[logfromblammo]

I think the canonical example of bad adventure game design is a "puzzle" in the Gabriel Knight series to construct a false mustache to disguise yourself as Lt. Mosely, who does not have a mustache, to commit credit card fraud.

It involves maple syrup and a cat. I remember brute-forcing through it by clicking everything and trying to combine everything with everything else, because online FAQs were not yet commonly available to me at the time. I liked the story enough to plow through the cloudcuckoolander puzzle logic.

After the Sierra games, the last example I can recall of WTF game puzzles was being required to incinerate a bizarrely out-of-place brassiere to get the underwire in Return to Zork. It would appear that either game designers have learned to behave themselves, or that I have stopped playing games that don't make any danged sense.