Pillars of Atlantis

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

I thought this puzzle looked kind of interesting, though I had absolutely no idea what was involved based on the picture. It consists of a number of pillars that are of three different heights. Some of the pillars have shapes drawn on them. These pillars are to be laid out on an elevated playing surface that is made out of a nice dark wood.

Usually I say what the goal of the puzzle is, but the vexing thing about this puzzle is that there is not really any clear indication of what the goal is! You are supposed to be able to piece it together from the clues, but I was only able to figure out one of the several rules that are supposed to govern how to lay out the pillars. Of course, if you don't know all the rules, then you can't even really begin to attempt the challenge of correctly laying out the pillars.

I reviewed the information available both in Pillars of Atlantis and The Enigmatic Temple, which has references to Atlantis in its hints, but I still couldn't figure out what the rest of the rules could be. Some fun this is! I even checked out the hints on SacredMythsAndLegends.com, but they were similarly cryptic and unhelpful.

Finally, I broke down and looked online for some hints and was able to find somebody who had posted the rules for laying out the pieces. I looked at the rules and I looked at the hints, and one of them made sense, but I have no idea how some of the rules can follow from the hints given. It was completely baffling to me at least.

Now that I had the goal in hand, I tried to arrange the pieces as described, which turned out to be quite easy. This made me a bit concerned that I didn't have all the rules, perhaps there was an additional restriction that I wasn't using. This is what made me a bit frustrated with this puzzle, you don't really know when you have it right, so you don't get much satisfaction from it.

I should mention that surprisingly the password for this one is not too challenging to discover. Like with The Equation the scroll with the hint to the password is contained in the box. Unfortunately, you don't get any information when you enter the correct password, just a congratulations message.

Considering the fact that this one kind of stumped me in some sense, I didn't spend very long on it. I got frustrated with it pretty quickly because of the issues I mentioned. I think this would probably be my least favorite of the series.

Tomorrow, the exciting conclusion with Carta Blanca, the last of the six puzzles that have been released so far!