Some of the puzzles require musical insight and good hearing capabilities, for instance tuning an instrument or putting fragments in the correct order. Another type of puzzle is purely trial and error (although musical insight can help a little, it involves reconstructing 'messed up' sheets of music).

One mini-game is playing cards. Since it depends on luck and coincidence it can take a while to win this, which influences the flow of the game (not very realistic to play a dozen rounds of a game of cards when you are in a hurry). The worst however is a conducting mini-game. A dot 'dances' on the screen and you have to follow it with your mouse cursor. This is completely impossible with a scrollwheel-type mouse (which I have) and very hard with a normal mouse (which I bought to be able to play this game). Fortunately, you can make a few mistakes as the result influences a simple word puzzle which is easy to solve even with lots of mistakes in the conducting game. However, at the end of the game you have to perform this mini-game perfectly without any mistake. I was not able to do this even after trying a dozen times. I had to ALT-TAB out of the game to escape the continuous loop of trying again and again.

musical puzzles

I don't mind music puzzles, as long as they're not too difficult or involve recognizing and memorizing complex chord progressions. But I don't like card games in game (except Scopa is OK). I don't like either Poker or 21. And the follow-the-dot "puzzle" sounds like a pain. Is there a way to skip that last puzzle where you have to get it "perfect" with a saved game?