Enter Solution Here

Puzzles that only exist so that you can enter the answer that you have received in another place. Expect the direct answer to be written on a wall in the room next to the puzzle device or similar in the easier cases.

If you are lucky, you have to find the answer split up in parts and properly figure out how to reassemble them into the answer before you can enter it. If you're unlucky, you'll discover the answer was given by an dying NPC a few hours ago, and now that you've forgotten it, the game won't repeat it.

Some people never find the clue and end up trying to brute-force the answer by trying everything. In some cases, this is because the game's Copy Protection has been stealthily disguised as an in-game puzzle, with the actual clue lying somewhere in the Feelies.

More generous games may register that the player has found the answer, and either prompt you with it at the appropriate point, or treat it like an Event Flag, simply opening any door to which you've found the access code.

The answer may be randomized to make it impossible to know without the clues. If it isn't randomized, it presents an opportunity for savvy players to attempt Sequence Breaking, which can fail if the game doesn't allow you to enter the right answer without going through all the motions.

Examples of Enter Solution Here include:

Action Adventure Games

• In The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time, and later games in the series, you can't actually play a song for use in-game until Link has learned it. The series utilizes this in other methods, as well; for example, Nico asks Link for a password (with associated riddle!) in The Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker, but even if you can guess the password, Nico won't accept it until Link has heard one of the pirates say it (though at least he acknowledges that it's close to the right answer and that Link's just "saying it wrong".)
  • Also, in the Great Deku Tree, a Deku Scrub tells you in what order you need to defeat three of his brethren to access the boss. And then one of them tells you where the boss' Weak Spot is!
  • In The Legend of Zelda Phantom Hourglass, one way they show off the DS's features is to allow you to write notes on maps. To make sure you get maximum use out of this feature, the solution to a puzzle is frequently given somewhere else in the dungeon, and you're intended to write it down when you find it.
    • Also, in the Temple of the Ocean King, there's a door where you have to draw a Triforce symbol on a door to go to a new area. Even if you know this, the game won't register it until you actually see the symbol in a completely different area of the game.
• In Penny Arcade Adventures, the PIN for the ATM card you loot is written on nearby scraps of paper. The trick is, in order to join the scraps into one continuous piece of paper, one of the scraps has to be flipped upside down.
• In StarTropics, the code for the submarine, 747, is normally found by wetting the letter that came with the game to reveal the watermark.
  • Nintendo also released this game for Virtual Console - when you download it, a copy of the letter is sent to your Wii mailbox (along with a button that dips the letter in water.)
• In Killer7, one of the chapters requires the player to memorize the details of multiple billboards in order to solve the security code of a fake office building. In a later chapter, a ridiculously long slew of security questions requires the player to find at least half a dozen audio logs and listen through every last one of them. Fortunately, the game is linear by design, so it's very hard to miss the solution in both cases (and in the case of the latter, the clues the game intends for you to memorize are shown in text while the audio logs play).
• In Dragonball Z - Legacy of Goku 2 one section requires you to shut down some disruptively loud music, by making a random combination out of 7 switches. You need to talk to three of the complaining bystanders in the valley below, who invite you to listen to a segment of the song the party-goer's obsessed with, each of which mentions a color. Those are the switches you need to flip.

