(This question can’t be asked without spoiling a minor puzzle, so turn back now if you want zero spoilers.)
How is the minor puzzle of getting into the Closet room in the wine cellar area supposed to work? The walkthroughs indicate that the closet’s yellow door is connected to the brass door found in the Wine Cellar Antechamber. Does that mean that the yellow closet door is supposed to open when the brass entrance door is closed?
The way that I’m seeing it play out (for release 8 serial 040205), closing the brass door just unlocks the yellow door – the yellow door doesn’t open via magic in the same way as other linked doors. There doesn’t seem to be any way to know that the yellow door is unlocked, which is odd.
I don’t remember this being an obstacle when I played through the first time many years ago… is there a clue that I’m missing this time around, or did it behave differently before? Is there any place where earlier releases of the game can be found?
EDIT: Interestingly, I took a peek at the Club Floyd walkthrough for the game at AllThingsJacq.com - Interactive Fiction | ClubFloyd - July and August 2014 - Savoir-Faire by Emily Short to see how the group solved it. It’s not clear that they actively did – although they had a solution in mind, it wouldn’t have worked. In fact, further testing shows that in release 8:
It appears that it’s simply a matter of closing the brass door then opening it again to get the yellow door open.
I must have solved this accidentally while experimenting with doors the first time around. Is there even a hint anywhere in the game that this is the correct solution? (If not, that seems a bit unfair, which makes me think that it’s a minor bug since fairness of puzzles is one of the hallmarks of the game.)