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Old 01-17-2012, 02:40 PM   #8
eriktorbjorn
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Join Date: Nov 2005
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I think the one that stands out most clearly in my mind is the brick wall in The Lurking Horror, one of Infocom's old text adventures.

Spoiler:
At one point in the game, there was a passage in a basement, too narrow to bring some of the bulkier items through. (While that particular game mechanic always annoyed me, I'm prepared to forgive it in this case.) On the other side of the passage, there was a hatch locked with a padlock, leading down into a steam tunnel. In one direction, a pack of hungry rats was approaching. In the other direction, you'd find yourself at a brick wall. You could hear some sort of machinery on the other side. You had a crowbar, but the wall was reinforced and you could only remove two bricks. You could avoid the rats briefly by grabbing on to the cables along the ceiling, but you were not strong enough to do it for more than a few moves, and the rats would reach you eventually anyway.

The first "aha" moment came when I realized that the building I was in had an elevator, and that the machinery on the other side could very well be in the elevator shaft. The second came when I realized that it was possible to pry the elevator doors open (and then wedge them open) when the elevator was on a different floor. Sure enough, on the bottom of that shaft was the other side of the brick wall, and a length of chain.

From there, it was pretty straightforward, though it may sound convoluted when I describe it. You had to remove the bricks (from this side, there was no need to worry about the rats), fasten one end of the chain to the reinforcing rod using the padlock (which you might not even have realized that you could take with you). Then you would climb out of the shaft with the other end of the chain, attach it to the elevator (if it was at the floor just above; otherwise, it would be out of reach), close the elevator doors and finally send the elevator to a higher floor. The chain would tear out the reinforcing rod, along with most of the wall, allowing you to get through with the bulkier items, some of which you needed to deal with the rats.


It just struck me as such a wonderful example of a lateral thinking puzzle in that it was easy once you figured out what the puzzle actually was.
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