Adventure Games

• The Neverhood has lots of these. Keep paper and a pencil handy or you'll find yourself backtracking often. For just two examples:
  • In one scene, to progress further in the game, Klaymen has to tune a radio to the same station that a radio in another location is tuned to.
  • In another scene, there's a specific mixture of chemicals which has to be followed to create a potion to revert you to the regular size after shrinking. There are actually two of them: one is for an emergency case when you forget to write down the solution for another one.
• Out Of Order, the controlroom password.
• Sam and Max Freelance Police, Jurgens castle.
• In Syberia II, the final puzzle (the device that calls the mammoths) has its solution written on one of the walls in the ship you arrived in.
• Gateway II has one spot where you have to press the right numbers on a TV. The right numbers are written on a painting near the beginning of the game, and advertised by a nearly identical painting right next to the TV - but if you forgot the numbers, you have to head back through a bunch of puzzle rooms to get to the original painting and then back through the puzzle rooms again to get back to the TV.
• Myst. Literally everywhere and everything. An example from the first game is finding the solution to one puzzle by manipulating an orrery to view specific constellations on specific dates mentioned in a journal. An example from the second game involves activating dome machines on every island then visiting one of the islands to use a polymorphic overlay to record the grid location of those domes. THEN, you have to determine what you do with those solutions.
• In A Vampyre Story, there are a couple of examples. In order to progress past the first act of the game, you have to get a three-digit combination to unlock your captor's coffin, but you can't simply try combinations until it works, you have to ask a couple of sapient room fixtures what it is. Then, early in the second act, you have to do the standard "mess with the bookcase to find the hidden passage" shenanigan. Just knowing the two titles of the books should, in theory, be enough information to eventually open it, but until someone else tells you to switch them, you're stuck.
• In King's Quest VI, a door in the Evil Chancellor's palace only opens to the words "Ali Zebu", which are a bit harder to guess. (Two clues need to be put together, one of which can only be found on the Golden Path.)
• Finding the code for the final door in Nancy Drew: Danger by Design is such a pain to decode that they included a walkthrough with the game that explains it. At least they did that much!
• The Frogwares Sherlock Holmes games involve rather Egregious amounts of this, especially since Holmes (who's asking you as Dr. Watson) presumably already knows the answer to what he's asking. Entirely done away with in Sherlock Holmes versus Jack the Ripper, though - it's been replaced by a more intuitive "deductions" system.
• In Seiklus, there's a room with a piano and two solutions to it. Entering one awards the player with access to the area above. Entering the other awards him with a moon piece.
• The Crystal Key has a particularly evil example. You begin the game looking at the control panel of your spaceship, with the coordinates of your current location displayed on it. About halfway through, you need to hijack an alien ship, and you're expected to enter in the same coordinates and land next to your original ship. If you didn't already write the coordinates down, you'd better save and restart the game.
• A rather irritating one in Dreamfall requires you to input a musical code consisting of four notes. The solution is given just a few minutes prior to finding the puzzle, but there's nothing indicating that you should remember that sequence of notes at the time, and there's no way to replay it. Hope you kept a separate save file handy. Also, the puzzle itself only contains three glowing symbols (each one generates a different note), so if you weren't paying attention, you'll probably assume that you just need to press the three symbols in a certain order, thus dooming your brute force attempts to failure.

First-Person Shooter

• BioShock (series) has this in the form of several audio diaries that inform the player of access codes to certain rooms. They include an invitation to an electrical torture session, a mother looking for her lost child, and a number of others. Of course, you can always just hack the locks if you don't manage to find them first.
  • The sequel will not let the player hack doors, so the combination must be found to open the door. (Or just looked up on GameFAQs, since combinations are the same every game.)

Platformers

• Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo Tooie: Even if you already know the Cheato codes (such as from a guide or a previous playthrough), entering them won't work until you've actually learned them from Cheato in your current game.
  • The code written on a wall on the ship in Rusty Bucket Bay is another example.
  • Actually, you could enter Cheato Codes without learning them in Tooie. You just have to put them in backwards if you hadn't "earned" the cheat yet.
• The mantras in the La-Mulana endgame. You have to find and read each mantra tablet in order before you can chant its mantra, and Guide Dang It if you don't know where to chant it.
  • Of course, La-Mulana did this in homage to the MSX game Maze of Galious, where you could find a monument that showed what you needed to type in the Boss Room to fight the world boss, or not bother with looking at monuments if you knew what to type already.
• Used constantly in Saira, but less of an issue given that you have a functional camera with plenty of room for everything. And the tutorial makes sure you know to use it. There still end up being things you won't think to photograph the first time you see them, but as there's usually nothing trying to kill you and the game's focus is exploration...

