Thoughts on Labyrinth

Somehow I managed to forget about this one...didn't play it during
last year's Comp because of all the horror stories I had heard about
its esoteric logic puzzles and unrelenting difficulty. Having been
reminded of it recently, I picked it up last night and gave it a
whirl.

Not only did I quite enjoy the game, but I found it much easier than I
was expecting. I only needed to consult the hints once, and that was
because I didn't recognize that "Tertius" was a magic word to be
spoken. I even managed to get the Last Lousy Point without help, and
all this is worth mentioning because I am the type to start pulling
out the hints and walkthroughs when I get frustrated (and I frustrate
easily). The Nim game was simple once I recognized certain "magic
numbers" that inevitably spelled my doom and learned how to use them
against my opponent. I've become an old hand at substitution ciphers,
and my experience with the one in Christminster made matters much
easier. The logic puzzle was tedious - there are no two ways about it
- but once I figured out which statements were undeniably true or
false (you can verify three right from the get-go and make some very
useful deductions based on what they say), testing different
combinations of statements led me straight to the magic number. As for
the maze itself, at first I was navigating chiefly by trial and error,
but eventually I learned a particular pattern of moves that helped me
rotate whichever door I wanted into position. I also discovered that I
could "map" the labyrinth simply by listing the rooms and all their
possible exits (with only eight rooms and three exits per room, it
wasn't hard). The rest was elementary: waking Melanie happened quite
by accident, and solving the cipher's riddle once I was certain I had
accomplished everything else was trivial.

After everything I had heard claiming the game to be just about
impenetrable...I'm actually surprised at _myself_. I've never
considered myself terribly good at IF, but if I succeeded where most
have met with frustration...O_O;