its in the second professor layton game (diabolical box) and out of the like 800 plus in the whole series its not even close to being the most difficult but its always the one i remember so ill break it down
its an illustration of three bottles with excruciatingly long and exaggerated necks that are entangled into a maze so you cant clearly see which bottle leads to which opening
and the flavor text is like “the garlic smells bad use two corks to block up the garlic bottles” or something
so basically tell which exits of the maze lead to which
entrances and then block those exits
but if you look closer you realize that this cant actually be done because all three exits lead to garlic
so i assumed it must be an error or something because theres no other input method to answer that its a trick question (some of the layton puzzles let you write in the answer but this only let you tap on the illustration to indicate your answer)
so i try all the different combinations and it still doesnt work so like a Goddamn Fool i have to buy the mega super hint, for this childrens coloring book maze of a question
and its the man
you have to tap the little cartoon mans nose to use the corks as noseplugs for this guy who dont even have nostrils
its really not that unreasonable comparatively but it is definitely the silliest use of lateral thinking in a video game that ive ever seen
well by that point in the prof layton series, it’s someone obvious that there’s always an outside the box solution to most of the puzzles. Like the astronaut on a planet finds life and it says how many of what there are and asks how many aliens are there total and the first instinct is to count it all up but the solution is 1 because they are all on their home planet, it’s the astronaut who is the alien to them. or the one about the germs and it’s like “if two cells create four cells in one minute and four cells make 8 in one minute, how long would it take 1 cell to create as many as 2 cells can create in 10 minutes” and the answer is 11 minutes because one cell creates two cells in one minute and then it’s back on track.