The main thing I’d say we need to be aware of here is that currently the Big One is very hard to actually score. If we have this, we’ll need some way to get more information about it.

e.g. brute forcing it will take on average 13 attempts per letter

That’s true. I’ve now changed the hint to be more informative.

don’t like the new hint. feel like it’ll result in more reductive gameplay where you always want binary search everything

Possibly. But direct binary search requires lots of separate Fish Identifications, each of which uses up energy. I think balancing that with wanting to put multiple guesses per Fish Identification, plus whatever constraints are imposed by the Fish Function and Obelisk hints, could be interesting. I personally don’t think the original hint would lead to more interesting gameplay anyway, though I’m certainly open to changing the hint if anyone wants to propose something.

I do like the idea of trophies. I wasn’t so keen on the specific clue at first, but I do think if it’s combined with other information sources, it could be interesting.