Puzzle Games

• Safecracker, about half of the safes was just there for you to enter solutions into.
• In Riddle Transfer, you and your friends are trapped in a government facilities, and have to enter codes in the keypads to get free. The codes are:
  • Phil: 78255. You can see it by clicking on your TV screen.
  • Phred: 51702. Phred's clue is a piece of paper with the word "SNOZ". The letters are actually numbers, bunched up together.
  • Zack: 12345. The clue he gives you sounds complicated, but it's actually a set of consecutive numbers. It was written on the side of his door.
  • Smiley: 51333. The agent who locked her up was mumbling it to himself out loud.

Role-Playing Games

• In Final Fantasy VI, even if you know the Easter Egg code to get the treasure in Daryl's Tomb, you still have to collect the sentence parts from some tombstones before you can "enter" it. That said, it's hard to see how the game could allow you to enter it otherwise, as it's a sixteen-letter code broken into four-letter chunks - specifically "The World Is Square" - Square's corporate motto at the time - written backwards: ERAU QSSI DLRO WEHT. At least it's all in the same dungeon.
  • There's also a really weird instance of this in South Figaro. One NPC tells you to give his grandson the password... and doesn't remember what the password is. Whoops! No clues are given, either. Fortunately, the game is nice enough to only give you three possible passwords to choose from and as many guesses as you need. Still makes you wonder how Locke ever guessed.
• Final Fantasy VII has several.
  • One requires you to guess the Mayor of Midgar's four-letter password by scanning books in the library. TV screens in each section helpfully remind browsers to return books to their proper sections.
  • Another requires the player to quickly enter a four-number combination into a safe. A note near the entrance provides clues to the locations of three of the numbers. Also the fourth, which is written in invisible ink below the first three clues.
  • During your trip to space, you can salvage the huge materia by guessing a four-button combination. Cid will rattle off clues as he remembers them. (If you get it on your first try, he'll suggest that you must have cheated somehow.)
• In Final Fantasy IX, in order to obtain the eidolon Ramuh, he asks you to retrieve 5 pieces from a story and bring them back to him. Then, you must choose 4 of the pieces and order them to make a coherent story. There are two options that make sense for the final part: suggesting that the main character, though a hero, was only human after all, or saying that the way in which he died was what made him a true hero. No matter which of the two options is chosen, Ramuh becomes Garnet's eidolon when she explains what made her choose that way.
• Super Paper Mario, the three boxes to hit.
  • Also from Super Paper Mario, there are two passcodes in Merlee's Mansion that you can buy, one of which lets you into a room where you can earn Rubees at a higher rate, and one of which opens a vault containing the amount of Rubees you need to pay off your debt.
  • And again near the end of the game, when you have to light torches in a certain order.
• Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door has the "can't enter the answer until you know it" version in Chapter 4: When the shapeshifter challenges you to guess his name, the letter 'p' is missing from the entry box. The literal letter is locked in a chest in the same room where you learn his true name.
  • Also from Thousand-Year Door, there's a numerical passcode in the that you can find out in one place and enter in another.
• The Sunken Ship in Super Mario RPG requires you to puzzle out the answer to a riddle using clues obtained through a set of minigames before you can fight the dungeon's midboss. It's "pearls", BTW.
  • Clues that often don't help very much... although in-universe they're written by three different people. Come on, how many of you went through that frustrating 3-D maze only to find an item and a clue you probably already knew about??
• The Cave of Spirits in Tales of Phantasia requires a password composed of four syllabes to enter. The correct password can be found somewhere in Alvanista.
• Happens a few times in Tales of Symphonia. One of them requires activating little windmills in order, and one requires making four statues face the right way.
  • The one with the windmills is compounded by having three solutions: one opens the door forward, while the other two break down walls in the room to reveal a monster and a chest behind each one.
• Tales of Vesperia features a door locked with a password you have to type in based on 3 clues found elsewhere in a ruined city. The password is totally obvious from the clues, but finding them requires the player to search everything. Fortunately you're not required to find them all to enter the solution, though you do need at least one.
• To get out of the Wyndian Tomb in Breath of Fire III, you have to read a series of tombstones, remembering the words written in green (and ignoring the ones in red), so that you can punch them into the largest tombstone in the area.
• Happens Once A Game in Mega Man Battle Network. In the first area, these's always a puzzle where Lan has to go off somewhere to find a passcode so Mega Man can proceed.
• Chrono Trigger, when you get sent to the future. It's a 4-button code, and you have 6 buttons to chose from, so it's pretty easy to guess it, since it will tell you that you've got it wrong as soon as you've entered a wrong key: XABY.
  • And in Lucca's sidequest, entering the code to stop the machine (Lucca's mother's name, Lara, or L, A, R, A).
  • Averted in Chrono Cross; fairly early in the game, you come across a multiple-choice question that appears to be one of these. However, as you're puzzling over it, you quickly discover that the correct answer is saying nothing at all.
  • Also played straight in the early game; a ridiculously large and ornate combination lock in a fortress is too inconvenient to brute force, having 100 combinations, but you can just head down to the barracks and learn it from a note a forgetful soldier wrote for himself.
• The original The Bard's Tale Trilogy—repeatedly.
• EarthBound has you do this to get into Master Belch's base. However, it's subverted as the password is to not say anything for three (real-time) minutes.
• Early in Dubloon, there is a room with five treasure chests which have to be opened in correct order. The correct order is scribbled on the floor nearby. In the final dungeon, there are four colour-coded statues which must be pressed in correct order. The solution is nearby as well (or more accurately, on its reflection on the floor).

