The Riddle for Iss makes no sense.

[Red Fox]

I just got the part after meeting Ulara where you go to find the names of the islands of the gods.
The clue for Iss makes no sense at all. I got the Cryptmaster to solve it for me, and the answer is RUMPUS, but how you get Rumpus from that line of confusion is beyond me. Even with his clue about finding one letter that "stands out" among each line, it makes absolutely zero sense.

[Krinkle]

when it gives you two words and says this but not that, that means, take every letter from the word on the not side, and make sure it's not there anymore on the yes side.
and if it says both then throw out any letter that isn't in both
and you'll notice it's too many letters just treat it like the combination locks you used to get into the royal tombs. I agree it is bad and even though i was correct, doing it correctly, that i had too many letters i thought i was doing it wrong and just got the answer while trying to find a hint.

[Red Fox]

Thanks! I'm annoyed I used Cryptmaster's help to solve it. I'm glad it had a logic to it and now I understand it. Thank you :D

[Spaghetto]

I honestly still don't understand how it works lol

[Red Fox]

Originally posted by Spaghetto:

I honestly still don't understand how it works lol

It's a kind of logic puzzle. You're supposed to compare the two words and use the words between them to figure out what the letter is. BUT NOT, AND, and NOT are like boolean logic terms here. Still, the most obscure puzzle out of the four.

[Nespadh]

It's too bad because it's a clever puzzle. I figured out how it worked for the first 3 letters, them I could not for the life of me figure out the rest. I tought I had the wrong idea, but then the cryptmaster tells me no that's exactly what I should do! Even knowing the answer I cannot figure out how I'm supossed to get the last three letters

[Panurge]

Big ol' bag of spoilers below:

The boisterous Island of Iss has:
(Boisterous here is a clue to the final word)

Shrubs but no bushes,
(The first letter is in "shrubs" but not in "bushes". That means it must be R.)

No homes but houses,
(The second letter is not in "homes" but is in "houses", so it must be U.)

Both mice and mouses.
(The third letter is in both "mice" and "mouses", so it must be either M or E.)

Cups but no cauldrons,
(The fourth letter is in "cups" but not "cauldrons". It is therefore P.)

Lunch but not dinner,
(The fifth letter is in "lunch" but not "dinner", so it could be L, U, C or H.)

Both saints and sinners.
(The sixth letter is in both "saints" and "sinners", so must be S, I or N.)

Once you have worked these out, you will see that the word is R U _ P _ _. You know that the third letter is either M or E and since no words start with RUEP you can be sure it's M. Now you have R U M P _ _. From looking at the possible letters for the last two spaces, you should hopefully now be able to guess the "boisterous" word!

[Red Fox]

Originally posted by Nespadh:

It's too bad because it's a clever puzzle. I figured out how it worked for the first 3 letters, them I could not for the life of me figure out the rest. I tought I had the wrong idea, but then the cryptmaster tells me no that's exactly what I should do! Even knowing the answer I cannot figure out how I'm supossed to get the last three letters

It's the fact that Crypt Master tells you you'll get one letter per line, but then you get 3 or so lines with multiple letters, that's what really threw me. I was helping my friend with it with hints today and she agreed it was very difficult.

Props for the dev popping in to say hi though. It's a clever puzzle for sure!

[Casstèque]

The crypmaster also solved it for me.
Since you could get multiple letter, per lines, I thought I had to put them back to back. and ended up with 8 letters.

That's when I went to reread the Cryptmaster advice and he straight up gave the answer.

[- ̗̀n o o k ̖́-]

That's interesting, I looked up my notes for that puzzle and I had
R
US
ME
P
LUCH
SIN
So I did figure out the bits, but then couldn't make sense of the end result! Also ended up using the Cryptmaster. Does he have a clue that hints that you should use one letter per line? Perhaps that's where it went sideways for me.

[Red Fox]

Originally posted by - ̗̀n o o k ̖́-:

That's interesting, I looked up my notes for that puzzle and I had
R
US
ME
P
LUCH
SIN
So I did figure out the bits, but then couldn't make sense of the end result! Also ended up using the Cryptmaster. Does he have a clue that hints that you should use one letter per line? Perhaps that's where it went sideways for me.

Cryptmaster tells you to get one letter per line in his clue I think. But he only says it once and there's no way to get him to repeat it. I thought I could get him to say it again by leaving and coming back but then he straight up solved it. It would be nice to type HINT and get him to say it again.

