@Cheeseness I don't recall being stuck for a long time not having a slightest clue of what am I supposed to do in relation to telescope puzzle. Could be related to the fact that I likely had the telescope in my inventory when I encountered this puzzle, but I didn't have Jojo (nor even realized that I could pick him up in the first place) when I stumbled upon that pump.

@dos I can imagine that playing a role in shaping a player's impression of the puzzle and its role within the game, for sure!

@Cheeseness Also, the telescope puzzle kinda makes sense. Sure, it's adventure game logic, but putting a telescope into a designated place so its light beam uncovers a secret is a thing that you could imagine happening in a detective novel. Since I wasn't aware of the term "monkey wrench", the animation that happened after I finally looked the solution up made no sense to me - I didn't know what was going on, how did I end up there and what role the monkey had in it at all :D

@dos That's a bit of a stretch for me, but if you do decide that it's dependent on familiarity with detective fiction tropes, then it's right back in the same box as the monkey wrench puzzle so far as carrying cultural expectations goes.

@dos I wasn't familiar with the term either and didn't make the connection until years later. There are *so many* other weird and unexpected things that MI2 asks you to go along with that the animation for turning off the pump and the outcome of revealing a cave wasn't difficult for me to just go along with.

@Cheeseness Weird and unexpected is perfectly fine and actually the reason I love MI so much, but this one was more like "that must be some kind of a joke and I'm missing it".

And no, I'm not really talking about specific tropes. It's more like "ah, so that's how he hid the map!" vs. "uhm, ok, apparently that pump is monkey-operated for some reason???"

@Cheeseness And sure, there's a lot of other jokes I didn't get in those games because of lack of cultural frame of reference, but I think this was the only one that made me lose so much time :D

@dos I'm not saying it's a good or clever puzzle (or even funny), it's just hard for me to see as stand-out for its shortcomings within MI2 specifically.

Prior to running this poll, I hadn't talked with anybody who was unfamiliar with the term that felt strongly about it one way or the other. It's been interesting to discover some new perspectives!

@Cheeseness I do find it pretty funny now that I know the term, but I wish the game made sure that I know it first ;)

@dos Yeah, there's definitely room for cues and foreshadowing within the game that would make it more approachable to a larger range of players without sacrificing the "experiment and find out" type character of the puzzle.