The Semantagician's Assistant
A Non-Interactive Walkthrough by Lance Nathan


CONTENTS

I. The Spotlight
II. The Dressing Room, Part One: Initial Transformations
III. The Dressing Room, Part Two: Getting a Door
IV. The Dressing Room, Part Three: Getting a Key

APPENDIX A: The Magical Devices
A-1. Some Very Oblique Hints
A-2. Some Slightly Oblique Hints
A-3. The Details of the Devices

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Formatting note: Most of this walkthrough is prose.  Commands are in all caps
on lines by themselves.  Commands prefixed with ">" are useful for getting hints
and seeing what's going on; commands prefixed with ">>" are the ones you'll
have to enter at some point to proceed with the game.

(Mostly I've left out "EXAMINE [THING]" commands, so assume that if you get
something, it's worth examining.)

---

Cruelty note: the game is intended to be Merciful (in the technical, Zarfian
sense).  That is, if I did this right, you shouldn't be able to end up in an
unwinnable state.  Things can be transformed, but either they can be transformed
back, or else you'll never need their original form again.  Very few things can
be actively destroyed (specifically, I think there's one, which can be eaten),
and those things are also things you won't need again.

So feel free to experiment!  Do stuff!  Pet the rabbit!  Talk to the rabbit!
Talk to the walls!  (Don't talk to the walls; it won't help and it'll look bad
on the job application.)  But also, have fun, and if you're not having fun, I
hope this walkthrough can help.

----

I. The Spotlight

You've got a magician's hat and very little else to work with.  There's one
very standard trick that magicians perform with their hats.  Some things to try
that may offer you hints:

> GET HAT
> REACH IN HAT (or PUT HAND IN HAT)

If you're still getting nowhere and you don't know what to do with a hat,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hat-trick_(magic_trick) may help.  Or more
explicitly: the trick you want to perform is pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

>> PULL RABBIT OUT OF HAT

("pull rabbit from hat" will also work, as will "take rabbit from hat" or even
"get rabbit".)



II. The Dressing Room, Part One: Initial Transformations

Once you're in the dressing room, there's a lot more you can do. (That includes
ASK WELDON ABOUT [SOMETHING], which should provide gentler hints than this
walkthrough.)  The goal at this point is to get out of the dressing room, which
at the moment has no exits, so the thing you're shooting for is finding a door.
(You may not be surprised to learn that you'll also want to find a key for it.)

Among the things you'll want to do is "use" each of the magical devices:

> USE SAWING TABLE
> USE RINGS
> USE WHEEL
> USE CHIMERA MACHINE
> USE ROTATOR
> USE FUNNEL

(Examining them will help too.)  You may as well take a look at the other things
in here:

> EXAMINE DOLLHOUSE
> EXAMINE SLOTS
> GET CHAIR

There's a lot of stuff in the dollhouse, but you'll find you can't take any of
it, presumably having to do with the slots in the floor and the empty slots in
the garage.

> EXAMINE VANITY

The vanity is much more promising, and you'll notice that there's a lot of stuff
on it: a few things on the table, and a few more on the mirror. (There's also
some fun background information if you EXAMINE POSTER and EXAMINE CLIPPINGS.)

>> GET WON
>> GET CARTOON
> READ NOTE
> EXAMINE PHOTO

You won't need the note or the photo, but both of them have some helpful words
on them.

Now the transformations begin!  As noted above, there are some empty slots in
the dollhouse's garage that you could fill, if you wanted to take something else
out of it.

In particular, you can put a car in the garage, if only you had a car.  You
don't have a car, but you have a cartoon, and some magical devices...

> PUT CARTOON IN TABLE
> SEPARATE TABLE
> GET CARTOON

This doesn't work, but if you try it, you do learn that things have to be sawed
exactly in half.  So you can't get a CAR by splitting the seven-letter CARTOON.
But if it were six letters long....

>> PUT CARTOON THROUGH RINGS

That turns the two "rings" in CARTOON into a single "ring", and now you have a
carton.

>> PUT CARTON IN TABLE
>> SEPARATE TABLE

And now you have a car and a ton!

