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.

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.

I'd say that it's also one thing if a game in general has out there logic and being thrown curveballs. I think that's why KQ5 is so infamous for the "moon logic" among those games - it just kind of suddenly throws these solutions from nowhere in particular. I don't think there's any indication that the cheese would work to revive the wand, though it's been years since I've played it so maybe it's thrown in somewhere obvious. Either way, the issue is that if you miss the cheese there's no way of knowing that you *need* that item. If they had at least thrown in that you need mold or something, then you'd probably realize that you need to explore that dark dungeon more.

Ha - I notice I removed part of the sentence (to cut a rope) that makes the lit torch seem like an odd choice. I suppose this also happens in AG design - the developers have a solution in mind, something gets lost in translation and you end up needing to read the minds of people who aren't there.

Our genre is very vulnerable to solipsistic design. I think the current media environment has contributed to the decline of moon logic, for better and for worse. Back in the day, developers were in their own bubble. Beta-testing generally happened within their circle and most of the feedback came from reviewers, who were trained to see puzzles in a mechanical fashion. The internet put fans and developers in direct contact with each other, it gave rise to video essays and other forms of reflecting on game design. It changed expectations and developed insights into good and bad puzzle design.

I say good and bad; some of these insights can make designers hesitant to ask players to think outside the box, which to me is part of the appeal.

Good point about the lack of indication - KQ5 has some dead ends and relies on players doing things that don't seem apparent until it's too late - if at all. I love the game, though.

Yeah, I think as you said - having an isolated team back in the day probably did lead to more "moon logic" because of lack of outside feedback. It's like when you have a group of friends and you start developing internal jokes that make zero sense (and aren't really funny) to someone outside said group. That's why I tend to think there probably was some logic with even the "cheese revives wand" solution, even if it's something like someone on the team read something about mold and cheese tends to get mold... but then they kind of forgot to explain the logic to the players.

KQ5 does occupy an interesting space in that it's the first of the "new" point-and-click games for Sierra, so I tend to cut it a lot of slack that I probably wouldn't for later games. Some puzzles in that game you actually have multiple solutions to (ie you can pay with the golden needle OR the coin), it's just that there's A LOT of non-obvious soft locks. If the "pie in the face" was one solution to the snowman puzzle it wouldn't be so bad that you could eat it. Surprisingly, I watched Turian Shepards playthrough of KQ1 and realised that that game was a lot better designed than I originally remembered, as in there are multiple solutions and you can get through the game quite easily just with less points.

Secret Files: Tunguska has a few terrible moon logic puzzles. Here's my "favorite" one (also posted in a similar thread at reddit): The protagonist is in a bar and needs a lemon. Of course there are no lemons lying around. But he knows that a truck loaded with vegetables and fruits for the local market will pass by the bar once a day. So he steps outside, covers a Dangerous Curve Ahead roadsign with a piece of cloth and goes back to the bar. Presto! The sound of screeching brakes! Our "hero" announces he's going to check on the driver, exits the bar, notices that a crate with vegetables and a LEMON has fallen off the invisible truck, and has the bloody nerve to say: I'm in luck. The truck driver appears to have made the turn. I would never have forgiven myself if something had happened to him.

There is so much wrong with this puzzle, I wouldn't know where to start.

Karlok, there is so much wrong with that entire game that if I started, I wouldn't know how to stop. 
The pixel hunting, the moon logic, the aforementioned disgusting disregard by the protagonists for everyone and everything in the world that gets in their way of acquiring something so trivial as a lemon, the piss-poor dialogue and beggaring-belief scenarios, the abject sexism and gender objectification (both ways). Okay, I'm going to stop here.
The *only* thing that (barely, just barely) redeems Secret Files: Tunguska is that it feels like a genuine sweeping adventure in a way that very few games do.