Dark Heart of Uukrul: Angry Dialogue During Clash of Blades

This dragon was awesome. I'm sorry I had to kill him.

I tell you, I'm in bloody heaven. The Dark Heart of Uukrul gave me a crossword puzzle--a crossword puzzle!--in the middle of a CRPG! Have I told you I'm a crossword fanatic? I compete in the American Crossword Puzzle tournament most years, and I do several a day. I like to look up anything I got wrong, or stuck on, in Wikipedia. That way, I learn something eclectically new every day. Anyway, thanks for keeping it a secret. Not since Might & Magic gave me a Sodoku-like puzzle have I been so impressed with a dungeon level.

Walking through the crossword level.

I recognized what it was almost immediately. My map of the level looked like a crossword puzzle grid (albeit not a symmetrical one, and with weird numbering), and when I stepped in certain squares, I got clues. This is how it laid out crossword style:

Now, more than a crossword, this was a cryptic crossword, more the style you'll find in The Times of London than The New York Times. Cryptic crosswords are much harder. A regular crossword might cue an answer like "NOSTRIL" with "A breathing hole" or, if they wanted to be cute, "A hole in the head?" A cryptic crossword would cue it with something like "Passage beneath a bridge." Cryptics involve much more lateral thinking than regular crosswords.

Assuming you can't read them in the image, these were the clues in the crossword in the game. I'll explain the annotations in a second:

(1) Weak loud backward liar [double definition, addition, anagram]
(2) Within or inside itself [obvious]
(3) Sounds like bread is being made, want some? [double definition, homophone]
(4) mythical monsters become tiresome [double definition]
(5) The infinite ethereal plane contains many small bones [hidden word]
(6) Sing out, but keep your mouth closed [cryptic definition]
(7) the avenger is moved to carve two points where the dead lie [anagram, addition]
(8) A keen joint [anagram, but with no cluing word]
(9) the tree before and after the fire [cryptic definition]
(10) Conditions important when walking less than twelve inches [double definition]
(11) Gives up a short recess to get a word in [double definition, addition]
(12) covered with cold wet spikes [this one isn't a cryptic, though it's not a common word]

The first one I got was probably the easiest: 9-down. Think about it: "The tree before and after the fire." Here's a picture of Will Shortz while you solve it.

ASH, right? It's a type of tree and it's what you have after you've burned a log of it.

Whoever designed this was familiar with cryptic crosswords and knew what they were doing; they used a lot of the conventions of cryptics, including multiple different types of clues. Briefly, there are 8 different types of clues you find in typical cryptic crosswords:

1. Cryptic definitions: These are the easiest and most common, consisting of a single definition with a hidden twist. They are common in American crosswords, but usually cued with a question mark at the end to let you know the constructor is having some fun. In cryptics, they appear straight: "Texas flower" becomes RIO GRANDE once you realize that "flower" isn't a plant but something that flows.

2. Doubled definitions. Here, you have two definitions in the same clue that resolve to a single answer. "Seductress's alarm" becomes just SIREN and not something like SIREN'S SIREN.

3. Anagrams. These are tough to identify because you have to be on alert for the types of words that the constructor uses to alert you to the anagram; words like "change" or "alter" or something similar. "Lease renewed by painter" becomes EASEL. Sometimes the anagram is a simple reversal, in which case you might see a clue that contains some variant of "around" or "backwards." "Protege sent back to sketch" would be DRAW (i.e., from WARD).

4. Hidden words. Like anagrams, these depend on finding the right cue words, which are often something like "hidden" or "within." "Weapons found in a farm stand" resolves as ARMS.

5. Homonyms. You have to look for clues like "heard" and "said" for these. "Insects that run, in speech" has to be FLEAS.

6. Broken words. In these clues, the constructor gives a separate definition and then a combined definition as concisely as possible. QUESTION might be cued as something like "Pursuit (QUEST) of charged particle (ION) leaves us wondering."

7. Addition and subtraction. Here we add letters and bits of words to make new words, usually cued with "loses," "gains," "adds," and so forth. "Lights go on when Massachusetts college gains weight!" might be BU+LBS = BULBS.

8. Really obvious answers that trip you up because you're looking for something cryptic. "Simply stated" might be, in fact, STATED.

Now, if this doesn't sound complicated enough already, the constructor might combine types. "Man juggling pins takes a sharp left to get his roots" combines an anagram (cued by "juggling") and an addition (cued by "takes") to get TURNIPS.

Now, if you're shaking your head wondering what the hell I'm talking about, I understand. I need to say this: this is insane. I do these types of crosswords--much bigger ones--several times a week, and it still took me a while to puzzle through this one. If I had encountered this as a 16-year-old in 1989, with no Internet (and no handy grandmother), it would have infuriated me. It almost certainly would have been the end of the game (although if there are truly more than 6 hearts, and you don't need them all, I guess you could skip this area).