>> GET CAR
>> PUT CAR IN GARAGE
> GET TON

With the car in the dollhouse, you can take out any of the other furnishings
(one at a time), though only one of them is useful.  If you're not sure which,
the sticky note on the vanity may help: you'll need a "drawer" at some point.
Nothing in the dollhouse has a drawer, but one thing has many of the right
*letters*...

>> GET WARDROBE

The wardrobe is perfect for splitting in half: an even number of letters, and
each half is a word. Unfortunately...

> GET TON

...that ton weighs a ton.  It's not going anywhere at all, not in its present
form.  You could put the car in and turn it back into a carton, but you'd have
to put the wardrobe back to do that.

Instead, you'll want to turn the ton into something else:

>> PUT WON IN UPPER CHAMBER
>> JOIN TABLE
>> GET WONTON

Much more portable!  (And edible; feel free to eat it, since you won't need it,
or its parts, again.)

Now you can use the table:

>> PUT WARDROBE IN CHAMBER
>> SEPARATE TABLE
>> GET WARD
>> GET ROBE



III. The Dressing Room, Part Two: Getting a Door

> EXAMINE ROBE

It's not obvious where we can get a door, but at least there's something going
on with the robe. Unfortunately, there's this cord on it, and you can't cut it,
or untie it.  Fortunately, you're in a room full of transforming devices.

>> PUT ROBE IN BIN
>> GET ROBE

Now the "cord" has become a "record", and that means the robe isn't tied closed
anymore.  You've got a few options to open up the robe:

>> UNFOLD ROBE (or WEAR ROBE or OPEN ROBE)

Something falls out!  If you look around, you can see what it is...

> LOOK
>> GET ROD

You want a door; you have a rod.  This is the point at which the photo may help,
as it provides you with the word "rood" if you weren't already familiar with
medieval church decorations.  And that word is a useful intermediate step...

>> PUT ROD THROUGH RINGS

Now you have a rood.

>> PUT ROOD ON DISC
>> TURN DISC

And now you have a door!  It won't do you much good where it is, but...

>> GET DOOR

...now it's on the wall, where it can be opened.  Or could be opened, if you
had a key.



IV. The Dressing Room, Part Three: Getting a Key

It's probably not obvious how it'll get you to a key, but at least the text on
the sticky note tells you that you want a drawer.  Now that you have a ward, you
can get one, through another intermediate step:

>> PUT WARD IN BIN

Now instead of a "ward", you have a "reward".

>> GET REWARD
>> PUT REWARD ON ROTATOR
>> TURN ROTATOR

Now you have a drawer!  As the note promised, it has a roster in it...

> GET ROSTER
> OPEN DRAWER
> CLOSE DRAWER

...but you can't get to it, because sometimes magic is *dumb*.  But the sticky
note also told you where the drawer goes:

>> ATTACH DRAWER TO VANITY (or PUT DRAWER ON VANITY or PUT DRAWER UNDER VANITY)
>> OPEN DRAWER
>> GET ROSTER

A roster!  It's not useful, of course, but one of these devices can transform it
in a familiar way:

>> PUT ROSTER THROUGH RINGS

Now you have a rooster.  Also not immediately useful, but the rooster is the
first thing you encounter that can go into the two unused devices...

> PUT ROOSTER IN CHIMERA MACHINE
> PULL LEVER

Oh well.

> PRESS BUTTON

It doesn't do anything to the rooster, but now you have a better idea of what
could go in it.  As for the other device:

>> PUT ROOSTER IN WHEEL
> TURN WHEEL
> OPEN COMPARTMENT

...apparently it can turn a rooster into a dog.  What can we make of a dog?

> PUT DOG IN MACHINE
> PRESS BUTTON
> PRESS BUTTON

It turns out the chimera machine can turn the dog into a hog, and the hog back
into a dog. The hog, if you test it, won't go into the wheel; but the dog will,
and turning the wheel once will turn the dog into a pig.

If "rooster, dog, pig..." isn't a familiar sequence (and you don't feel like
websearching it or asking Weldon about the Chinese wheel), you can keep
experimenting to see what animals you can get.  Given that you want a key,
there's one that's particularly promising.  Assuming you've gone through them
all and have a rooster in the wheel again:

>> TURN WHEEL BY 11
>> OPEN COMPARTMENT
>> GET MONKEY

A monkey is half-key!  Sadly though it's not half-monk, it's half-mon, and "mon"
isn't really a thing.  The monkey, though, can be transformed into something
whose other half *is* a thing:

>> PUT MONKEY IN MACHINE
>> PRESS BUTTON
>> GET DONKEY

A donkey is half-don, half-key, which is much better news for you.

