#challenge puzzle

[10bmnews]

Optical Illusion: Can you tell who is the daughter of this woman? - Times of India

Brainteasers are an excellent method to test your intelligence and improve your mental acuity. They assess not just your IQ but also your capacity for critical thought, logical reasoning, and observation. You may demonstrate your ability to analyze circumstances properly and swiftly by solving brainteasers like these under time pressure.The task for today is a challenging puzzle that requires you…

[cuttle-creatures]

Compilation of tonight's fun.

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

Excellent choice, Councilor Medarda. A supreme challenge.

This one.

@mandaloreyan this gave me a HEART ATTACK when I saw your tags my god it was RIGHT THERE she could've just as easily chosen Viktor and what then. WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN

[rmovvla]

Idk, i love mr puzzles 🙄💥💥

[yangjeongin]

HYUNJIN | 『GIANT』 Music Video

[jovialoddity]

I have a headcanon of Professor Puzzles that every time you tell him your favorite movie he tells you a thousand and one reasons why it shouldn't be your favorite and explains why movie x is better

(and nobody can stand that)

Oh ABSOLUTELY. I think it’s canon that Puzzles can’t tell the difference between his own subjective opinion and objective fact, and he is NOT the type to sugarcoat what he says. So if somebody tells him they liked a movie he thinks was hot garbage he will straight up tell them their opinion is shit.

[meg-girumi]

Christmas/New Year’s week

Day 6: Cookie decorating

{Navigation post}

[cerealdawg]

art challenge!!! og photo vv

ALSO NO MARIO IS NOT PISSING GET OUT OF MY HEAADDDDD im too lazy to fix it pls

[princema-k]

THE LIVING MUSEUM: CHAPTER 1

(interactive puzzle at the bottom!)

As luck would have it, the detective had a case that had just been given to her by the Chief Constable Barton (talk about a high order!) I watched as she leafed through the folders on her desk before slipping out a small stack of papers and bringing them over to me. Clearing her throat, Detective Layton ran over the details…

“At approximately 2:00pm, a fire alarm in the Natural History Museum sounded. Around 5 minutes later, visitors in the museum reported that they witnessed several exhibits, and I quote, ‘come to life before their eyes.’ There were visitors who told officials that the suits of armour on display had started to move and raise their weapons, visitors who reported that paintings on the walls started to melt and blink, and visitors who said that the dinosaur skeleton exhibits had opened their mouths and moved their heads. But the most damning of all seemed to be the Tyrannosaurus rex exhibit, who not just moved but assumed a lunging stance with its full body, as well as somehow roared.”

“Right, that’s odd. And?”

“Well, since the officials were only able to question the visitors outside of the museum due to everyone having been evacuated because of the fire alarm, naturally they went inside to check the exhibits themselves.”

“And they found…?”

“Nothing. They did a whole sweep of the area, but they found nothing out of place. All exhibits were in their normal places, the paintings were just fine, and everything was untouched.”

“Wow…”

“I assume the reason that Barton held onto what information they had on it and handed it to me was due to the witnesses. Despite the fact that the Yard found no obvious signs of tampering, everyone swears up and down the walls that the museum had seemingly come to life at that moment.”

“...That is a proper mystery. And these files are all we have on the matter?”

“Well, in a sense, yes. These are all the files we have,” Detective Layton muses as she taps the bottom of the stack on the coffee table. Then, getting up, she drops the stack back in their folder. “...Which is why I was thinking of heading over to the museum myself to do a bit of personal investigation.”

“As expected of the great Professor Layton,” I say cheekily as I stand and follow her to the front door, grabbing my jacket off the hanger in the process. The detective sighs lightly as she places her hat on her head, pulling the brim over her eyes in mock disappointment. “Please, Ms. Altava. It's just Detective.”

Now lifting the brim, she smiles brightly as she grabs her umbrella.

“So, Ms. Altava… let’s go investigate this living museum with our own two eyes, shall we?”

And with that, our adventure into the peculiar museum begi-

“Ah, but before that, I have here the directions to the museum written for me by Barton, and it seems to be a puzzle of some sort. As you’re now my assistant, why don’t you give it a shot? Think of it as a warm-up of things to come.”

…Right. She’s Layton’s daughter, after all. How could I have forgotten? …And are we sure they're not really related by blood…?

PUZZLE 1: Where's The Museum?

Take your time and think about the answer, or Flora (and the puzzle master) will be very disappointed in you...!

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J (Need a hint?: 1 | 2 | 3)

(thanks to @justkillingthyme for beta reading, and several mutuals for puzzle testing!)

