We love our test solvers! They're making sure that the book you get is the best possible book. But they kept finding little mistakes, and we found some more in our own verification. That's not a complaint, because we absolutely want to find all these mistakes before the books get printed. But we kept pushing back the date for ordering the color proofs, to get as many changes as possible in. Then two things happened which caused a slightly bigger delay (about a week more).
We replaced a puzzle. You read that correctly. We certainly hadn't expected to do this at this late stage. But, as we got more feedback, we realized that one particular puzzle wasn't going to be fun for anybody. It's always the case that people like different puzzles. We know from experience that some people love a puzzle that others hate (there's one particular puzzle in The Librarian's Almanaq that we get very polarized feedback on; it's a "favorite" puzzle for some while others think it's "the worst puzzle in the book"). In this case, we became convinced that this puzzle wasn't like that — it wasn't going to be fun for anybody. We goofed. It's never fun to come to such a realization, but we made the tough call and replaced it, and the replacement puzzle is much better.
A minor but significant mistake. We found a mistake that was, literally, a single character mistake. But it had a cascade effect, and it took a whole bunch of time to fix it. There was more than a little cursing (thematic conjurer's cursing, of course) at Almanaq World Headquarters.
We're trying to be as open as possible, but we can't tell you the details about these puzzles because they would be spoilers. But, if we run into you in person, after you've finished the Almanaq, we'll be happy to fill you in.
The silver lining in all of this is that the extra fixes mean this last short wave should go very smoothly. At this point, we are waiting on the delivery date for the color proofs.
Potion bottles. You would not believe how messy The Great Qdini's office and lab were. Stuff was strewn everywhere. Among the paraphernalia were many potion bottles, so of course we took pictures of them for the book. We thought you'd like this one*.
As always, thanks for your support!
Roy and Emily
* Not everything's a puzzle. We just arranged those potion bottles in a pretty way. But just because we didn't make them into a puzzle doesn't mean you can't solve it anyway. Hmm... 12 is the number of hours in half a day, the number of notes in the solfège scale, the number of bagels in a non-baker's dozen, and the product of the first three factorials. There has to be something there, right? Right? Next update in two weeks.
