I-I-I... I don't know why I wanted to start this, but here we are.

Puzzles in adventure games that just doesn't make sense unless you exhaust your inventory. Or something. Illogical solutions.

The first one that comes to mind is Lost in Time, the puzzle where you're stranded on a rocky coast and are looking for a way to escape. The solution is to search a fishing shack and get the following: a bottle of nuoc mam (Vietnamese fish sauce), some bread, and a nail. Then do this:

Use the nail on a chandelier in the shack to unscrew it (why would a nail unscrew something?)
Pour the fish sauce on the bread
Go outside and throw the bread onto the roof of the shack
A seagull will swoop down to get the bread, knocking a buoy off the roof (which you didn't even know was up there)
Cut the rope off the buoy
Tie the rope to the chandelier to make a grappling hook
Throw the grappling hook up on top of the cliff and climb up

I solved it without a walkthrough only because there are just 2 screens (inside the shack and outside the shack) but it was so frustratingly stupid. To this day that puzzle pisses me off. Lost in Time was fun but it had a LOT of moon logic / guess the developer's mind / convoluted for the sake of making the game last longer puzzles.

I tend to like moon logic when the game provides at least some signs and hints towards the solution, however improbable.

Let me think, though...

My absolute #1 favourite moon logic moment is the pie defense in King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder! I'm not even mad at it.

Another moon logic moment: the cuckoo clock puzzle in The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery. The clock shop wasn't accessible up to this point and if I recall correctly, there's no way of finding this out save for trying it at random. The way you use it is not very apparent - and it's a small miracle when it does what you need to achieve.

I think the worse AG puzzle is one that require a specific course of action when others seem available. You need one item (a pair of scissors), while you're carrying one or two that have very similar properties (a lit torch and a sword). Things that would suffice in the real world/AG logic of the game. There are games that are more clever about this than others.. but that's probably for a different thread.

Can German users say if the Deponia puzzles make more sense in German? I remember smashing a lot in those games.

Like, are there plenty "monkey wrench" puzzles that don't make sense to non-German speakers?

I tend to like moon logic when the game provides at least some signs and hints towards the solution, however improbable.

Let me think, though...

My absolute #1 favourite moon logic moment is the pie defense in King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder! I'm not even mad at it.

Another moon logic moment: the cuckoo clock puzzle in The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery. The clock shop wasn't accessible up to this point and if I recall correctly, there's no way of finding this out save for trying it at random. The way you use it is not very apparent - and it's a small miracle when it does what you need to achieve.

I think the worse AG puzzle is one that require a specific course of action when others seem available. You need one item (a pair of scissors), while you're carrying one or two that have very similar properties (a lit torch and a sword). Things that would suffice in the real world/AG logic of the game. There are games that are more clever about this than others.. but that's probably for a different thread.

Oh yeah, those are great examples! The cuckoo clock one always bothered me because the full motion video just made it seem so weird. In an animated game, maybe it would have worked, but seeing a real human pull a cuckoo clock out of his jacket looked pretty dumb. In KQ5 the "honeycomb on the ground" puzzle was pretty bad too.