the-witness
Near the end of The Witness, there are a series of puzzles wrapped around pillars.
I'm having trouble with the one composed of a 6×5 grid mostly covered with dots ⬣. I've already tried drawing it on paper, but still couldn't figure it out. I need some hints.
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--*--*--*--*--*--*--
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--*--*--*--* *--*--
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--*--*--* *--*--*--
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--*--* *--*--*--*--
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--O--O--O--*--*--*--
The piece of paper gives you a solution that you can enter into the hexagon puzzle below the Windmill.
This is completely optional.
I think the most spoiler-free reformulation naturally would be spectrograms of the sound records. Since, they allow you to hear with your eyes.
I made them and checked that you can see (on spectrograms) all the patterns, which I was able (hardly) to hear (in the sounds), that means the puzzles must be solvable with my spectrograms even if you hear nothing.
Note:
1. Many puzzles becaume trivial for me once I saw the spectrograms, but some still are hard (see note#2 below). I think this is perfectly normal, since exactly the same was true in the other parts of iland: most of the puzzles where just to make sure that you understood rules correctly, not to be a challenge. Also I think this was the case for a musician, who would hear sounds.
2. Even once you figure out all the rules correctly you still may need some trial and error to make sure if you see correctly, but these are minor (much much smaller than I had to try using my ears).
3. On the spectrograms below you will see time on horisontal axis, frequency on the vertical and the color shows intensity of the sound component.
1.1. S1P1 (set 1, puzzle 1)
1.2. S1P2
1.3. S1P3
1.4. S2P1
1.5. S2P2
1.6. S2P3
1.7. S2P4
1.8. S3P1
1.9. S3P2
1.10. S3P3
1.11. S3P4
1.12. S3P5
1.13. S3P6 (here I decided that 2 sets is not enough and made 4)
Best Answer
Sorry, no spoiler tags here because it doesn't work correctly with code blocks. So...
Spoiler warning! 3...
Spoiler warning! 2...
Spoiler warning! 1...
Since a dot requires a line passing through it, we can pick which dots have only two possible connections:
Extending the lines from those six dots leads to four more dots being connected:
Now, we can repeat the same idea and create two new corners based on the four dots we've just connected:
This leads to two dots that can only be connected horizontally:
Which leads to three more corners:
Almost there, only two dots and two free ends are left:
Which finally leads to the solution:
So... Drawing this on the computer, using characters, worked better for me than drawing on a piece of paper.