Issue three is now with the printer, and with luck people should be receiving it early next week.
For issue three, we are going to try a slightly different approach to hints. This is partly to avoid the forum being filled up with requests for help, and partly to try and reduce the quantity of PMs being sent around the system! Naturally, we understand that there are some who like to work together on puzzles - many hands often do make light work. All we are asking is that specific requests for help should be directed along slightly more official channels, as outlined here.
When the issue is published, it will contain a series of hints for each of the individual puzzles. These hints will also be posted in the issue forum. These hints are generally what would be called “starting out” hints – the sort of thing which you should only need to look at if you absolutely cannot make any headway with the puzzle at all. Some solvers may refer to these hints as the “well, I already knew that!” type.
People are free to post speculation in the forum relating to what a puzzle may or may not be about (and there will be one or two puzzles in which this speculation may well be encouraged rather than thwarted...) However, speculation that inadvertently borders on a spoiler or an answer is likely to be removed.
After the magazine has been officially available for a couple of weeks or so, a second round of hints for each of the puzzles will be posted. These will generally relate to what would probably be called the “what now?” stage of a puzzle, when you have amassed lots of information about a puzzle, but you have no idea what to do with it. And at the start of the next month after the magazine has been posted, then some even more explicit hints will be posted onto the forum for those people who don't like to ask for help. And just occasionally, some additional hints may turn up in unexpected forms or places. So keep your eyes open
However, having said all that: people who do get stuck at any point should send a request for hints directly to gill216 (or, if you are baffled by the overall meta puzzle, you should ask Scurra.) We would politely request people therefore not to post requests for help in the forum directly. Gill is quite willing to provide hints, but it should be observed that these hints will be graduated on the same sort of scale as those posted in the forum - so don't necessarily expect a direct answer to your first cry for help!
One extra clarification here: Gill is happy to receive queries along the lines of "here are the words I have, what's wrong?" which seem to crop up a fair amount in the forums.
Our first goal is for everyone to have fun - and getting completely stuck is rarely having fun. So if you do get stuck, please don't be afraid to ask for help. Just be careful not to confuse "being puzzled" with "being stuck" - never forget that basic rule of puzzles: step back for a moment and look again at what you have. It's surprising how often that helps
