The DA puzzles

Are you used to standing aside and letting other toons solve the DA puzzles because you don't know how to do it yourself? Well, in this guide I'll try to give a closer look at what you need to know to solve them yourself.

Inside every DA office you will find puzzles that need solved so you and your team can get through a locked door without having to battle holocogs. The holocogs will do you a lot of damage, if you are unlucky, and will waste valuable gags that you need to get through the entire office easily. Battling the holocogs will not give you any extra jury notices, although you will get credit for the gags used once you finish the office and they will count towards total amount of "defeat cogs" tasks (300 cogs, 100 lawbots etc.). You can't always rely on other toons to know how to solve the puzzles and find that you yourself are the only one available with the courage to try. There are 4 different puzzles that you might encounter: 3 in a row, Matching, Avoid the skulls and Skullfinder. The two first types are very easy to solve; if you only know what the goal is, you should never fail at these. Avoid the skulls and Skullfinder, however are much harder to solve. Even when you know what you are doing, you might find that you sometimes will trip the puzzle and have to face the red holocogs. 

So how do you get good at solving the puzzles? Well, a lot of toons go into an empty district and run into the A office solo to practice. In the A office you will always find 2 puzzles in the very beginning before having to engage into battle with any cogs. So you can go in and practice solving the puzzles and then teleport out again. Repeat this over and over again until you feel that you master the puzzles well enough to go in with a group. However, please take note that if you do trigger the puzzles during your practice runs - you can't avoid battling the holocogs so you might want to avoid going in using a toon that risk losing all level 7 gags if it goes sad!

There are three things to remember before starting to solve a puzzle:

1. There is no time limit, so you don't have to rush to solve the puzzle.
2. You can adjust your camera angle by pressing TAB on your keyboard until you find an angle you are comfortable with. Playing around with the angles can make things a lot easier when solving the puzzles.
3. When a puzzle is solved, all toons receive a +5 or +10 toonup, which can be a good help since you won't find many toonup barrels in a DA.

Now lets take a closer look at the different puzzles.

3 in a row

This puzzle is very easy to do and you should never fail once you understand the goal and had a few practices. The puzzle consists of green triangles, red X's and blue diamonds randomly placed on the floor. At the top of your screen you will see a row of red skulls in front of a button. Do not step on these skulls or you will trigger the holocogs! Your goal is to match the triangles, X's and diamonds in rows of 3 - vertically or horizontally in order for them to disappear of the board. Once all of them are matched, they will disappear along with the red skulls - and the button will automatically be pushed down opening one of the locks on the door leading forward into the DA.

To solve the puzzles you need to move the pieces around on the board. By stepping on a piece you select it. The piece you have selected will be attached to you, and move along with you, until you either match it by making a complete row of 3 X's, diamonds or triangles - or until you have dragged it to the bottom of the board and step outside of its perimeter. If you have one shape attached to you and can't match it up or don't want to draw it to the bottom you can also select to step on another piece which makes you drop the old piece and the new piece will instead move along with you.

You can work with other toons to move the pieces around, but if you are stuck solving the puzzle alone you can still solve it pretty fast if you take the time to look at the puzzle before starting to move the pieces around. One option is to move all the pieces to the bottom of the board and line them up that way. But if you examine the puzzle you might find that by using some logic and select which ones to move first you may find a quicker solution. In the picture above I decided to move the X at the top down first beside the other 2 X's then I could easily move one green triangle and finally one blue diamond.

There will always be one extra piece of each shape, but it will automatically disappear when you match the other pieces so don't worry about it.

Matching

This puzzle is also very easy to do and you should never fail at it once you understand how it works. As you step up to the board you will notice that it consists of red squares and green triangles. At the top of the screen you will see a row of red skulls guarding the button. As long as you don't step on the skulls you can't fail the puzzle so just watch your step and lets get started.

The object of the game is to turn all the pieces of the board into either red squares or green triangles. You do this by stepping on the pieces. Every time you step on a piece it changes so that a red square will become a green triangle and vice versa. You can change a piece's color as many times as you like - every time you step on it it will change. To solve a puzzle alone you might have to do some backtracking and change a piece's color several times. The first thing you should do before starting to move on the board is to make the choice of which of the two colors you want the board to turn into. The strategy for selecting which color to turn the board into can depend on two questions:

1. Is one color already dominant so that it would be easier to change everything else to this color too?
2. Would I have to do less backtracking if I select one color over the other?

And of course if you prefer you can just always change the puzzle into the same color no matter what the board looks like. Plenty of toons have a preference to make the entire board either green or red. But it might be quicker if you make a strategic decision.

If you're not alone in solving the puzzle, make sure the other toon is striving for the same goal as you. You don't want a situation where you're turning everything green while somebody else is turning everything red. That will just cost you extra time and some grumbling. Once all the pieces are the same color, the row of skulls will disappear and the button will automatically be pushed down.

Avoid the skulls

Now this puzzle is a lot trickier than the previous two and can be quite hard to not trigger. The game requires fast reflexes and the ability to think quick. 

As you walk up to the puzzle, you will notice that there is a constantly moving pattern on the floor. Your goal is to find a path to the button on the top of the screen and push it down to disable the puzzle and open the lock. The problem is that on the floor there are red skulls appearing seemingly random and if you step on a skull you trigger the holocogs. You don't want to rush in without a plan!

