End Games: My Face-Palm Moment

In the first book of the Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, there is a scene outside the gate to Moria in which Gandalf sits pondering the riddle written over the door trying to uncover the password that will let his party through. He translates it as "Speak, Friend, and Enter," and becomes increasingly frustrated as his "300-lives-of-men" worth of accumulated wisdom allows him to drag up virtually every secret password known to history all to no avail until it is pointed out to him that the riddle can also be translated as "Say 'Friend,' and Enter."

Face palm.

Boy, have I been over-thinking these puzzles. I solved two of them in short order over the weekend after dialing back a bit. I blame the need to discover an extra step in Puzzle 3 for my assumption of an unnecessary extra step in Puzzle 4. I was looking for the right solution and muddied up the clues which had been presented as straightforward as possible.

Puzzle 5 I rebuilt three or four times and kept fiddling with until I finally noticed, through sheer physically manipulative luck, the final instructions were built into the structure of the puzzle itself. When followed, the puzzle changed shape on its own, without further fiddling, and the answer was written right on it (although that did take a little squinting to see).

Unfortunately, that still leaves me four puzzles to go, the last one being unlocked yesterday. With all of them released, it is now a simple race to see who can deliver the last answer first. I am sure I am so far behind as to be completely out of the running but no announcement has yet been made, so I will keep plugging away.