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Still Life Hints

Mark Ackerman's Apartment: How do I pick the lock to the apartment?

  • 1 of 9: Be patient with this puzzle.  It is arguably the most difficult puzzle in the game.  (Or, if you run out of patience, the full step-by-step solution is given at the end of this question.)
  • 2 of 9: The primary reason for the difficulty is in the explanation of how lock picks work -- or, rather, the confusing, stilted wording of the pseudo-explanation.
  • 3 of 9: Begin by experimenting with the two lock picks -- selecting them by right-clicking on one or the other -- and see what happens when you click on one of the vertical bars after you have selected a pick.
  • 4 of 9: If you choose a vertical bar that is inaccessible to the selected lock pick (i.e., it is blocked by other vertical bars), nothing will happen.
  • 5 of 9: If you remove the pick from a previously-opened vertical bar, you may find that bar moving to a closed (or partially closed) position once again.
  • 6 of 9: Before each movement of either pick, think through what you want to accomplish -- i.e., which tumbler you would like to depress.  Then think about whether the target tumbler is fully accessible to a pick.  And don't forget to account for which *other* tumbler may be going to react when you depress your target tumbler.
  • 7 of 9: You'll need to plan ahead, and occasionally even allow previously-jammed tumblers to become "unjammed", to make specific progress.
  • 8 of 9: Don't worry if you have to re-do some tumblers.  Keep experimenting, watching the results, and learning more about how the picks and tumblers interact -- and how the regular and master tumblers inter-relate.  You may want to start with the blue section, since those are the simplest part of the puzzle.
  • 9 of 9: As you might suspect, jamming the other master tumblers will not be as easy as jamming the blue master tumbler.  The blue section is a good "practice section".  However, as you begin moving to the right,
    into the other two sections, you will find that tumblers in these sections may *unjam* tumblers in earlier sections!  Nothing restricts the interaction between tumblers to a single section.

    You will need to work your way through each section, occasionally going back to re-jam tumblers that have become unjammed.  It may seem frustrating at first, but the key is to keep track of every interaction, and know which tumblers affect which other tumblers.  Without that information, solving the puzzle would resort to a painful and tiresome trial-and-error approach.