A Tale for Anna – How to Solve Puzzles

This is a bunch of hints for the puzzles in A Tale for Anna.

Puzzle Hints

All credit goes to godamnsteemsux!

Puzzles 1-5

The puzzles are in the order that you do them. Putting them in alphabetical order would not be very helpful seeing as how it doesn’t tell you the name of a puzzle during play; you have to go to the Minigames thing to see their names.

1. Trapdoor (ball in a maze):

Find the path by working backwards. Remember that since each move (except the last one) ends by hitting a wall, when you are tracing the path backwards, you are always going AWAY from a wall.

2. Spellbook (4×4 wraparound slider puzzle):

It only takes 10 moves to solve it from the starting position, whereas I NEVER figured out a way to swap 2 pieces and put everything else back the way it was. So it you find yourself with every piece where it belongs except 2, you might actually be better off clicking the reset button than trying to solve it from the current position.

Big hint: It’s obvious which pieces belong in the corners, so you might, say, start by moving each corner tile up or down until it’s in the row where it belongs.

3. Panoptic Potion (pipe connecting puzzle):

Down below there are two pieces of paper showing you how the pipes need to be arranged.

If the left half is giving you trouble, try intentionally swapping the two identical pieces (Especially if those pieces are not lit up. A piece that’s in the correct position will be lit up, and the two identical pieces are regarded as different by the game.).

4. Fishnet (rings and strings):

You can only move the topmost ring on a stick. Since there are 9 rings, and each stick can hold only 4, you can’t ever move any of the bottom-most rings.

Intuitively, the ring that belongs in the center of the center stick should be one that has lots of connections, and the corner rings should have few connections. Intuition is correct in this case.

Big hint: Although the solution has no strings crossing over, the rule is NOT that a string is red when it crosses another string. A string is white if both of its rings are in the correct positions, and red otherwise.

5. Hidden levers (blue, green, and red levers):

You don’t absolutely have to move all the pieces completely out of the way before you begin moving a lever. But it’s a very easy puzzle either way.

Puzzles 6-10

6. Dark Hollow (frogs and mosquitoes):

In order for there to be a point to moving mosquitoes out of the way, you’d have to be able to move at least 3 out of the way, and you can’t do that at the start. So move 2 frogs out of the way, then move 2 mosquitoes to take their starting places. Then move a third mosquito next to the first 2. Then you can start moving frogs to take the places of those first 3 mosquitoes.

7. Magic Bean (ball in a maze, swapping acorns on scales):

This is not hard at all, it’s just kinda klunky, the way that you have to swap acorns to rotate the maze, and how far it turns depends on how unbalanced the acorns are.

8. Dreamcatcher (web with moths and gems):

Not hard. It’s probably best to do the corners first.

9. Guiding Thread:

Well, of course, doing the obvious shortest path for one color may cut off another color completely. And of course, the only solution leaves no unused space.

10. Magic Gramophone:

Too easy.

Puzzles 11-15

11. Distant Planets:

Very easy. You can arrange the planets however you want as long as no two planets of the same color are in the same horizontal or vertical row. Having all 4 planets of the same color in a diagonal line IS allowed.

12. Magic Barometer (the thing with the 4 elements):

Very easy, especially if you’re like me and you wildly guess that all 4 columns need to have the elements in the same order.

13. Constellation Pap:

This is the easiest puzzle. Even counting the non-puzzles that come later. (Well, maybe don’t count Tail’s Cage.) Even counting the jigsaw puzzles. This puzzle doesn’t even allow you to screw up and lose progress. (Except, of course, by clicking the reset button.)

14. Star Castle:

Each button except the last one has a direction indicator showing you which way to go for the next button, and 1 to 3 dots telling you how far to go. Very easy by working backwards.

15. Bright Lantern (yellow, red, and green sliding gems):

The round red gem can get to its destination without help from the other gems, so it seems like you should do it last. The squarish green gem can get to its destination without moving the other 2 gems, so it seems like you should do it first. The pointy yellow gem absolutely needs help to get to the yellow square. There are two ways to help it, but they are NOT equally good.

Puzzles 16-20

16. King’s Portrait:

This puzzle is actually hard. It starts with a random arrangement, and I had trouble figuring out which pieces go where. I’m pretty sure that there is no sequence of moves that can swap two tiles and put everything else back where it was. So if you wind up with all tiles in their correct locations except for two of them, I’m pretty sure that means you’ve been given an unsolvable starting position. Maybe you should just skip this puzzle. This is the only puzzle that I skipped.

17. Jafar’s Cage (reflecting beams of light):

Most of the colors can route very simply, bouncing off only one mirror.

18. Tail’s Cage:

This isn’t really a puzzle; It’s just a mindless and tedious hunt for matching shapes. What advice am I gonna give you? “When a spinner covers three shapes that have already been matched, there’s no need to turn that spinner again”? “Try not to drool on yourself”? “Remember to breathe”?

19. Air Stones:

I started by putting the outermost stones in place, then worked my way inward.

20. Underwater Lyre:

This isn’t a puzzle; it’s just a sequence-guessing game. If you’re getting it right, seaweed thingies light up, but when you click a starfish out of order, the thingies go dark.