About Scarecrow's Field

About the Field

Scarecrow's Field was initialy concieved at an online "notebook" of information related to solving puzzles at The Stone. I later added information for the other Stone puzzle groups and The Stone Unturned. In time the site expanded to include hosting new puzzles which are now in the area called "The Field". Originally I only hosted a few puzzles which I had written myself, but now the majority of the puzzles in The Field were created by other players. Field players have taken to calling themselves "Fielders" in much the same way that players of The Stone have traditionally been called "Stoners". Since The Field was inspired by The Stone many Stone Players who have joined The Field use the same login name as they had at The Stone. This is strongly encouraged, but not enforced.

On April 3, 2008 at Midnight PST The Stone shut down for good. As expected, many players had not finished The Journey and wanted to continue solving the remaining puzzles and new players continued to hear of the site with the desire to give it a try. Further, many members of the Stone Community wanted to maintain ties with each other in a similar context to The Stone. In May of 2008 I received permission from Rod Bruinooge, The Stone's original creator, to re-host the puzzles of The Stone. With help and support from Gary Howe and Stewart Tansley I adapted all of the Stone puzzles to work with the code I had created for The Field, and created the site "The Stone Monument" reproducing The Stone experience as closely as possible with links to Scarecrow's Field. In the latest version of "Field Code" The Stone Monument is integrated as a "sub-site" within Scarecrow's Field.

About the Sites

Scarecrow's Field is the name of this entire web site, which is composed of several "sub-sites". Those sub-sites are "The Field", "The Stone Monument", and "The Stone Unturned". The Field is the sub-site of playable puzzles which continues to add new puzzles and accepts player-contributed puzzles. The Stone Monument is the complete set of playable puzzles from The Stone separated into the groups "The Unknown", "The Immediate", "The Movement", "The Extras" (additional puzzles released by "Honorary Stonekeeper" _Gary after the Final Six Tournament), and "Outside the Immediate" (additional puzzles released as a second tournament, and comprising the last puzzles ever released at The Stone). The Stone Unturned sub-site at Scarecrow's Field is a "reference database" where you can view all of the information I have about a puzzle once you prove that you've already solved it by entering the solution. If you want to play the 294 puzzles available at The Stone Unturned you must play them at the the original site.

About the Forums

You cannot join the forums until you have solved at least one puzzle in any of the puzzle groups. This is a means of reducing the probability of spam registrations, and you should be able to find at least one puzzle that you can solve without help. All players are strongly encouraged to join the forums. The forums are an active community of puzzlers who provide helpful tips for solving puzzles (called "nudges"), help with creating puzzles if you're so inclined, and general conversation. It is strongly recommended that you use the same name in the forums as your user name in The Field. At present this is not enforced, but there are plans to link forum and player identities in the future.

About the Databases

All of the sub-sites have a "database view". This view will only show puzzles which you have already solved. You can view this list in two ways, "Grid View" and "List View". In Grid View you will see a grid of thumbnail images of the puzzles, in List view you see a list of puzzle titles. By clicking on any puzzle in either view you will be taken to a page which displays all of the information I have about a puzzle. For playable puzzles this includes all accepted variations of the solution, and all "close" and "clever" responses. For the database-only non-playable sub-site this only includes the responses I know about. Database views for all sub-sites also include puzzle images, a link to the answer page, and in some cases additional notes about how the puzzle is solved and possibly hidden information in the puzzle. This information is useful if you're researching links between puzzles for a possible "meta-puzzle", or to remind yourself about a puzzle when providing "nudges" for other players.

Most players do not have the ability to add to these notes, however if you believe there is information that should be added to a puzzle database entry you can send a message to ScarecrowPA in the forum so I can verify and add the information.

Helpful Links

Rather than create a list of interesting links to related information I will provide just this one. Stewart originally created "The Portal" with links to a wide range of interesting sites in some way related to The Stone. Over time many of those links have disappeared, and the original hosting company disappeared as well. I have re-hosted the page here unchanged for historical purposes, and with the permission of the author.