angband puzzle

[fizzix]

In less than a month, one of my favorite events of the year, the 31st MIT mystery hunt will begin. This is a weekend long puzzle solving extravaganza with the catch that the winning team has to write the puzzles for the next year.

Anyway, 5 years ago, the hunt featured an Angband related puzzle that I thought I'd share with you.

enjoy! And then imagine solving it never having heard of Angband or maybe even roguelikes at all!

[Derakon]

Well, the "-more-" is a characteristic messaging system for roguelikes; figure that out and get a major listing of them, and then cross-reference against "iron prison" and you should find Angband. From there it's mostly a matter of rolling up a character with cheat_know and making some educated guesses.

[Timo Pietilä]

In less than a month, one of my favorite events of the year, the 31st MIT mystery hunt will begin. This is a weekend long puzzle solving extravaganza with the catch that the winning team has to write the puzzles for the next year.

Anyway, 5 years ago, the hunt featured an Angband related puzzle that I thought I'd share with you.

enjoy! And then imagine solving it never having heard of Angband or maybe even roguelikes at all!

I have to say that even with knowledge of Angband, that one would still be quite challenging without previous experience of such mysteries

And even with them, several of them are very tough to figure out:

"Phew! 'e still smells, don't 'e? Nasty bugger kept makin' me fall
in'ta all kinda o' holes, many wit' spikes n' suchlike at th' bottom.
'least, when 'e n' the cronies 'e call'd wasn't makin' me head feel
like it was gunna 'splode"

hmmm..."still smells" OK, that resolves that one. Smell, traps, brain smash. Only one that fits the description.