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Alg Num Theory

Member

Registered: 2017-11-24

Posts: 693

Website

Unsolvable Master Detective game

This game: https://www.mathsisfun.com/games/master-detective.html.

Is there a glitch in the software?

If there is a glitch, please fix it. I’ve just wasted four hours of my morning trying to solve an unsolvable game.

Thanks.

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Me, or the ugly man, whatever (3,3,6)

phrontister

Real Member

From: The Land of Tomorrow

Registered: 2009-07-12

Posts: 4,877

Re: Unsolvable Master Detective game

Hi Alg Num Theory;

Sorry, but I rambled on in my three posts. I'll tidy things up into one post:

It appears that your puzzle has a glitch, because all constraints, other than the Labrador Retriever/Pyramid one that won't solve, are met...and the only possibilities I can think of whereby the puzzle could be sound are these two highly unlikely ones:

   1. A clue was moved from view.
   2. A given pre-solved square was converted into an unsolved state...which can be done by a single mouse click (either left, right or forward) while hovering the mouse over it (easy to do unknowingly). BUT, 'unsolving' a pre-solved square doesn't restore any of its pre-deleted matching elements, and so you'd have had to click on at least one of those to create multiple occurrences of that element.
      (a) In this scenario, and provided your other solutions are correct, a pre-solved dog, being the St Bernard or the Vizsla in either the first or third square in the dog row, leads to a solution.

But maybe the puzzle is sound, and the reason for the apparent glitch escapes me.

I'd be happy to check the puzzle by playing it from scratch...I just need you to tell me the pre-solved square/s in the original puzzle (the puzzle doesn't seem to be solvable without there being at least one of those).

Btw, I always take a screenshot before starting a game in case I need to restart.

Last edited by phrontister (2019-04-04 13:37:07)

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