Monkey Island 1 - How to find out about yellow petals?

[Muyfa666]

This actually bothered me for years...

When I first played MI1, I never figured out how to get past the piranha poodles, so I found out about the yellow petals in a online FAQ.

My question is; how do I find out in-game about the petals?

[eriktorbjorn]

The only clue I ever found was that Otis talks about how he's been imprisoned for picking the "yellow Caniche Endormi flowers in the forest". I don't know French, and I don't know if the game really expects you to, but Google Translate claims it means "poodle asleep".

[Muyfa666]

I am trying to recall reading about the flowers somewhere in the game, but that's probably me remembering it wrong.

So there's really no clue to this? Wow. That would be almost impossible to figure out without a guide...

[LordHoto]

One of the three pirates tells you that you could try to drug the dogs IIRC. And eriktorbjorn already mentioned that Otis talks about being imprisoned for picking up the yellow flowers. So, basically it's just giving you some hints and you would need to take a guess that you can do it with the flowers.

I can't remember using a walkthrough for this one, so I can't really say it's "impossible to figure out without a guide."

[criezy]

I didn't use a walkthought either but Otis' hint is a huge hint when you understand French ("caniche endormi" indeed literally means asleep poodle).

[Muyfa666]

Yeah, it seems like the french is actually the hint.

How people figured this out (in countries where french is not common at least) before the internet is beyond me.

Personally, no one of my friends speak french at all, so this would've been a difficult nut to crack.

Oh well, nice to hear to explanation at last.

[jepael]

Yeah, it seems like the french is actually the hint.

But it's not only a french hint. Those words have latin origin so they are similar also in many other languages.
Even in en-us language dogs could be called canines (police have K9 units, wolves are canis lupus) and students might sleep in dorms (or be otherwise dormant).

Back when I first played this game as a kid, me and schoolmates could not understand all the details in english (we had just had only 2-3 years of english in school so far) and I still don't understand french So some of the puzzles were a challenge. But it did teach a lot of english...

[criezy]

Yes, French is similar to other latin-based languages so you might work out the meaning even if you don't know French. But in this particular case you also got lucky (maybe). In latin, dog is canis, which has given the word canine in English (and both chien - not obvious that that's the commonly given etymology - and canin in French). But French dictionaries give a different origin for caniche: it seems it is derived from cane (a female duck) with the -iche suffix (which is common in French) because this is a type of dog that likes water (although it is possible that it is derived from both canis and cane to mean a water dog).

Note: cane also as a latin origin. It comes from anas which means duck.

And now I don't regret studying latin at school since it can help me solve adventure game puzzles

[Freddo]

I don't remember if I had any problems with this particular puzzle, but in these games you always pick up everything (except in Dreamweb I suppose), and if you get stuck you try every possible combination you can think of.

I do remember being stuck in Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis for 2 weeks once. No way that would happen today, with internet and guides being so easily available.

[LogicDeLuxe]

It's called "Hundeschlafblume" in the German version. Boris Schneider made the game quite a bit easier for us, I guess.