The Witness: Symmetry Laser Puzzles Walkthrough

Once you’ve completed the the Pink Trees, you can move on to the open world of the island. The grass will remain behind you as a rocky area opens up ahead. If you head to your left, you’ll come across a huge barn-like structure that happens to be a pottery manufacturing plant. This is where you’ll first encounter the Symmetry Puzzles.

Pottery Barn

The door to the barn will give you the instructions you need to solve the rest of the puzzles:

Once inside, you will find a huge oven, with wires leading to it. Each of these wires leads to a panel with a row of puzzles that require symmetry to solve. The puzzles will look confusing due to breaks in the paths and other issues. To help you out, we put together all the panels for you (click to enlarge):

Solving all the puzzles in the barn will power up a panel in the area nearby. This will lead to some real challenges as well as the first laser you’ll encounter since leaving the tunnel.

Gaining Access to Symmetry Laser

The panels solution is as follows:

This will start the string of puzzles you need to solve in order to open the gate leading to the laser. The first two (heading to the left of the steps) are simple symmetry ones like you’ve seen although one will introduce a new mechanic. The first solution is:

The second one gives you a taste of the yellow line. This works similarly to the other symmetry puzzles, except that no matter where you start, you will be the blue line. Figuring out which side is for you is important, as you’ll have blue and yellow hexagons to incorporate into your paths later on:

Once you’ve cleared that, a new kind of puzzle will appear. To solve these you simply need to line up the background and trace them. Some parts will be blocked by obstacles, so use the parts you can see to make it work (click to enlarge):

Now it’s back to those yellow lines from before. These are extra tricky because the yellow line fades as you progress. This makes things difficult as you’ll have to use your mind’s eye to envision where the yellow line is (it becomes invisible at a point), or you can just use our solutions (click to enlarge):

With these done, it’s time to access the laser.

Activating the Laser

You’re on the home stretch and the laser is within reach. You’ve powered up the door barring your access, now just input the simple puzzle solution and you’re almost there:

There are two sets of lasers, on one side you have blue, and on the other you have yellow. The blue side is impossible to do until you complete yellow. They are simple puzzles with yellow hexagons that need to be touched during your path:

The solutions of the blue puzzles are just reflections of the yellow puzzle directly across from them:

There you have it, you now have access to the symmetry laser and will earn yourself a shiny achievement. Simply walk up and swipe the lock and watch as the laser reveals itself.

You can also check out our growing wiki full of solutions for The Witness’s puzzles over here.