I asked for that info for my own personal curiosity. Both me and Nimmy are very competitive and I wanted to know what I did or didn't (or she did or didn't) in order to win.
Tom was kind enough to provide the info that made the difference. Everything was perfectly legal and fine.
Thank you darkraptor.
BUT, now that the quest is over, I think I can give my feedback.
Stage 1: - the code was fairly easy (at least for me) and it was fun. What "angered" (it is a strong word but I cannot find another one) was the lack of info (3 letters were missing but I had to "drag" the info out of Tom about what to do with those letters).
-the puzzle was indeed difficult and for me there was no way to solve it in the allocated time frame. So what I did was to try and form some words and search for them. Unfortunately I didn't search in the right place. So this was pretty frustrating. And not fun.
Stage 2 - to find the words in that big sheet - LOTS of fun for me since I used to do those kind of puzzles when I was a kid. The problem was there were spelling mistakes that made me lose precious time trying to find out if I made mistakes or I am missing something.
-find the locations: that was a mind blower. Luckily I cheated. I had a hunch on what those "hints" would be and the second one was easily to check (the one about Tranquil Planes). From that point it was just a kid's play to find what were the verses that fit. So....not exactly the way of solving Tom wanted.
Stage 3 - all the crosswords were solved mainly by using "Search". So the better you were at searching stuff the faster you could solve them. Not so fun. Quite frustrating at one point. Especially since some of the definitions were very ambiguous and vague.
Stage 4 - quite an impossible stage because I would have needed a rituals generator to be able to cover all possibilities. Not to mention that in certain conditions almost all rits can win. And the deadline killed me (but this is just me...): quite a complex task with only 2 days to complete AND during the working week. Again, no fun.
However, I admire the dedication and I acknowledge the effort Tom put in this quest. Hope he'll learn from his mistakes and next ones will have less bad points.
Also, Tom, PLEASE ask someone to spell proof your quests...