[messydoodlesyt]

Valentines Day SMG4 Ship Challenge Thing #1

(Yeah I need a better name for this)

Anyways first ship that was requested is Marware! Hope I did y’all justice 🫡

I’m still taking requests here if anyone’s interested in requesting SMG4 ships!

[exhausted-archivist]

I Think Solas Was Never Supposed to Succeed in Tearing Down the Veil

This has been sitting in my drafts for like.... weeks. And I'm kinda just chucking it out there because I want to talk about it but I also don't think there will ever be a time where this can be discussed without strong reactions. So, I'm just gonna treat this with half seriousness and be kinda general? I'm down to discuss but I'm not here to deal with the pro/con Veilguard sentiments. I just wanna talk about the game in a mostly analytical way.

I think Solas poses a lot of cool narrative restrictions, contradictions, and irritations. He is a wonderful antagonist – easy to be against what he's doing but also you can, at points, see where he's coming from. Can still think he's smart/dumb/irrational/ect, but still see the logic. Whether its flawed or not.

That said. The endgame for Dragon Age was likely never going to maintain the Veil coming down. Now let me explain before you boo me for being right. For legal reasons this is a joke.

I've seen people talking about how it would be nice to see what Thedas would have looked like with the veil down and lamenting how a lot of things happened off-screen even though in any scenario the destruction of Thedas would have still largely been off screen.

But I always just think about how the narrative was pretty heavy handed in how it has always been characterized as a bad thing, a sort of fail state at best. Wiping out all life on the continent at worse.

Which leads me to the conclusion:

Solas was likely never supposed to succeed in tearing down the veil and it was never depicted as a good thing if he succeeded.

Now I'm going to stick some stuff under the cut, because spoilers for datv, but we get at least a sliver of what they were looking at in terms of scope prior to the switch to multiplayer, and even what they were thinking of on the heels of Trespasser before datv became Joplin.

To clarify the general timeline for datv you have: Prior to official project start (roughly 2014-2015) -> Joplin (2015-2017) -> Morrison (2017-2021) -> Morrison Single-player (Veilguard) (2021-2024)

I also, and I cannot stress this enough, concept art is not cut content. None of what is shown should be considered cut content. They were exploring possibilities and most of these came in very early in pre-production. They were not carried past pre-production for many reasons we don't know and might not ever fully understand.

Anyways, I'mma start with something I think is missed by a lot of people:

Most (if not all) of Thedas as we know it wouldn't be there. Solas stressed that the tearing down of the veil would kill a lot - if not all people - in Thedas. There is no guarantee for elves or dwarves, and certainly not humans and Qunari/Vashoth. This is stressed heavily in Tevinter Nights when Charter talks to him. (Emphasis by me)

She shook her head helplessly. “Because you told the Inquisitor that you were going to destroy this world,” she said. “Did you expect us not to try to stop you?” He sighed. “It was a moment of weakness. I told myself that it was because you all deserved to know, to live a few years in peace before my ritual was complete. Before this world ended.” “Then perhaps we are not the only ones you lied to,” Charter said. “You do not have to do this.” His look pinned her. “I have no choice. What I am doing will save this world, and those like you—the elves who still remain—may even find it better, when it is done.” Charter considered lying, but then she thought of Tessa, with her quick smile and strong hands. “There are those I care for who would not.”

For reference of those who haven't read the comics, Tessa is Charter's human partner.

He stresses this both when he mentions it in Trespasser. He knows his path to do so ends in death, he wanted the world to be at some degree of peace before most of it died - its why he helps reveal the Dragon's Breath plot.

Okay, so what about datv? They could have changed their mind, a lot of stuff changed between what we were given in Trespasser (2015) and Tevinter Nights (2020).

Glad you asked!

So, what we know from the artbook is that in this post-Tresspasser/pre-Joplin era concept art, they explored the veil coming down in a different way than what we got final game. Matt Rhodes also posted the piece with the artbook caption that this was a pitch that involved Solas summoning a titan beneath Minrathous to tear down the veil. [Source]

An artist's pitch for a potential end-game. Solas has raised the titan upon which the city of Minrathous had been built, in order to use its strength to tear open the veil.

So not only did they explore Solas continuing to use titans for his purposes. Repeating a sin he has regrets for – which would have been such an interesting thing to talk about with Harding or even to throw back on how Solas still throws away his morals and values because he's barreling down the "ends justify the means" highway.

But this also says a lot about how much he does not care to about the consequences on the modern people. I also think it negates what growth he could possibly has and would be in conflict with the established fact that he does try to mitigate the damage of his ritual.

