Quotes / Solve the Soup Cans

Video Games

Hmm... Looks like one of those combinatorial puzzles shoehorned in to slow down the game's pacing.

—Filemón upon encountering a series of switches that open a trophy cabinet, Mortadelo y Filemón: Balones y patadones

Webcomics

You answer the phone in a hard boiled manner. You explain to the woman gruffly that you'd love to help her out, sweetheart, but you're up to your neck in all this weird puzzle shit. You hang up.

— Problem Sleuth

Vriska: The puzzle sucks! All these puzzles suck. If I have to help you put one more dumb slab of boring rock into another stupid wall indentation I am going to put an indentation in my desk with my face.
Tavros: But it, uhh, it looks like a frog, and that's kind of fun.

— Homestuck

Umbrella became a successful company years ago, but it has since hit several problems with the business interior. The boss installed a suggestion box to see what problems need fixing. One employee said that he needed four crests, three keys and a jewel to get to the kitchen. The fax machine is also blocked off by sharks.

— Penny Arcade

Tycho: Nobody in this goddamn game will help me unless I do their fucking math homework. Look at this asshole. Hey! What are the chances of you lowering this bridge without any Da Vinci Code bullshit?
Bridge Operator: I haff tvelve metchsteek
Tycho: FUCK YOU!

— Penny Arcade

Web Animation

"Besides, everybody knows the way to save Senor Cardgage is to cut a bunch of motor sports magazines in half and pour gravy on a defibrillator."

— Strong Bad, Homestar Runner ("A Decemberween Mackerel")

Web Original

Code: Veronica has you find a player piano roll in a surgical torture dungeon to unlock the death camp's casino's slot machine to get an ant statue to activate a music box to trigger the secret bed-ladder to a carousel. You haven't gone aphasic, Capcom just randomly picked words from a dictionary instead of writing them.

— Cracked

David: At this point, Clark and Kara run across two symbols and two switches, and they realize (OF COURSE!) that they have to simultaneously shoot a bank shot at the two symbols on the pillars and then have them bounce off that and hit the switches to open a hidden door. Luckily, Ollie has two bows.
Chris: Why. On Earth. Would anyone make this the way to open this crazy door?
David: Because Orion was apparently Shigeru Miyamoto.

—Chris Sims and David Uzumeri on Smallville ("Prophecy")

During the 90's we had a glut of dull adventure games where solving the puzzles required diagnosing the mental illness of the game designer. Playing them was like watching a fifteen minute movie, ten seconds at a time. And you're not allowed to see the next fifteen seconds until you can guess the writer's favorite flavor of baby.

— Shamus Young, "Stolen Pixels"

Web Video

"I'm not usually one who's given to moan,
But I've had nothing but trouble with my new summer home
It seemed like a steal, with its lake view most spiffy,
But when I asked for the key, things began to turn iffy
'Cause they gave me three statues all covered in gore,
And said to arrange them beside the front door
To unlock the house, but I think I was scammed,
Because half of the doors still seem to be jammed"

— Yahtzee, House on the Hill

"Keys! Codes! Cards! Parts! Chips! Shit. This isn't Resident Evil with dinosaurs. It's Myst—with tank controls!"

—Stop Skeletons From Fighting on Dino Crisis

"Now, whoever created this box is just some filthy fuckin' degenerate. There are four locks on this box. The first key is on some creepy hole outta the wall with slime comin' out of it; the second key is this diarrhea toilet...You're in a padded cell and it's written with blood on the w—oh no. This is the guy. This is the guy who made CAPTCHA . After he was put in jail for makin' CAPTCHA."

—Dunkey plays Silent Hill 2

"That's what makes this game so great: it's free from all logic."

— The Angry Video Game Nerd on Friday the 13th (NES)

"Adventure game puzzles were always a joke; the sheer absurdity of their logic was the punchline."

—George Weidman on Broken Age

"So you've got this letter that you desperately want your son to read... So your plan is to type up a letter and then conceal it in some rusty tool box, bolting a tray over it, and then concealing the tool box in a disused supply closet in the back corner of Wyn Tech's network server room, and then counting on your son to for no real reason grow oddly-interested in the supply closet, so much so that he sneaks into your evil boss's office — the one who murdered you, by the way — and steal a key from him, going inside and then getting strangely interested in a tool box, searching that and finding your letter. Dad, have you ever heard of a safety deposit box?"

— Noah "Spoony One" Antwiler, Let's Play Phantasmagoria 2

"For a point-and-click, the puzzles are surprisingly logical... Uh, except for one part where I had to put shoes on a ladder. Which is actually the only time in the whole game where you combine two items from your inventory; I didn't even know this was a mechanic, let alone to fucking put SHOES ON A-"

—videogamedunkey on Broken Age, "Dunkey's Best of 2014"

Real Life

I submit that it is a "Logic Opera." The game is beautiful, things are happening... But every person you meet breaks into 'puzzle' the way that viking ladies tend to break into song, out of nowhere, and now you're riddling out some jackhole's insane chicken scratches.

— Penny Arcade, on Professor Layton, Professer Layton and the Perpetual Torment''

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