. Eventually succeed. Solved!

Meta : Easter Egg Expedition

It’s time to search for all the easter eggs. It’s a good going so far, but the letters are kinda all weird and German-y… Until I get locked on ID number 13 ;-; Link. Turns out, not even the internet knows what the easter egg is, because it’s nowhere when I search for it. Even tried to “backsolve” the URL, but got nothing after 20ish tries. About 30 minutes later, still stuck, so I guess time to just watch this movie on Disney+ and pray.

Update : Almost asked for a hint and realised what it was midway through typing it out. I don’t like the fact that it was So hard to google as well as hard to find exact term for (CANE messed with me for a good 5 minutes). But… time to move on…

After a couple more hiccups that I’m not happy about,12 I finally made it through.

Meta : Where’s Sporky 2

Finally opened this. Still at (6+2)/16 solves. Also know what to do. I think I’m stuck either guessing thematic answers, or going back to solve more puzzles.

Arbitrary Break the IIIrd

So at this point I’m 4 days in and finally getting my first feeling of “I solved something” after cracking 2/5 (?) metas. This is good progress, finally. I feel like I’m finally showing my grumbly old-man side with this hunt, and my full apologies for any hunt writers reading the same ;-; I know this is hard work and y’all put a lot of effort making a fancy clean puzzle hunt that also manages to be incredibly cute. And I actually appreciate that, despite how much grousing I do. That said, I did intend for this blog to be as much of my actual thoughts when solving as possible, and I am a grumpy man. So… I guess there will be more of that coming ;-;

Either way, we’re now strictly at a “midway point” of this hunt, and I have actually decent progress on pretty much all the puzzles. So looking forward to picking them up and giving them yet another shakedown tomorrow (or whenever).

Still Unsolved Puzzles

Charming but Cryptic

Oh yay another cryptic. I guess that puts an end to any plans I had of speeding through this hunt eh. Either way I decided to slowly trudge my way through this, and it’s actually going okay so far. Still don’t know what to do once I eventually fill out the grid though.13

I’m starting to see why crossword folks usually prefer checked letters so much. I am making progress, but it’s so slow ;-;

Transmission Mission

Made steady progress through the day, almost got the entire crossword grid and…. then stuck. I’m slowly making my way trying to identify chemical hormones by their symbols, but it’s time consuming. And I’m slowly trying to use photoshop to adjust the pipes to match things, and it’s…. not working. Moments like these, I truly hate this website for having this weird thing where you can zoom in or out, but the images remain the same size.

Math is Math

I started working on it, but I’m usually bad at these “Reach target number” type of puzzles. So I’ve been lost in the “combinatorial explosion” that results from these numbers. Maybe it’s time for me to make my own solver for this, just to make progress on it. Let’s see.

…(Sleep Break) Decided to not do this one manually. As it is, if I’m doing things manually, I’ll be bad, so might as well do it using good code. And by good code, I clearly mean stolen code. Thank you to github.com/Radcliffe for this 4 fours code that I then modified. Made a bunch of spreadsheetfu mixed with Python to organise and sort through the logical process, made a ton of good deductions…. And immediately hit a contradiction ;-; I really don’t want to start over on this, but I have to. Sigh. More automation it is.14

Helium Capacity

Making steady progress on this. Have the grid almost filled out. Both the ahas (Elements and UP) came naturally to me, so progress has been good. I sure do like the “Confirm midway subparts” of certain puzzles, it makes the puzzle all the more easier, which newer solvers would appreciate. I just have to make sure I don’t rely on it like a crutch or anything. Still yet to finish the grid, and no clue how the extraction would work, so…

…(Sleep Break) Two days later, transcribed this on a spreadsheet, and tried to hack at the last 2 clues. Got one, but even after Nutrimatic, still clueless (heh) on the last one. ;-;

Highway Petrol

Solved the sudoku, manually of course. It was fun. Got to the next aha (car names from the Piston cup) as well as MIDDLES from there pretty quickly. And then stuck! No clue where to go from there, except what the checker is telling me. This hunt will take a while, innit?

A heroine’s Journey

Started the puzzle, finished the “maze”, stuck on the next bit.

P.S. Have I told you how much I hate not being able to zoom out of images? It just messes with me, having images stay the same size and everything else shrink/grow.

Stargazing

Started the puzzle. Decided to go off to shinier puzzles midway. Will come back to this one, eventually.

…(Sleep Break) Took me 2 days and one extremely boring voice call to finally start working my way through this one. It’s a fair bit of busywork, so perfect for when I was feeling a bit brain-dead. I still don’t know what I need to do after though, so a bit stuck here. Let’s see.

When one door closes

After days of ignoring this one… Transcribed and started progress. I “think” (think being keyword) I know how to go about this. I just don’t see a direct way to. Maybe I’m missing something hm.

Recette du Success

I looked at this puzzle exactly once, tried one idea (Caesar shifting the words) and immediately gave up and went to other puzzles when that didn’t work. Not really doing great at this persistence thing, am I?

references.unsort()

  1. There obviously can be more improvements, but I do not currently know how. Suggestions welcome ty. ↩

  2. Any guesses how long “that” lasted? It was one hour. ↩

  3. Total time taken was 20 mins fwiw. I’m not winning any fastest puzzler awards with that, that much I can tell you. But I still count it as quick, okay!? ↩

  4. That’s mostly because I didn’t like the lack of line tool in their website drawing thingamajing.15: ↩

  5. Total time taken was 17 minutes. ↩

  6. I did warn you, this blog will have a lot of grumpiness. :3 ↩

  7. On related topics, I did find it curious that this was the only puzzle where the logic puzzle was not linked. Unlike the other three.16 ↩

  8. Quite fitting to do that on the “ants” puzzle heh. ↩

  9. I reckon it’s got something to do with the slimy scales and what not they have. ↩

  10. Link to My singing submission for Familia Tunes. Also a link to the transcription of the same. ↩

  11. By far my greatest singing “yet” comes from Mystery Hunt 2022. Link. I am super proud of it (and of Yosh for doing the writing for it.) ↩

  12. Hence proving the adage “You don’t like puzzles that you get stuck on”. Which as a saying I actually have a real problem with, ngl. But that’s for another time. ↩

  13. Remember that time when you and a teammate are both on a spreadsheet and they’re hovering over an important cell and you get ultra frustrated because you need them to move the cursor? Well, fun fact, you do not need teammates for that authentic experience! ;-; ↩

  14. I am dreading the day I finish this and look at the solution doc. Either I’ll be glad I didn’t try it the manual way, or I’ll feel silly for all of this extra work ↩

  15. Edit: There was indeed a line drawing tool. I is just blind. ↩

  16. Note to self: A sheet based (mono-colour) nonagram solver and/or a generic colour-nonogram solver would be an incredibly handy tool. ↩