Because Titans are massive. So much so that Valta talks about it in her notes after joining with the Titan. So massive that a Warden on her calling gets lost in one. Summoning one to the surface would be cataclysmic at best. These beings are larger than mountains, its even suggested some are as large as entire mountain ranges both prior to and in datv. Not to mention Titans prior to datv are at least 14 miles below sea level (deep as the Mariana's trench) according to the da ttrpg and the map of the Descent dlc.

Summoning something that large from so deep, on a coastal area would cause so much wide spread damage... It is irredeemable. Its unjustifiable. Which would make any positive ending for Solas feel undeserved and forced upon you. So I get why this wouldn't have pushed forward. Its too loaded and irredeemable that even if someone wanted to pursue saving him from himself – you can't do that after something like this.

I still think its a cool concept that also really throws Solas' whole "I'm not a god" and "the Evanuris aren't gods" thing into the spotlight. Because the series has repeatedly asked us to consider what we consider to be a god, and if we're being told this isn't an act of a god... what in Thedas is? But that's a whole other post.

Joplin Era Art

Concept art shows they were already exploring a world state where at the end of the game, Solas mends the veil. It is not labeled as a fail state. [Source: The Art of Dragon Age The Veilguard]

Tranquilizing himself. Solas recloses the veil around himself and the blight.

This next one is considered a fail state.

This sequence was an early fail state. Solas succeeds in his ritual, life as Thedas knows it has come to an end, and the ancient elves return.

This sequence of boards shows Solas meditating and triggering an explosion (the iconic one to Dragon Age that has appeared in every game, and we see in Trespasser. The beam and then shockwave.) You see people standing around an animal and then when the shock wave they are on the ground dead. Then it cuts to a colour row of frames where a halla is grazing and the spirit bodies of the ancient elves appear on the horizon.

Solas succeeding in tearing down the veil was always a bad end. People were to die in mass quantities. Everyone would be gone. South falling to the blight? Small potatoes, as no one from the previous games exists anymore.

Another exploration of a world state successfully stopping Solas shows him making Ghilan'nain and then himself tranquil as he seals the Veil around himself and the blight.

Solas tranquilizes Ghilan'nain (above) and, as his last act, performs the same procedure on himself.

We see him tranquilizing an early concept form of Ghil, and in the second image we see the same sealing imagery of the veil as the second piece of concept art that had him closing the veil.

Defeated, Solas enters the Black City alone.

Even early on in Joplin, Solas was going to return to the Black City. Solavellan or not, his defeat seemed to always remove him from the waking world. Which is interesting to consider.

After that, the artbook – and any other concept art that has been shared – doesn't show any indication that the broad strokes of what was laid out in Joplin changed with Morrison. Neither the multiplayer nor reverting back to single player.

Solas doesn't succeed to bring down the veil and end game Solas always ends up beyond the veil.

I do wonder if the how changed at some point, but I find it interesting that we have no public indication that they carried the idea of Solas succeeding in any shape or form through production. Or that he doesn't mend the veil in end game.

Which lines up with what was telegraphed from Inquisition forward.

To me, Solas never felt like he was supposed to succeed because the narrative made it very overt that what he was doing was devastating. It felt that there was no coming back from it. Thedas would be inherently so different – and you'd have to commit to either it coming down in all world states or none at all because it would be such a divergent thing.

I think the veil coming down is a fascinating concept and definitely one to end a series so you have to start somewhere else – either so far in the future or in the past.

[starry-bi-sky]

writing about Bruce's speculations in chapter 5 of WTNS was the best part of his POV hands down. It meant I got to force everyone to listen to me infodump about my in-world lore and in some cases character studies, and they couldn't do anything but listen because it was vital to the chapter.

Danny isn't gonna go on an in-depth internal monologue about blood blossoms because he already knows what they are and what they do. So unless prompted, he's not gonna explain them in detail. He's also not gonna go into detail about what Vlad does or what his motivations are because he already knows Vlad and has a pretty good grasp on why he does shit. (although the blood blossoms did absolutely throw him for a loop)

BRUCE meanwhile doesn't know any of this stuff. So he's got to research Vlad and Blood Blossoms and all this stuff and then form his own conclusions and theories from that. It also makes an extra challenge for myself because i have to remember not to meta and keep in mind that he doesn't have the same knowledge on ghost stuff as Danny, and thus everything he knows is from a limited lens.

It's great, it's fantastic, it's my enrichment. Coming up with conclusions for Bruce to come to with the info he's got on hand is delightful. It's like im playing logic puzzles.

[art4lm]

These were requested from my instagram

thought of drawing one of markiplier’s characters but I decided to redraw his pfp instead 🤷‍♀️

[thehazelmist]

My brother drew Mr. Puzzles In the Super Paper Mario Artstyle!

Check out my brother's other art, It's pretty cool!

[rmovvla]

He was fairy 🧚‍♀️✨