>> JOIN TABLE
>> PUT DONKEY IN TABLE
>> SEPARATE TABLE

Finally, a key!  Also a don, who does you no good at all on this, the day of his
daughter's wedding, but that's fine.

>> GET KEY
>> UNLOCK DOOR
>> WEST

And you win!



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APPENDIX A: The Magical Devices

One source of frustration might be not simply moving forward, but rather
understanding what each device does.  I hope that discovering how they work is
fun, but in case it's not fun, you might want to just be told.  Weldon can help,
up to a point, but since you won't even be able to use the chimera machine
until fairly late in the game, here are some spoilers on what the devices do.

With one exception, all of the machines' transformations are reversible.  (With
the last, you can't transform anything you'd need later for another purpose.)

A-1. Some Very Oblique Hints

If you had the following objects, each one would work in exactly one of the six
devices.

* A mouse
* A dragon
* A macaroon
* A pot
* A shoehorn
* A (bottle of) port

A-2. Some Slightly Oblique Hints

In particular, the items listed above could be transformed by the following
devices.

* The chimera machine: the mouse
* The Chinese wheel: the dragon
* The rings: the macaroon
* The rotator: the pot
* The sawing table: the shoehorn
* The funnel: the port

A-3. The Details of the Devices

The chimera machine could turn the mouse into a louse, and back.

The animals on the side of the machine are oblique hints to this transformation:
there's a SKINK/SKUNK, a BEAR/BOAR, a MOOSE/MOUSE and a MOOSE/GOOSE.

Specifically, the machine turns an animal into another animal by changing its
Nth letter, where N is the number the lever is set to.  Unfortunately, the lever
is stuck at 1, so it can only change first letters: you wouldn't be able to turn
the mouse into a moose, but you can turn it into a louse.

---

The Chinese wheel could turn the dragon into a snake.  Or a horse, or goat...

(You might also notice that Weldon gives a slightly different response if you
try to put him into it, because you *could* put a rabbit into the wheel.)

Specifically, its twelve divisions hint at the Chinese zodiac.  Inserting any
animal that's part of the zodiac will let you turn the dial up to eleven spaces
forward, producing the corresponding animal.

(Though you can't put a bull, or sheep, or hog into it.  As we learned from
"Counterfeit Monkey", devices that operate on the names of things require very
strict regulations on what things are called.  As a result, the wheel will only
accept an ox (and not a bull), a goat (and not a sheep), and a pig (and not a
hog).  Letters of complaint may be addressed to its manufacturer, not to me.)

---

The rings could turn the macaroon into a macaron, and back.

As their description suggests, they can turn a double o into a single o, as
well as the reverse.  There are plenty of objects they have no effect on (such
as the car), and many others that they resist because the result would not be
a word (such as the port, since "poort" isn't a word), as well as a few that
they resist because the result would not be something you can hold.

---

The rotator could turn the pot into a top, and back.

The rotator simply reverses the name of the object on it.  If the result
wouldn't be a word (as with "dragon / nogard"), it won't turn.  If the result
would be a word but wouldn't be something you could hold (as with the won), it
will put up too much resistance to turn.

---

The sawing table could turn the shoehorn into a shoe and a horn, and back.

The table saws things in half.  It has to be strictly in half (if you try to
saw the bookshelf into "book" and "shelf", Weldon will tell you why it won't
work), and both halves have to be words (so it wouldn't be able to turn the
"dragon" into "dra" and "gon").  The reverse is also true: it couldn't rejoin
a "pot" and a "horn" even if "pothorn" were a word, because those aren't
halves.

---

The funnel could turn the port into a report.  (If you had a wrench, you could
invert it and use it to turn the report back into port, but you don't.)

The "action/reaction" writing on the funnel suggests its purpose: it turns a
word into the word with "re-" prefixed to it.  If that wouldn't make a new word,
the object will fall through it unchanged.