I did ultimately get them all, but some of them only because I'd filled in a few letters from other clues. It took me a couple of hours, and fortunately these were hours in which I had no power (and thus Internet access), so I couldn't have cheated even if I was tempted. I'm still a little confused about part of 7-across. Which ones can you get? Put your answers in the comments--and don't be lame and look them up somewhere.

Answers opened doors.

But the crossword wasn't the end of the puzzle on this level. Not by a long shot. At the end of each of the "words" on the map--both across and down--was a secret door, and the answers were the passcodes necessary to open the doors. Inside each secret area was an image of something like "four diamonds above three squares." There were 12 such images in all, all containing diamonds and squares, but in varying numbers and sometimes with squares above diamonds.

Messages elsewhere in this dungeon area had told me that the key to answering a code was to use the symbol mentioned first if the diamonds outnumbered squares and to use the symbol mentioned second if they did not. A second message indicated that I was to ignore ties, of which there were three. So in the end, I had a string of symbols that went diamond-square-diamond-diamond-diamond-square-square-diamond-square.

If I didn't want to do the puzzle, I could have tried all 512 possible combinations until getting it right.

Inputting this message into a control panel in the south of the dungeon got me access to a new area, where I encountered a dragon guarding one of the hearts and a valuable chalice. Here's the best part: all of this puzzling actually makes sense in-story. The dragon turned out to have a vice for intellectual puzzles, such that when Uukrul gave him one of the hearts to guard, he went rogue and reconfigured the dungeon area specifically as a puzzle for adventurers to solve. Isn't that cool? Most of the time, you encounter weird messages and odd puzzles that are nonsensical in terms of the story.

Note that he's breathing fire while talking to me. For dragons, there's no distinction between debate and combat.

The dragon was a tough combat, and I died a few times. I ultimately won through a combination of a spell called RESEN that negates magic (otherwise, the dragon casts something that stuns you every turn) and the priest's RALKOR prayer. It was enough to get my characters to Level 10. They now have four of the stone hearts.

Uh, that didn't look like "ice" he was breathing a minute ago.

At the northern tip of the diamond was another puzzle of sorts. One of the messages in the chronicles of the Circle of Mages had told me that:

The mirror within the diamond carries the promise of Eriosthe's future. Uukrul has cast a dark vision upon it which portends only doom. The fair image must be awakened, though I know not how.

Indeed, when I arrived at the location, I found a mirror with some "dark images":

 

The solution was an interesting one, and I only hit upon it because I had just been reminded by Canageek to read the manual thoroughly. As part of my reading, I made a list of spells in my notepad so I could better remember them. There was one priest prayer, KUURAOTH, that I couldn't figure out what it did for the life of me:

Fshofth, hark at the kauri branch, a bird dips:
Takes honey from the silvered flower, and stops
Troubled by a dark mirage, far in the forest
Your glass will shatter the foundations of the dream

I had written "huh?" in my notebook, but when I came to mirror I remembered the phrase "troubled by a dark mirage, far in the forest," and I gave it a try. Sure enough, it cleared up the image. Light shone through the clouds, the figure in gray disappeared, the tower turned to dust, and a panel opened beneath the mirror, rewarding me with a "kauri plaque." I don't know what it does for me, but Mara assures me that it's "significant."

Sagaris told me that the kauri plaque "bears a prophecy from Areth. He wished to be the ruler of Eriosthe and enter the throne room of Aldron's palace," so I suppose that's where it gets me. Incidentally, Sagaris continues to be a wise-ass while identifying equipment for me:

It turned out to be a plain leather cap that sold for 16 gold pieces. Jackass.

I'm not sure if the KUURAOTH prayer has any possible uses elsewhere in the game. There are a couple others like this--and one mage spell--that suggest they might exist solely to solve puzzles. I'll write more about the magic in an upcoming posting.

One other thing: this diamond area is absolutely obsessed with the shape and condition of tiles on the floor. I mean, the entire game has been, to some degree, but in this area, I could barely walk three steps without some new message about the tiles. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be reading anything into these descriptions. Perhaps there's some giant puzzle at the end that depends on my ability to faithfully recall tile descriptions.

This game is confusing me with The HGTV Addict.

The rest of the level had encounters with spiders and lizards that never cleared: if I left the room and re-entered, there they were again. They helped remind me that I was playing a CRPG and not reading the Sunday paper.

These guys sucked, too. Corroded my weapons and armor in melee combat. I learned to hit them with RALKOR from a distance.

Overall, the time spent in this diamond area has been some of the most exhilarating moments I've ever had in a CRPG; it's probably the best I've felt since the kobold battles in Pool of Radiance. It was a truly challenging puzzle that made me feel honestly rewarded for having finished it. This is turning out to be a pretty awesome game.