The key to the puzzle really is knowing it's a "boisterous" word. But "rumpus" is a very very obscure word. This game is great for flexing and stretching your vocabulary, and don't get me wrong - I do not want this puzzle to change. But very very few people will know the word "rumpus" unless they grew up with a "rumpus room" in their house. You could brute-force it though, with some basic knowledge of English you'll infer where the vowels should go and then just try combinations of them. It would reduce your guesses to about 10 or less.

[Nespadh]

Originally posted by Red Fox:

Originally posted by - ̗̀n o o k ̖́-:

That's interesting, I looked up my notes for that puzzle and I had
R
US
ME
P
LUCH
SIN
So I did figure out the bits, but then couldn't make sense of the end result! Also ended up using the Cryptmaster. Does he have a clue that hints that you should use one letter per line? Perhaps that's where it went sideways for me.

Cryptmaster tells you to get one letter per line in his clue I think. But he only says it once and there's no way to get him to repeat it. I thought I could get him to say it again by leaving and coming back but then he straight up solved it. It would be nice to type HINT and get him to say it again.

The key to the puzzle really is knowing it's a "boisterous" word. But "rumpus" is a very very obscure word. This game is great for flexing and stretching your vocabulary, and don't get me wrong - I do not want this puzzle to change. But very very few people will know the word "rumpus" unless they grew up with a "rumpus room" in their house. You could brute-force it though, with some basic knowledge of English you'll infer where the vowels should go and then just try combinations of them. It would reduce your guesses to about 10 or less.

I don't even know what Boisterous means, let alone Rumpus!

I agree the crux of the problem is that there is more than one answer per line. It just seemed so strange for a puzzle to be imperfect like that, that I assumed I must have missed something and did not even try to solve it with the letters I had.

Though I do understand that it must be very difficult to find words that have a very direct relation and only one letter of difference. I think what would really help is to find a way to communicate to the player that he will get more letters than he needs and that he might have to try to play with different letters.

[- ̗̀n o o k ̖́-]

Yes, if I got the clue that I'm to use one letter per line I might have solved it.

I'm seconding what Red Fox has said, it'd be super useful in a context like this to be able to type "HINT" or "HELP", and then the Cryptmaster would say the hint, and if I typed it again, he'd say the next one (similar to how NPCs cycle their lines when you keep typing "SECRET" or "GOSSIP").

I've had no trouble for the most part with vocabulary ("mellifluous" comes to mind, never heard that one before). In this puzzle, I thought "boisterous" probably means "fancy", and when Cryptmaster gave me the solution I was only a little bit puzzled, because I thought rumpus was a type of steak (rump steak is a thing, apparently I misremembered). For the first time in my life, I will use "oh I'm not a native English speaker" as a defense haha. Looking the words up, it makes a whole lot more sense.

[Naïvety]

Originally posted by Panurge:

Big ol' bag of spoilers below:

The boisterous Island of Iss has:
(Boisterous here is a clue to the final word)

Shrubs but no bushes,
(The first letter is in "shrubs" but not in "bushes". That means it must be R.)

No homes but houses,
(The second letter is not in "homes" but is in "houses", so it must be U.)

Both mice and mouses.
(The third letter is in both "mice" and "mouses", so it must be either M or E.)

Cups but no cauldrons,
(The fourth letter is in "cups" but not "cauldrons". It is therefore P.)

Lunch but not dinner,
(The fifth letter is in "lunch" but not "dinner", so it could be L, U, C or H.)

Both saints and sinners.
(The sixth letter is in both "saints" and "sinners", so must be S, I or N.)

Once you have worked these out, you will see that the word is R U _ P _ _. You know that the third letter is either M or E and since no words start with RUEP you can be sure it's M. Now you have R U M P _ _. From looking at the possible letters for the last two spaces, you should hopefully now be able to guess the "boisterous" word!

The issue here is you're assuming people will know to use only one letter when there are multiple available. There's no indication initially that the word is only 6 letters long, and the hints that tell you to only use one letter can be missed permanently. It makes sense that there's confusion. I personally didn't have an issue with it, but I do think it was probably the weakest essential puzzle in the game.

[captncookie]

As someone whose native language isn't english I wasn't able to find this word on my own. I had no idea what it was.

[paulbbg]

I had a look at the metrics for this area of the game and lots of people are struggling on the god scrolls, so I have heard your suggestions and I will take some steps to making these puzzles a bit more obvious with skull style word entry letters across the top, this will make the puzzle a bit more obvious to the words expected, and guessing them a bit easier. I will track the metrics from there and we can adjust based on it accordingly.

expect it in 1.034 update in a week or so.