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Still Life Hints
Interaction of the regular tumblers
The instructions indicate that pressing a regular tumbler with one of the lock picks will cause a reaction in another one of the tumblers. In this case, the related tumbler (i.e., the second tumbler that "responds" when the first tumbler is pressed) will also be a regular tumbler, not a master tumbler.
Understanding this interaction is crucial to solving the puzzle. When a regular tumbler is pressed (and this can only happen when one of the two picks is clear to move to that tumbler and depress it fully, without being blocked by a tumbler to the left of it), it will be depressed completely. At the same time, one of the other regular tumblers in the locking mechanism will react. The first step to understanding and solving the lock picking puzzle is to keep track of which tumblers cause a "sympathetic reaction" in which other tumblers. These correlations are fixed; that is, if pressing tumbler "A" causes a reaction in tumbler "B", then those two tumblers will always be linked in that manner. Tumbler "A" will never cause a response in any other tumbler besides "B". (The tumblers here are *just* examples ... the actual relation in the game will be different and is given in another section of these hints.)
The relationship does not always work in reverse, however. Simply because pressing tumbler "A" causes a reaction in tumbler "B" does NOT mean that pressing tumbler "B" will cause a reaction in tumbler "A". Nor does it mean that tumbler "A" is the ONLY regular tumbler that will cause a reaction in tumbler "B"; it is conceivable that pressing tumbler "C" might also evoke a response in tumbler "B"!
Begin by determining, tumbler by tumbler, which tumbler is related to which other tumbler.
