Headscratchers / Legends of the Hidden Temple

• Why did those kids have so much trouble with the Shrine of the Silver Monkey puzzle? It's only three pieces!
  • It may have been three pieces, but consider this: the contestants are under a strict time limit (three minutes can go by very fast, especially in a twelve room temple that averages going through at least two thirds to three fourths of the rooms and solving puzzles), and there's a number of ways that each of the pieces can be placed (though only one solution). They just don't have the time to flounder around, trying to figure out which piece goes where in which position. By that logic, the kids also had problems with the King's Storeroom (the clay pots were very durable and had to be either pushed or thrown down which meant searching the floor for the key or hit very hard and often dropping the key on the ground), Medusa's Lair (the number of snakes that needed to be found was reduced because of how long it took to find the snakes), the Room of the Secret Password (the contestants all wore mouth guards and either they had to take out the mouth guards and waste time or their voices were muffled due to the mouth guard), and the Chamber of the Sacred Markers (same as Medusa's Lair; the markers were scattered all around the room).
  • The pieces were also placed in a way that made it difficult for shorter contestants to get a hold of them due to the design obviously favoring adults. On average, many of the contestants were between eleven to thirteen years old which meant they likely didn't have the height to reach the pieces (especially egregious with smaller females like Tarrah and Missy who had to climb on the shelves). Then there's the fact that the completed monkey had to face away from them rather than toward them and that meant they were basically putting together the puzzle backwards. By that same logic, this was also what made the Jester's Court so difficult (the center pattern's cross legged design made it all but impossible for short players to get at the button that lines up with the head though some got around it by kneeling instead) but at least Anti-Frustration Features kicked in for that one and it was one of the only rooms that didn't have a Temple Guard (the Pit was the other one).
  • Lastly, sometimes the trigger didn't work. It wasn't enough to just get everything in order, but sometimes it required some amount of actual effort to slam the head down and that also had to be properly aimed. So even if you had a kid that could breeze through it the Monkey could just decide to say "nah" and still make them fiddle around with it for far longer than necessary.