I had some success in the wine cellar this evening, and raised my score from 34 to 48 points. That’s still a rank of “petty criminal”, but hey, working your way up through the ranks takes time!
Cycling to my work, I suddenly thought of the solution to one of the puzzles … probably. Now I’ll have to wait the entire day before I can try it out. This game, and especially playing it with a public vow in place that I won’t check a walkthrough or hints, is really reviving the old-school experience for me. 
I enjoy it immensely.
Still, I think it’s fair to say that Savoir-Faire, even though it claims to be an old-school puzzle romp, really isn’t one. It’s a new-school reinterpretation of an old-school puzzle romp. Sure, it has all the traditional trappings: an abandoned mansion, searching for treasures, locked doors, unwinnable states, a score and turn count, dozens of inventory items, a carrying limit, a hunger daemon, a light puzzle, something that looks suspiciously like a maze, and so on. But it only keeps what is fun, and twists what isn’t fun into something else. The hunger daemon (I don’t think this is a spoiler) turns out to be either unreal or so relaxed as to lack any bite. The maze isn’t really a maze. The inventory limit is circumvented by a container that can hold everything and that the protagonist manages automatically. You only get into an unwinnable state when you actively destroy things or otherwise do something that is clearly irreversible.
Plus, the games, though it looks difficult and cruel, actually goes out of its way to point you in the right direction. Almost every puzzle --maybe every puzzle – revolves around the use of the magic system, which is much more unified than that of the Enchanter trilogy. So you always know what kind of logic lies behind the game world (or at least you know what kind of logic you have to learn to comprehend). Or take the first puzzle, with the locked doors. It’s a real “gateway” puzzle: a puzzle set early in the game that restricts your movement until you have demonstrated an understanding of the game’s basic concepts. That is very new-school. Or take the books from the library, which serve as useful in-game hints to what were otherwise perhaps slightly too difficult puzzles.
Anyway, I’m loving it.
[rant=Speculation]My interpretation was that the two types of links are completely separate. With a normal link, changes in one object instantly apply to the other. With a reverse-link, the objects don’t actively affect each other at all, at least not in small changes of state like opening and closing. Rather, they passively become more alike. If you reverse-link a clay tablet to a sheet of paper, the paper becomes more clay-like and brittle while the tablet becomes more paper-like and flexible, both ending up somewhere between the two extremes. Or to use the example from the memory in the game, a man reverse-linking himself to a suit of armor would make his own skin harder and more durable and the armor softer and more pliable. He wouldn’t become truly impervious, but halfway between the properties of flesh and steel is still stronger than flesh alone.
Objects need to already be extremely similar for this to work, because every such change in their properties takes “magical energy” or whatever: altering a teacup and the Sun to some bizarre halfway-point between them would require enormous changes to them both, and Pierre doesn’t have the willpower to accomplish such a feat. Even minor changes in state are very difficult. Altering information with a link, like when you reverse-link two books or recipe cylinders together, seldom produces anything intelligible. Agrippa Postumus (in Damnaio Memoriae) is able to do such things because he has spent his life perfecting the art of reverse-linking texts; Augustus compliments him on it in the introduction.
It would be interesting to see what would happen if the properties of an object were changed significantly while it were reverse-linked. If I linked two metal statues together and heated one to melting, I would expect the other to deform as well. But what if this were a reverse-link? Would the property of “softness” then travel through the reverse-link and make the other malleable? Or are the properties set when the reverse-link is created, and fixed thereafter? Would the link just break because the objects were no longer sufficiently similar?
I don’t know if this is the canon explanation or not, it’s just what I came up with when first playing the game and trying to understand the system.[/rant]
I finally got some playtime in today and now am up to 25 points and have several directions I can take once I get back to it. It turned out I was being stymied by one rather obvious link: between the two mirrors and once I got past that a significant portion of the game opened up to me. Even though the geometry here is somewhat small, I’m finding Trizbort invaluable for mapping out certain relationships, specifically the colors of the doors in the cellar. Note, I’ve had to restart a couple times due to experimentation (and lately have been making a new save anytime I’m going to use up or destroy an inventory item.) But returning to my current state has never been a problem – once you know how, it takes 5 minutes to walk through the rooms gathering your stuff.
