The Enigmatic Temple

The Enigmatic Temple is the fourth puzzle in the Sacred Myths and Legends series of puzzles. Check out my previous entries (DaVinci's Secret, The Equation, and Legend of the King) if you'd like to see what my experience was with these other puzzles.

The Enigmatic Temple is not particularly visually appealing as far as this series of puzzles goes. It looks fairly simple with a roof that pivots slightly but it won't pivot all the way due to an obstruction. There are two pillars that block the removal of an "artifact" inside the temple, which appears to be a set of dice that are fused together. The goal is to unlock the puzzle and remove the dice.

I had high hopes for this puzzle, since I enjoyed the hidden mechanism puzzles (DaVinci's Secret and Legend of the King) quite a bit more than The Equation since the goal was more straightforward. Even if you don't understand the clues, at least you have the satisfaction of getting the thing open and finding a scroll. I suppose with The Equation you have the satisfaction of assembling the pieces within the square, but it leaves you wondering why.

I took the puzzle out of the box and to my surprise, it opened right away! At first, I thought that it really was that simple, but I later realized that the mechanism that keeps the top from rotating immediately was not engaged. This brings me to my biggest beef with this puzzle: it can become unlocked fairly easily by conditions one would expect while being manufactured or shipped and it stays in this unlocked position. A minor modification to the mechanism would prevent this from being an issue and make it a somewhat more challenging puzzle.

This was particularly irritating because I was hoping to get a bit of mechanical puzzling enjoyment out of this one before I had to deal with those damn clues again. Speaking of clues, now that I know how to solve The Enigmatic Temple, I can understand what one of Legend of the King's scroll clues was referring to. However I think it would be very unlikely for somebody to discover this meaning and be able to make use of it when trying to solve The Enigmatic Temple.

Now that I had the puzzle open, I took a look at the scroll. As usual, the clues were fairly obtuse. I was completely baffled by the 'password' clue that hints at a password that can be used to unlock a clue to the next puzzle on SacredMythsandLegends.com. However, I'm not very good at this type of word puzzle, so maybe you'll have better luck than I did. The clue pertaining to Pillars of Atlantis was similarly cryptic, but I hoped that it would make more sense when I gave Pillars of Atlantis a try.

Tomorrow, I'll write about my experience with Pillars of Atlantis.