finished! turns out the command is "use pot on a-frame"
First, I'll say where my opinions come from... I tend to be more from the text-based MUD crowd but moved on to playing a lot of older and newer text adventures.
Frustrating at times but a really good puzzle game that's a good blend of classic text adventure intuition and common sense. I'm not from the era of the old school text adventures games so some of the commands to me aren't as intuitive and involve finding the correct syntax like "lift carpet" or "push button" (instead of press button). The putty business on the tripod and the laser (its a good thing I didn't try to turn it on) also threw me off, and it took me over three tries to figure out how to find the gravestone when the laser was on. Overall a very nice job - there weren't any glitches in the game.
finished! one of the best text based puzzle games i've played. frustrating but oh so rewarding at the very end... especially when done without a walkthrough. off to mansion ii...
