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Sometimes I kinda wish I could just click and drag the walrus path to adjust it instead of having to redraw the whole thing when I want a specific path but the difficulty of drawing it with a mouse almost always makes me mess it up and/or my walruses move so I get a message about the start of the path no longer working.

I know what you mean

Also, g'morning!

Morning!

11:13am, Walrus 404 report seeing a cloud that looks like a bad omen.
11:19am, Walrus 404 report that they would like a snack.

Mrf. I am inordinately upset after a friend who has contributed plenty times to EW efforts claimed to be useless for EW as a whole after seeing just 2 symbols and recognizing that they were clearly for properties that friend knows of but nothing about. And every example I gave of how they can and HAVE helped, they just smacked away like it wasn't actually anything of value.

I have seen this happen many times in many years. It's always puzzling to me.

It often turns out that that person was going through something major IRL that had nothing to do with EW.

If I saw a cloud that looked like a bad omen, I'd kinda want a snack to make me feel better, too!

I know that I sometimes feel a little bummed that I'm unable to productively contribute more to certain things directly (especially solving symbols), but I also know the whole point of the event is teamwork, and that you put a lot into providing a variety of ways people with different knowledge, skills, and schedules can still contribute.

And yes, snackies are nice. Actually I'ma go get some of the watermelon I have in the fridge.

And yeah, that friend has also been going through a long string of issues. Things are currently looking up, at least, with a couple promising job leads.

I actually tried to do away with the riddles entirely one year so as to not make people feel left out if they didn't happen to follow particular IPs, but the community rebelled.

And as mentioned, I already knew I was more upset by the exchange that it actually made sense to be.

Nah, I have been in your shoes. And it can hurt to have a bid for connection rejected!

The riddles are a tricky matter. They're definitely a fun thing, and the pop culture ones can be great for helping folks who like the same thing have an excuse to engage with the thing together. And the puzzle ones that use the Library shift things, but the focus with more time and/or natural puzzle skill are going to appear to others to be solving it all by themselves, even to people who helped get to the answer but did not personally say the answer.

I think some of it might tie in to weird cultural quirks about what defines intelligence and its value, and some might be that the setup of the event makes the symbols the focal point. Solving the symbols is the key to progress; everything else is just in support of that. And a lot of western culture emphasizes the value of the person who appears to do the thing, especially the more they appear to do it alone, above the value of support.

Yup. I don't know how to solve for that any more than I have, really.

I imagine the collection symbols are an attempt to help combat that too, but those ones kind of feel different for some reason, at least to me.

I do notice that there is less discussion year over year in the topics; people make more and more guesses silently, without discussing their reasons for it, so it looks like more of a solo activity than ever.

And still LOADS of people who participate but won't set foot in any of the chats, and are frustrated that coordinating is hard.