>>Everything you say here reinforces my feeling that this is a bug, not
>>a feature. Puzzles which can only be solved by dying are a bad thing,
>>imo. This sort of "instant death" puzzle always makes me think one
>>thing---too bad the author couldn't think of something more original.
>>I shouldn't have to die and then undo or restore in order to "find out
>>how the mechanism works."
>
>Not a bug. Coded it up on purpose I did.
I meant that figuratively, of course.
>As one other rec.arts.int-fiction poster wrote, I *like* games where I
>can die. I want to do things I might not try in real life (although
>those who know me know that that's not too many things :0).
But there's a difference between dying and dying arbitrarily. In this
particular case there's no logical connection between the arch and the
cells (it's certainly not obvious if it's there). This makes the
whole thing pretty arbitrary and not very interesting imo. Is there
some reason that the archway exists? To me, it seemed like it was put
there out of sheer "puzzleness." But then, most of the underworld in
JFW seems pretty arbitrary, so maybe that's the point :-).
chris