Re: Announcing: Fyleet, Crobe, Sangraal

[Dave G <dgatewood@bigfoot.com>]

J R Partington wrote:
> An enchanted wobblefiend says "SUNBURN" to you in a meaningful
> fashion, and warns you to act on the information at once. You are then
> supposed to go to the Labyrinth of the Sacred Turnip and make the
> following moves: SOUTH, UP, NORTH, BACK, UP, RIGHT, NORTH, before you
> next save the game.

I can't see why saves would need to be restricted in this particular
example.  What the author of this puzzle would want to prevent is a
player finding a path through the maze *before* he learns the secret
code.  Once the player has the code, that problem has already been
avoided, and saving the game gives the player no unfair advantages
whatsoever.

A better workaround in this case is not to disallow saves, but to do as
you say below:

> Of course, SUNBURN won't work until you have been told the
> route (and next time you play the game it might be WELDERS).

Perhaps someone could come up with another example?  I'm not trying to
be argumentative: I'm sincerely curious if there is an example of a
puzzle where disallowing saves is truly necessary.  Any example I can
think of could be taken care of more elegantly by the "Spellbreaker
cubes" method (of which "SUNBURN won't work until you've been told that"
is a distant cousin).