If you stand in front of the puzzle and watch the movement for a while, you will notice that there is a sequence to the pattern. Each piece of the floor will first be blank, then turn into a square and then into a skull. So if you watch the puzzle long enough you can see blank paths leading up to the button area. When you see one of these blank paths, you should hurry and run along it to reach the button. Don't hesitate too long when you see your chance, because as soon as your blank floor piece turns into a square you know that a skull is coming next. If you're not fast enough to run the entire way, you may have to think on your feet and change your intended direction on the run. Any bit of lag can cause your brilliant plan to fail so bear that in mind when you see other players triggering this puzzle. Don't cause a stink fest unless you are really sure it was done intentionally. This puzzle is really not very good to solve as a team. If more than one toon attempts to solve it at the same time, you risk running into each other and thereby triggering the puzzle accidentally. So, if somebody else is already there to solve it, it's best to just step aside and not interfere.

Skullfinder

Many toons consider this puzzle to be the hardest because it often requires a lot of thinking. And for many players that have never played Minesweeper (game included with Windows) it can be a complete mystery. To solve it, you have to fully understand how it works and not let your concentration slip. 

As you approach you will see a 7x7 board of squares on the floor. Under these squares, there are a total of 7 mines hiding and your goal is to open up the board enough so that you can find a clear patch leading up to the button. There will never be any mines hiding under any of the squares in the front row, so start the puzzle by running along the first row to open these up. 

Once you have cleared the first row, you will notice that the board opens up a bit more, revealing numbers on some of the squares. These numbers tell you how many mines that are bordering to the number. The mine can be in any direction from the numbered square - including diagonally.

Now to explain how the puzzle works, I'm going to take you through a game of Minesweeper in Windows. In Windows, on the easiest setting, the game consists of a board of 9x9 squares and has 10 mines. The game works a little different since instead of having a fully clear row, you always know that the first field you click will be free of mines. But I hope you will get the general idea as I try to lead you through how I think.

I click my first square and this is the board I now have to solve:
Now as I look on the board, I can already easily determine where some mines are.  I know that 2 mines have to be placed where the red arrows are pointing - and that the 2 squares by the yellow are are free of mines. I know this since there are only 2 squares bordering either of the 2's so they have to be there and since the 1's can never have more than one mine close to it and we know its diagonally up and down the other 2 squares by the yellow arrows has to be free.
I can also see that for the leftmost 2 in this triple series of 2's the only way there can be two mines is if they are side by side with each other. That means that I can confirm that the middle 2 is already bordering 2 mines. So if the 2 red arrows are already pointing to where the mines are - that means the square the yellow arrow is pointing to must be free of mines. If it wasn't, the middle 2 would be surrounded by 3 mines.
I know that there has to be a mine where the red arrow is pointing because there is only one square that the 1 on the left on the third row is bordering to. By knowing that - I can rule out the presence of any mines in the 3 leftmost bottom squares, since there can not be any mines diagonally or below the  first 1 on the second row.
There has to be mines in both these squares since there are only two available squares for the 2's to be referring to. Now lets see what we got so far. In this picture, the mines we know about are marked with a flag and all the squares we assume are empty are marked with a question mark.
In the Toontown Skullfinder, you can't mark squares so you'll have to remember for yourself where the mines are. Now lets clear things up a bit more here by clicking away all the question marks and see what we got.
Good I didn't accidentally hit any mines so now I have these last few pieces to figure out.
Hmm, there has to be a mine under the 1 since that is the only available square that is bordering. So that means the 2 on the second row already has 2 mines bordering it now. And since you can't have any more mines diagonally or below it without exceeding the limit I know the 3 rightmost squares on the bottom are safe.
I can see that there has to be a mine by the left 1 on the bottom row since nothing else is bordering it. And since there can't be another mine diagonally of the 1 on the top the square under the 3 has to be safe. Hmm that only leaves one place where the remaining mine for the 3 can be. It has to be diagonally to the right. Now lets see if the logic works by opening the last squares of the puzzle.
Yay puzzle solved! Now normally it will take a lot less than 115 seconds for the easy Minesweep (when not taking screenshots and stuff in the process), so playing the game in Windows is really good practice for the Skullfinder puzzle. Once you master the beginner level of Minesweep you can go on to intermediate and expert. If you manage to solve those, you should have no big problems with the DA Skullfinder.

Now most of the time you will be able to work yourself logically through the puzzle but there are situations where you are left with a guess and have a 50% chance of making the right choice. Before you make such a guess though, step away from the puzzle and make sure that you haven't missed any important clues somewhere. Since you don't have a really great top down view of the puzzle in DA's it can be easy to miss an obvious opening to work through logically.

Once you find a clear path allowing you to get to the button in Skullfinder, you can step on the button, disable the puzzle and open the door. Be very careful when moving around the puzzle though. It is very hard to move diagonally on the board since you risk triggering the puzzle and the slightest movement in the wrong direction can have you battling the holocogs. Some people are able to jump to diagonal spots by carefully positioning themselves in a corner and while trying to keep as centered as possible jump to a diagonal square. Personally, I've never been successful with this method and if you fail you are most likely to trigger the puzzle. Trying to jump over a square that has a mine on it will also inevitably trigger the holocogs. So be careful!

For those that want more advanced statistics on the minesweeper puzzle and common situations you can encounter I can recommend following this link: http://www.frankwester.net/winmine.html where you will find an overview of some common situations and the probability of which ones are most likely to win the game for you.

My hope is that you now feel that you are ready to try out these puzzles for yourself. So what are you waiting for? Head off to an A office and start practicing! And have fun!