Draconis, the thing is, I don’t remember that both objects affected by that particular link are changed. Rather, one of them is. I never knew which one was going to be changed, and which property would tide over.
I’m now at 43 points and consulted your list Victor. It seems we’re on trajectories that are similar, but not exactly the same. I’ve annotated your list:
Tasks I’ve solved:
[spoiler]* Move the brick. (DONE – though I didn’t figure this out until just this evening.)
- Open the doors into the house. (DONE)
- Unlock the ‘hidden’ door. (Which door? The one behind the hangings?)
- Make light in the darkness. (DONE)
- Get the bauble. (DONE)
- Make the model universe reveal something. (DONE)
[/spoiler]
Tasks I think must be performed but that I haven’t solved yet:
[spoiler]* Cut the roses. (I have an idea, but to try it I have to solve another of these tasks first.) (DONE)
- Retrieve the tea recipe. (Surely this should be easy? I think I managed it the first time I played the game, but can’t remember how. Nope – loaded an old save just to check this, didn’t get it out then either.) (SAME)
- Get rid of the yellow hangings. (I have a detailed plan, but I think I have to perform another of these tasks first.) (SAME - I know what to do, just need something else first.)
- Open east door in the long salon. (No idea.) (SAME)
- Read the encrypted letter. (I have an idea, but need to solve another of these tasks first.) (SAME)
- Stop the bee from killing me. (No idea. Don’t seem to be able to link it to anything.) (SAME)
- Find olive oil and salt so I can cook something. (I managed to find out where the olive oil is, but I can’t get there.) (I have the salt, and I suspect where the olive oil is, but am not sure.)
- Open the cellar doors. (No idea how to manipulate them yet.) (I have all open except three, one of which I can get to both sides of.)
[/spoiler]
I’d also add, to anyone who is considering trying this, that the linking seems like it would be a little arbitrary and vague, but as implemented, it’s not. Every link that I’ve found has made sense; there are some links that are possible that have no (apparent) use, but no links (so far) that make you wonder why they’re possible at all.
Good to see we’re both progressing, Matt! Though of course I was hoping you’d have solved the Tea Recipe puzzle by now; that would have given me hope. 
And yes, that was the hidden door I referred to. I’m sure we both have the same multi-step plan for getting through it, but we first need to solve the most infuriating puzzle in the game!
I am currently at 52 points. New tasks I’ve solved:
[spoiler]* Cut the roses.
- Stop the bee from killing me.
- Get into Cheese Corner. (By opening one of the three cellar doors you haven’t unlocked yet. So far, probably my favourite puzzle in the game.)
- Find olive oil and salt.
[/spoiler]
New tasks I’ve added:
[spoiler]* Get the dancers to move.
- Remove water from the well?? (Or find some other way to use the [name of object withheld].)
- Open the remaining heavily-locked cellar door. (OK, I solved this literally 1 minute after writing this post. I’m now at 57 points. Well, 61, actually.)
[/spoiler]
Now I feel I’m just fighting the parser:
I'd like to make both the andouillettes and the lentil soup, but how do I split the sea-salt? I've tried using the spoon and the cup, but that doesn't work, and referring to "some sea-salt" or "half of sea-salt" doesn't work either.You can’t do both, I believe; they’re alternate solutions to the same problem.
OK, I apparently suck at spoiler tags. Luckily, that’s not very spoilery at all. Thanks for the reassuring comment, Sam!
I have solved the Tea Puzzle, though I’m not sure if my solution will preclude my ultimate success. We’ll see. It’s a very nice puzzle. I also am really enjoying the old-school feel of knocking my head against the wall for awhile, taking a break, getting inspiration, then turning back. It’s a nice pace.
I’ve an idea how to solve the salt problem, but having not gotten into a certain corner room yet, I have no need of it at present.
I’m at 55 points.
You have solved the tea puzzle! All right … so it is solvable then. I need to think about it more.
I solved almost every other puzzle I know about. Apart from the tea puzzle, just two things remain on my list:
[spoiler]* Open the east door in the long salon.
