The first step in this puzzle lies in its makeup. You see a bunch of letters that appear connected by lines. The first thing I think of when I see a puzzle of this conformation is that it’s some kind of connect-the-dots. I begin to search for words embedded in the puzzle. If you did that with this puzzle, you should have seen patterns emerge.

As always, this puzzle is Vs. System themed. That means that the words you’re looking for most likely have some sort of connection to Vs. System. I’m not going to give you the exact answers (that would be unfair to those of you who did all the work). But I will help you solve the rest of the puzzle.

Once you arrive at your connected words, you need to think about the clue I gave you at the beginning. At the beginning of every puzzle, I leave a small, vague hint about what you need to think about to solve it. This hint read, “Whenever you fly solo, you’re leaving someone out.” The first thing you have to do is figure out what connection this could possibly have to the puzzle. The thing to focus on in this hint is the phrase “leaving someone out.” This makes me think that something is being left out and I need to figure out what that could be. So, examine the puzzle for things that could be left out.

The puzzle is fairly straightforward in its construction. It has circles with letters and lines that connect them. Since its construction is so simple, the only thing that could really be left out is either a connection or a letter. In each piece of the puzzle, all of the letters are used. This leaves one possibility. Sure enough, upon checking the puzzle, you should see that there is one connection in each piece that is unused.

The next part of the puzzle involves what to do with the unused connections. The simple answer is to use them! Each connection gives us a letter pair. Puzzle creators love to use basic puzzles in their more complex ones, and I’m no exception. Word scrambles are classics in the puzzle world and are used frequently as a step in many more complex puzzles. I’d try unscrambling the letters with which you’re left. Once you do that, you should be able to solve the puzzle.

Also, as I’ve said before, once you’ve solved all of the puzzles, you’ll know what to do with them. Apparently, I have more in store for my puzzles than simply having them solved a single time. You should try to figure out what that is. I think you’ll be pleased with the result. In case you don’t know where to start looking, I have a simple suggestion—at the beginning.

Happy puzzling!

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