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Puzzling

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    $\begingroup$ Is there a possibility that the formatting is important? e.g. the section on X, E, O and I seem to look like a cow (or horse) head.... $\endgroup$
    – APrough
    Commented May 15, 2020 at 13:11
  • 7
    $\begingroup$ Maybe it's just me, but I found the flavour text a bit off-putting. It implies this is a puzzle taken out of context from the middle of a book, which might put people off if they feel there's potentially background information missing, or other puzzles in the book which build up to this one which might suggest a starting place. Making it clearer that this is an original puzzle might help it get more traction? $\endgroup$
    – Mohirl
    Commented Jun 15, 2020 at 11:31
  • 3
    $\begingroup$ @Mohirl Thanks for the suggestion. I'd honestly never imagined when I wrote the puzzle that my poor attempt to simulate a scanned textbook page would fool anyone, and I thought the flavourtext would be obviously so. Nevertheless, as several people appear to have been confused, I've added a clarification. $\endgroup$
    – Anon
    Commented Jun 15, 2020 at 12:29
  • 5
    $\begingroup$ To add some balance to the comments here, personally I thought it was fairly clear all along that this was an original puzzle just playing on the trope of people coming to SE for advice (for one thing the book title is entirely fictional and turns up no Google search results) - especially having experienced some of the OP's other recent puzzles first-hand I've now got a sense of your style! Not to say that I think anything less of people who were fooled by it (I don't), but I just felt somebody ought to say that your effort to add interesting flavour-in-disguise was appreciated here! :) $\endgroup$
    – Stiv
    Commented Jun 15, 2020 at 13:03
  • 8
    $\begingroup$ As a counter to melfnt, I'm now more interested in looking at it! I didn't look too deeply into the puzzle at first and thought the story was real (only having skimmed it). $\endgroup$
    – Deusovi ♦
    Commented Jun 15, 2020 at 17:42