Floor puzzle in the fort (initial area)

[Pesky]

The whole of this is spoilers. If you don't want to know the result, look away now.

Took a look around the initial area where you emerge above ground and noticed something I had missed before one of the ornaments has a maze puzzle. Solve that puzzle and you get a floor puzzle nearby. The floor puzzle has four solutions, one of which is impossible. I found out the intended function of that floor puzzle, which is nothing to do with the correct solutions.

But when you get one of the correct solutions it makes a really loud noise. I wondered whether they actually did anything. Anyone know ?

PS: Also never noticed before. When, after solving the first two puzzles, you first emerge above ground, you can see in the far distance the top of the mountain. And the top of the mountain is also the very last thing you see on the great glass elevator ride.

[Catgirl Jessica]

That's just the sound that floor puzzles make when solved. Others do the same thing. Nobody has found any significance as to why they make that noise.

[Pesky]

Okay, that makes sense, I remember the same thing about the 'wooden' puzzles in the cave: make a big sound suggesting something important happened, but have no apparent result. Thanks for your reply.

[Ninsar]

The weird (and annoying?) thing about all five of those puzzles is that they make that "obviously"-did-something sound when you complete them, but they also all have multiple exit points to complete them---which, as I'm sure anyone who's played through the game can tell you, tends to be a clear indicator that it matters which you choose. The different exit choices in a puzzle typically do ... something. But, I haven't been able to figure out what any of these specific puzzles might do (either personally, or by searching online).

[Pesky]

Like the puzzles in the coloured marshes. Right. Except that having explored the area thoroughly I am now sure that those puzzles are not connected to anything.

This violates the way The Witness works. You get one area where you can clearly see how a mechanism works. You learn how to do a new puzzle-type there. Then later on you are presented with that same puzzle-type in a more complicated situation where you have to rely on what you learned previously. Which is just what those puzzles in the wood storage area look like.

I'm forced to say that the designers should have either left them out, or connected them to doors in the cave area.

[Ninsar]

Yeah, I'm left with the impression that they were going to do something, but that part got removed before release... perhaps.

[I bind you]

You have to fail this puzzle right to "solve" it.