Expecto Patronum! crossed 100,000 page views tonight.
I was pretty certain it was going to happen today, but I was still a bit surprised when I looked at the stats and saw that the blog was now showing 100,010 page views. Not bad for a blog that started out as a post-DH brain dump!
For the longest time, the blog’s most popular page was Battle of Hogwarts Anniversary. That surprised me at first because I wrote the post in about 15 minutes. Most posts – or at least the analytical ones – take hours to write. Judging by the search terms in my stats, I think a lot of visitors were looking for the fanart featured in that post and stumbled across my blog.
Lately, though, the blog’s top page views have been the ones pertaining to Snape’s Logic Puzzle – or (in Google Search Term Lingo) the “Potions Puzzle Pottermore.”
The blog post again took about 15 minutes to write, but Solving Snape’s Logic Puzzle – the permanent page that the post points toward – took a good number of hours.
I wrote the page while doing the PS/SS re-read over a year ago, and I wrote it actually as a companion piece to the re-read post An Ounce of Logic, which was just getting too long. Solving the puzzle based entirely on the rhyme (and without being able to look at the bottle layout) was great fun because it was an opportunity to go all super-mega-ueber-geeky!
Because it is so geeky, Solving Snape’s Logic Puzzle got maybe an average of 3 page views per day in the year before Pottermore opened for Beta testing. But now – now that you actually have to solve the Logic Puzzle to advance in Pottermore – the hard work I spent solving the puzzle and writing about it last year has finally paid off. The average page views per day for that single page have jumped about 3000% since August 15… and who knows what the percentage will be come October, when Pottermore opens to the public. After all, the solution is already laid out, and people are looking for a quick way of solving the problem.
I can’t really think of a better way to celebrate the 100,000 milestone than by knowing that some of my personal favorite work on Expecto Patronum! has caught on and taken us over the mark.
So thank you, everybody who’s reading, for visiting and supporting this blog. :)
Expecto Patronum! 
CONGRATS ON THE RISE TO YOUR SITE. I MY SELF FINE IT QUITE INTERESTING. IT HAS GROWN ON ME IN THE PAST COUPLE OF MONTHS. ON A MORE UPSETTING NOTE STILL WAITING FOR MY LETTER FEELS LIKE I’LL NEVER GET IN. AT LEAST I HAVE EP TO KEEP ME INFORMED THANKS SO MUCH.
Thank you so much. :) I think you’ll be getting in soon now. Pottermore has announced that they are picking up the pace!
Way to go Sis! Congrats!
Looked at the logic puzzle, now that I know I will need it. Will try to work on it before I study your hints.
I think my owl is still waiting to hatch.
Your Sis
Your owl should arrive soon, I think. :)
Congrats!
Thank you! I hope to see you inside Pottermore soon!
congrats Cindy! its not surprising that your blog gets so many many visits :) it really is splendid work.
Thank you Steph! :) It was amazing how it slowly built, and then just exploded.
Congratulations!
Thank you so much!
What happens if you ‘solve’ the puzzle wrong?
I don’t know. I’ve never solved it wrong. :)
Look at the Solving Snape’s Logic Puzzle page. At the bottom of the page, right before the comments, there are two solutions. One of them is correct. The only difference between the two is the location of the “Forward” bottle (and the poison it switches positions with). You are looking for “Forward” and “Backward.”
So what do we know about the size of the bottle that holds the “Forward” potion? (It’s in the chapter – and also a little bit further up on the page). Once you know the answer to that question, all you need to do is look at the bottles and you can tell which one should be the Forward potion.