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The answer to this puzzle...
We find this by:
Doing so results in something that looks like this (in spoiler, below) and the final answer can be read off:
A note on my solve path:
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It looks to me like this puzzle is:
Why? First note that:
Next, there seems to be some sort of hint to the right of the vertical dividing line in the image...
We can then...
13
The beginning
The first puzzles
The third blanket
Crosses
This suggest the following rule:
Irregular grids
The flower/star/explosion/fireworks-symbol
The last blanket
The last puzzle
Using the
The puzzle is completed!
Extraction
So now we know the final solution!
Some more notes on the final answer
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In a solitude of the great rectangle of pipes, plus signs, and hyphens lies a list of words.
They are aligned in a staggered manner along a vertical bar which suggests they should be
And so we try this and Now! we see a pattern!
The first word is FORESIGHT.
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Possibly partial answer, with help from Mohirl's comment:
The enumerated answer starts with:
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Puzzle
Puzzle
Puzzle
Puzzle
Puzzle
Puzzle
Puzzle
Metapuzzle
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The top clues
The O grid:
X grid:
What next?
If both players move...
Questions:
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Astrid is trying to find:
And its "formula" is simply:
There could be many reasons why this isn't working for Astrid, which are well beyond the scope of this answer!
Some explanation:
8
The words are created by
So the three words are:
Images:
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What are we looking at here? Art? No!
First:
What next? Well note that:
Finally:
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Mmmhmmm, for breakfast we are having
The clues in the story
how tea and charcoal can be made into chocolate
and
"Be sure to remove the floaters, these thing tend to create a lot of excess gunk."
suggest that our alchemy involves
Then if we note that
Dragon Soup include both ingredients of Pastry (❤ & △) and adds a third ingredient (☆).
...
5
The answer is:
The logic:
Counting as stated:
5
The two words you are looking for are:
Because:
5
Partial Progress
I noticed the arrow sets looked like
And converted them into letters which appear in the corresponding words:
Their scrabble indices match the sum in the red rectangle:
Anagramming the letters give the final answer:
4
The answer is
Individually the answers are
Now if you
Which yields
And this is indeed
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A word is in the set $\Pi$ if and only if
Examples
The image of Earth
Hint 1
Hint 2
What do "homo", "cell", "mega" and "micro" have in common?
The crown picture
Astonishing coincidence
2
A partial clue that I discovered:
If I really wanted to stretch it, the following possibility suggested itself:
2
Based on the new hint, one thing I notice is that
1
Here is a Starting Point:
That was the crux of my earlier comment:
Does the slash indicate closeness or separation ? Meaning : Is "a paid day" one unit or "day/cOmes" is one unit ? Does the comma indicate separation ? Or it is not significant ?
Assuming slash is separation, ignoring comma:
Assuming slash is closeness, ignoring comma:
...
1
Epilogue:
Outstanding solution by @Amoz
Here is the image that inspired this puzzle:
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