Back in Control
Solution
This capstone is a culmination of the three puzzles in its round, reusing some of the mechanics from Temple of Tears, Black or White or Moon or Sun, and Paingram (or their precursors).
We start by solving the flower-like clues, labeled "Locations," which are given in alphabetical order by answer. The hexagonal shape suggests that they are pangrams, which helps confirm that the answers are all 7 letters. Using the mechanics from Pangrams, we know these letters form the letter bank for a longer phrase.
The phrases are actually locations in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, as clued by the Notes and the similarities to Temple of Tears. They are sorted alphabetically by location. Each of the location clues also contains a reference to a sun, moon, black circle, or white circle. This lets us correlate each one to a symbol used in Black or White or Moon or Sun.
| Pangram clue | Answer | Place (in TotK) | Notes (Location Clue) (symbol underlined) | Symbol |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Islands with Beginish and Tearaght | BLASKET | EAST AKKALA STABLE | In the distance, you see an establishment where your horse is resting, illuminated by the sunlight. You decide not to stop by, as you won’t be needing a horse for your next trek to the west. | ☀️ |
| Resembling horse fodder (hyph) | HAY-LIKE | LAKE HYLIA | You start with a relaxing swim under the moonlit sky. | 🌙 |
| Robert and Janet Vackar Stadium, formerly | H.E.B. PARK | HEBRA PEAK | You climb to the highest point of the snowy mountain. A round, black ore lies at an abandoned campsite. | ⚫ |
| York’s cathedral | MINSTER | RIST MINE | You descend to look for some Zonaite deposits, when all of the fallen spirits of monsters return to flesh under a scary red glow (i.e. blood moon)! | 🌙 |
| Ctesias’s lost text | PERSICA | CAPE CRESIA | You visit a cool-looking promontory, where you see a white ring drawn in the sand. | ◯ |
| Duke Volarian the Tyrant | REDFIST | DESERT RIFT | As the sun beats down, you head south and trudge through the sand, where you find a large fissure. Time to go back to where you started! | ☀️ |
Taking the relative locations on the TotK map and roughly transposing them onto the 6×6 grid, we can map the symbols onto the ?’s. We can now solve the grid using the mechanics in Black or White or Moon or Sun.
Locations on Tears of the Kingdom map
Once we have the path in the grid, we can use this to reorder the scrambled Notes in "chronological order" of events. We can click on the buttons in the control panel in this order, starting and ending at Lake Hylia (based on the text "You start..." and "Time to go back to where you started!"). This completes the puzzle upon submission.
Appendix: Logic Solve Path
We start with the white circle in the bottom right (Cape Cresia), which forces the path to go straight through.
Since the path must pass through all moons or suns in a room, the moon in the top right (Rist Mine) forces the path to turn left into the adjacent room. In addition, because we can’t re-enter any rooms, the path must turn left from the bottom moon.
We can now follow the path left through the sun, and all the way around through the black pearl, which forces the path straight down.
The loop must pass through a moon in the final remaining room, and there is only one way to do so while connecting it to the adjacent room. This completes our path.
