This page contains spoilers from the 2-Tone Game. If you haven't already played the game, you might want to do so before continuing reading this page.
Teuton is a silly puzzle. It started out as a "placeholder" puzzle. I knew I wanted a puzzle themed on the word "Teuton". But I only had the vaguest idea of what it meant (and worried that players might be similarly in the dark). Until I figured out what I "really" wanted to do, I slapped together some automatically-translated common sayings.
Early playtesters had fun with this puzzle. They didn't stroke their chins and say "Aha! How very elegant!" Instead they giggled and laughed and spoke the puzzle out loud with outrageous German accents. I like elegance, but I'm a big fan of cheap laughs. The puzzle stayed.
Now, not all the playtesters liked this puzzle. Some folks pointed out that it was pretty trivial to rush through. Just as the page's text had been automatically translated from German, it was pretty simple to automatically translate it back and figure things out from there.
So... serious folks didn't much like the puzzle. Then again, they could blow through it in five minutes, so they weren't annoyed for long. Meanwhile, less-serious folks enjoyed the puzzle. So it stayed.
Here's the original puzzle; similar to the final:
Some automatic translations from English to German:
Ein Apfel ein Tag hält den Doktor weg.
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Taten sprechen lauter als Worte.
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Alles neu macht der Mai Blumen.
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verzweifelten Zeiten erfordern verzweifelte Maßnahmen.
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Jeder Hund hat seinen Tag.
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Gute Zäune machen gute Nachbarn.
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Großer Verstand denkt gleich.
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Zuhause ist, wo das Herz ist.
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Wenn es nicht kaputt machen, nicht zu beheben.
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Im Land der Blinden, der Einäugige König ist.
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Es nimmt zwei zum Tango.
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Schlafende Hunde soll man nicht wecken.
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Lügen, verdammte Lügen und Statistiken
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Kein Mensch ist eine Insel.
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Aus den Augen aus dem Sinn.
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sechs von einem, ein halbes Dutzend vom anderen
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Morgen ist ein anderer Tag.
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wenn es hart auf hart
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Thanks to my playtesters, I learned about German capitalization. (It's for nouns, not just proper nouns.) I also learned some fascinating variations on "common" English sayings. E.g., is it "Every dog has his day?" or "...its day?"
So there were many attempts that were almost, but not quite right.
But since the message was in German, players didn't have an easy time
spotting/fixing errors. Players entered many wrong-but-close guesses
for this puzzle. Thus, the hint/guess system has many responses for
strange answers. E.g.,
"CANDY sounds like a translation of KOMMI, which is close,
but not quite right. Maybe check for gender-neutral canines?"
In the final version of this puzzle, as players figured out the message, they could "guess" each word to see if they were on the right track.