Longest time to solve a puzzle?

[grillage]

I am around 8 horribly frustrating hours into one of the puzzles. Before this one I never took more than 2 hours and most within 30 minutes or so. What is the longest that any of you have taken to solve a particular puzzle?

[sekti]

I doubt I've taken longer than 2 hours for any of the puzzles and eight hours certainly seem excessive. After 30 minutes I would probably start doing a formal analysis, trying to systematically separate the possible from the impossible. Usually there is a few overall strategies or first steps that are conceivable and if you know that some of them definitely don't work, or that no solution can involve some particular intermediate configuration, then you can focus on what's left.

Abstract “hints” like this probably don't help you much... if it's a particular puzzle that you are stuck on, I suggest you tell us what it is and write down your thoughts on what a solution may and may not involve. Then we should be able to tell you if your reasoning is sound and give hints on what you may have missed.

[grillage]

I am clearly missing something obvious. I have been over and over the possible/impossible. I am waiting for the eureka moment. I won't tell you which puzzle for now because I want to solve it without help. Once I find the solution I will share.

[inappropriately_gendered_fungus]

I'm not sure how long one puzzle has taken me, but I couldn't get past The Great Tower for like 30 hours.

[grillage]

Done it. It was crater and the thing that got me was that I did not believe that it would let me out with a sausage on the fork. I really did not think that skewering in the end of the sausage was useful.

[Aexis Rai]

I love Crater for that. There is really no consequence of the mechanics that was left unused, end-spearing included. I do think at least one previous puzzle forced you to leave while still side-spearing something, can't remember which.

I know Cold Cliff had me for a few days, at least 5 hours thinking. Might have been harder than Cold Frustration. Rough View and Skeleton might also be in that category. And then there's several past where you are now.

[grillage]

Other than Crater, I have still not seen another puzzle that requires that tactic. The other puzzles that you mention have not slowed me down that much. Nothing like Crater anyway. Having said that, none of the puzzles where I am now are easy. I love this game.

[Tricky Joe]

I spent about three evenings on (late game level) The Decay. I just could not see the way through it, and thought I'd explored every possible move (which of course I hadn't). Eventually I went back to first principles, describing to myself what the problems were and what conditions would have to be true to solve them, and finally the penny dropped. It was by far the longest I spent on any one puzzle, although looking back at it, it wasn't the hardest (I was just blind to a crucial move).

Two more late game levels: I had the same crucial-move blindness on Ancient Dam (I spent a long time thinking it was impossible to even start it), and I know many people had it with The Backbone (although it was okay for me).

I definitely experienced the same issue as you and (I imagine) most people with Crater. It's a brilliant trick and I'm happy to have been stumped by it -- it was much more fun to realise that there was an exception to what I'd been conditioned to avoid than if I'd just seen the answer right away.

[grillage]

I just did Ancient Dam Took me more than two hours.

[Toper]

Originally posted by Aexis Rai:

I know Cold Cliff had me for a few days, at least 5 hours thinking.

Oh, thank goodness, I thought that was just me! I think I was stuck just as long. Then I figured it out in my head in bed and got up and solved it in about 40 seconds.

I finished the game today and I think no other level took as long.

[AxemJinx]

After a several-months-long hiatus from the game, I finally solved Cold Frustration today. Overall, it probably took around 4-6 hours of in-game time and several more hours outside the game just thinking of possible approaches. I partially blame experimenting with a new discovery that ended up being completely irrelevant to the solution, but hopefully that knowledge will come in handy later. I just didn't perceive the correct way to cross to the other side of the map for the longest time.

Special thanks to Pipe Push Paradise for, upon completing that game today, giving me the impulsive urge to try this puzzle once more. Now, on to the next set, finally! That was the last one in World 3 (?) for me.

[rory]

Having cleared the game just today, I'd say Crunchy Leaves was the hardest in the game for me, solely because it stumped me hard enough that I literally just quit playing the game for months afterwards. And then was the only puzzle in the entire game I had to look up any segment of (only a little bit of the start of the puzzle) to solve, unfortunately. All because it decided it didn't want to use the main mechanic of world 4 at all for some reason.

Aside from that one, the two biggest contenders IMO are The Backbone (hardest puzzle in the game for real, probably, all things considered) and Cold Frustration (possibly the most awkward solution of any puzzle in the game, despite being fairly early on). A few others mentioned here took me a while but those ones are the only ones I can recall that took me a real significant amount of time to solve.

[Aexis Rai]

Originally posted by Cyril:

I'd say Crunchy Leaves was the hardest in the game for me, solely ... because it decided it didn't want to use the main mechanic of world 4 at all for some reason.

One post on the subreddit here about that puzzle suggests that you can solve it with turning, but almost no one does, and no-turns seems intended.

[Emfour]

Originally posted by Aexis Rai:

Originally posted by Cyril:

I'd say Crunchy Leaves was the hardest in the game for me, solely ... because it decided it didn't want to use the main mechanic of world 4 at all for some reason.

One post on the subreddit here about that puzzle suggests that you can solve it with turning, but almost no one does, and no-turns seems intended.

I can confirm what is said in that post. I solved Crunchy Leaves using that 'alternate' method, without even thinking I could have just rode down a sausage into the grill. It's a bit tedious, but quite satisfying, and it does put W4's core mechanic to good use. I wonder if that was Stephen's initial intent?[/spoiler)

[-NN-]

I can't give a precise figure, but certainly multiple hours on occasion, mainly in world 3. In terms of game progression, world 3 was by far the most challenging world. The final world was a slog but none of it was particularly hard, just often extremely fiddly. I'm surprised to see Backbone be called the hardest level in the game though and get multiple mentions. Ancient Dam was tricky. Ultimately, I'd have preferred the game to be harder and actually combine more points of logic in the late game, rather than dropping tactics/mechanics and somewhat limiting them by area.

[ShnitzelKiller]

it took me 8 years to figure out Ancient Dam