I’ve got 50 out of 50 points in the game – it seems like there’s no check to prevent a player from “discovering” the creeper vine over and over, nor from sleeping many times and getting points each time – and I am stuck.
My idea, which might be entirely wrong, is that I would like to blow up the cave with the monster. I’ve wheeled in the barrel of gasoline and opened the cap. Any attempt to bring a burning besom into the cave is met with a draught that extinguishes it. So I thought that I might drop it into the well instead, as that appears to connect with the cave, but the game rejects that as well.
If not for the above, I have no ideas at all about how to proceed. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
I was stuck on this, but your hint request actually got me on the right track – I think you almost had it but might have run into a guess the verb issue?
Try PUT BARREL IN WELL (I got hung up on trying to open the cap first).
I only wound up with 45 points, though I did get a good ending (I only slept twice). Wonder if I missed something, or there’s just scoring related weirdness, as you noted? I didn’t manage to do anything with Farmer Brown, though the ending text seemed to take care of that just fine…
Ah. I thought I had tried putting the barrel in the well, but perhaps not. I had also tried several times to pour the gas/empty the barrel in various locations, but the failure message led me to believe that it wasn’t possible anywhere. So I had actually put the barrel in the cave itself with the monster, and opened the cap, on the assumption that any open flame would then trigger it. However, if you have not dumped the barrel (or its contents) into the well, then the game won’t let you throw the flaming besom down, even if the barrel is already down there.
As for Brown, I was able to give him the meteor for 5 points.
Thanks, those were the missing points! Sure seems like that would be a bad idea, though…
And yeah, my first try also involved just dropping the barrel in the cave and opening the cap, which I’d thought was the right track since you get a customer response, whereas you can’t OPEN CAP above the well and I was trying to pour the gas down instead of just dropping the can in. But trial and error got me through.