#117 asks you to paint a cube with three colors - red, blue, and yellow - in "as many possible ways as you can without repeating patterns such that no two faces that touch use the same color." The answer is that there's only one way to do this, which requires two opposite faces to be one color (think the top and bottom of the cube) and the remaining four faces to alternate the other two colors.
But...we're given primary colors. Which makes me immediately think that you could always mix them and make other colors easily (orange, green, and purple at the least), which would increase the number. I didn't try to guess the number of combinations using mixing, but I did consider it heavily before I just put in the correct answer of 1. Since the only caveat the puzzles gives is "don't leave anything blank," I could see someone struggling with this.
It doesn't say anything about what you can/cannot do with the paint, nor does it give you any guidelines on how much paint you have. I guess if it did give you restrictions, it would be a little more clear. No big deal I suppose, but it's still something to consider. Would have been nice if they'd given us a guideline about no mixing OR gave us something other than primary colors.
Re: Recap - I agree there should be both a skip option you can set somewhere AND a button should allow you to skip. I like the recaps, but one of the big rules of all gaming should be that you can skip such things if you want.
Re: Residents of Mystere - So we learn that they are robots maintained by Bruno (I think that's his name), who is doing it to fulfill the dying wish of the late baron Reinhold. St. Mystere is basically one gigantic gift to his daughter such that she can grow up in a living environment that is very loving toward her, and anyone who can solve all the puzzles becomes her guardian.
But this raises some interesting things to think about. For example, it doesn't look like Bruno has any apprentice. So what happens when he dies? I guess the robots eventually keel over and everyone treats them as dead? And if so, do they bury them? Obvoiusly the idea of a grave has to be in their memories (given the grave of ...Violet? The late mom), and I imagine that the robots have AI sophisticated enough to learn/adapt. Since Bruno always kidnaps them, I wonder what they'd do when he's not around.
Also, does Flora interact with them much? If she does, then wouldn't they wonder why only she ages/grows older? I can't imagine the robots being so advanced that they age, so wouldn't one of them notice this? Even if they didn't interact with her, would they come to that conclusion on their own? This invites a rather interesting question of whether or not one of them might come to understand what they truly are.
Did anyone else get a small chuckle out of Luke's apparent hatred of any women hitting on Layton? I found this amusing. I guess in the world of the game, no one really questions a grown man running around with a young boy (I'd understand immediately if Luke were an orphan, but I guess there's no real reason for the game to go into the backstory of the two characters outside of the bare minimum, even with Don Paolo apparently really having it out for Layton).
Which reminds me - I got a really strong Inspector Gadget feeling toward the end of the game, with Don's funny flying machine and Layton's (as JJJ put it) Macguyverosity. I guess I just yearn for that now-begone animation style. I know the game is compared to Triplets of Bellville a lot, which I enjoy since I watched the movie last weekend and found it endlessly charming, and the French themes overlap.
Level 5 really did do an astonishing job on this game. I kind of want to play through it again immediately.
I guess that's all for now. Like I said, I think about things like this a lot and none of my friends really play these types of games. The ones that do don't have it yet and probably won't for a while, so this is my only real outlet for talking about them. I guess that's kind of pathetic, aye? But eh. I'm writing to get my thoughts out in the hopes someone will respond. If no one does, no big deal.