- Make the well accessible.
Obviously, that is assuming that the tea puzzle will allow me to get through another door, but I’m almost certain that it will.[/spoiler]
I’m currently at 68 points.
Success! Not with the whole game, but with a particularly interesting puzzle.
Major puzzle spoilers here:
The blue door puzzle. I tried scratching the white door with every possible implement I could think of. I tried washing it with water. I tried soaking the cloak in water and using the result to stain the door. I tried just scrubbing the door with the cloak. Finally I thought of light, so I tried putting the glass jar on the desk in Marie’s room. I tried hanging the cloak over the window (hoping the sunlight would filter blue through it.) I tried putting the jar in the dark box and putting the dark box in the jar. Imagine my sense of elation when I finally tried putting the bauble in the jar, and it just slipped right in. And that worked! What a great puzzle!
I’m now also at 68 points. I still have to:
[spoiler]- Figure out how to unlock the hidden door (a puzzle which you seem to have solved early and easily)
- Get more salt somehow (I have an idea here.)
- Empty the well
- Unlock the east door
- Make the dancers dance
- Translate the letter[/spoiler]
Ok, then we seem to be almost at the same spot except that
I need to get the tea recipe, and you need to do the unlocking, the dancers and the count’s letter.
I’d say that all of those three puzzles are relatively easy, but maybe you also think that about the tea recipe.
No, I wouldn’t classify the tea recipe as easy, just obvious in retrospect
And some ruminations, spoilery but not for you. (Not related to the tea puzzle.)
I just want to mention how subtly, but masterfully clued that light puzzle was. One detail: “a mirror inset inside the box (reflecting white light from the sunlight)”. Just the subtle mention of the color of the sunlight there was enough. Very very nice.
Yes, I completely agree with that! By the way, that was the puzzle to which I suddenly realised the solution while I was cycling to my work. It was so obviously correct that I didn’t even doubt it.
The puzzle you guys are talking about is definitely one I wished I had had a chance to figure out myself, somehow, but by that whole section I was relying completely on the walkthrough. It didn’t help that the very first move on that whole puzzle…
…closing a door, I disremember which but I think it was the door that led to the entrance of the cellar…
…caused a reaction I managed to totally and completely miss. I’d taken the first step on that chain of puzzles, but didn’t realise it for missing the effect.
Maybe it’s just as well. The puzzle you’re talking about is wonderful, I agree, but I really don’t know that I’d have been able to solve it.
OK, I have succeeded: 124/125 points. (I have no idea where the last point is.) Once I got past the hidden door, I was able to somewhat steamroll through the rest of the game, though there are still plenty of interesting, unique puzzles after that point. This was absolutely a 5-star experience, made all the better for not consulting walkthroughs. I really liked what you wrote earlier about how it takes old-school conventions and twists them into new-school implementations. The puzzles are all interesting, unique, clued, logical and often quite difficult. I’m looking forward to VV3
True to the genre, this is a Last Lousy Point that’s almost impossible to find.
Congratulations! You have beaten me.
The tea recipe puzzle is making me insane. Some of the more elaborate things I’ve tried:
[spoiler]* Reverse link the recipe with another recipe, hoping to use it. No luck; they all seem to be unusable.
- Defacing one of the existing recipes so I can reverse link the tea recipe with it, thus copying it. There doesn’t seem to be any syntax supporting this.
- First pouring olive oil in the hole, then water, hoping that the recipe would be moved upwards by the rising oil. No luck
- Stopping the hole either inside or outside, filling the whole basin, then removing the stop, hoping that the flow of water would carry the tea recipe out. No luck.
- Linking the tea recipe to another recipe, putting that in a closed bottle, then throwing the bottle in the well, hoping that it would float and somehow get the other recipe to float as well. It doesn’t float.
- Reverse linking the recipe to another recipe and throwing the other recipe into the well, or hitting it, or whatever. Nothing happens.
- Filling the basin with mud, hoping that mud would carry down the tea recipe. You can’t take the mud, however.
- Putting the salted pork in the hole, then adding water, hoping that it would swell up and somehow make something happen.
[/spoiler]
I guess I’m ready to ask for a small hint.