Stealth-Based Game

• In Metal Gear Solid, you are asked at one point to contact Meryl through CODEC. The frequency to use, of course, is written on the back of the CD case. Brilliant bit of copy protection, that, until the advent of GameFAQs...
  • Not to mention the fact that you only had two hundred frequent options and she was the fifteenth...
  • In Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake: Solid Snake, there's a part where you have to contact a scientist via the radio, using a frequency obtained from a note on the leg of messenger pigeon. The trick is that Snake, instead of seeing a number written down, reads the note as saying 'WIS.OhIO'. If you contact Miller enough times, he'll eventually correctly deduce that Snake is holding the piece of paper upside down, even if you haven't.
• Splinter Cell has this in spades. The first two games had keypads that you either had to get the codes from a computer or interrogate a guard. The third gave players the option to hack the keypads with the risk of setting off an alarm upon failure.

Survival Horror

• The Silent Hill series plays a variation where the directness of the answer is inversely proportional to the puzzle difficulty. A numeric that appears scribbled over a surface in Easy, for example, can become a two-variable equation system in Hard.
  • Or, in true Silent Hill style, a simple logic puzzle on Easy/Normal turns into a tender love poem that describes, in graphic detail, the act of mutilating someone's face on Hard.

Third-Person Shooter

• Headhunter the game does this quite a lot with key codes and what-not in e-mails but perhaps the worst case is where the combination lock to the board room of a biker gang is the same as the graffiti on a poster just around the corner.
• Psi Ops the Mindgate Conspiracy has one for a door lock, however it's randomly generated every game to make you have to remote view the screen.

Web Games

• On Neopets, answering a question for the Brain Tree is impossible until you do two quests for a completely different character. The two part answer is random each time, and even if you could guess correctly it won't work unless you do the extra quests.
• The final puzzle in the horror game The House 2 requires knowledge of the year of birth of the family's daughter. The real daughter, who the family killed and stuffed into the safe, was born in 1947.

Web Original

• The players of LIS DEAD have to find passwords and enter them to unlock the meat of most of the game.

Visual Novels

• The brief visual novel Summer, Cicadas, and the Girl has, as its only decision point, a text box where you have to enter the next location for the character to go. Unless you're very lucky (or very Genre Savvy), you won't get it right the first time. But each time you get it wrong, a new option appears on the title screen to give you a small hint.
• Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors has several puzzles like this, given its genre.