Oh, then I have mixed that up with another adventure game. 
I DO think the reduction of verbs is a game changer, though I think that started with earlier games.
A lot if times I was “stuck” was related to not thinking of a different verb… Open Cereal in MI1, Push Speaker in Day of the Tentacle, and Bite Bottle in MI3 were all things that stumped me.
And I remember feeling cheated out of a puzzle in MI2, with LeChuck’s Fortress, the door with all the locks in it. I noticed immediately that the “recommended verb” for right-clicking was Look At instead of Open. That was weird and different! So yeah, sure enough, the puzzle solution was to Open the Door. That puzzle would have benefitted from the game not having right-click recommended verbs.
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I think you might be right for subtle reasons related to how the mind works.
For example, I have a hunch the skull might be useful here. But I haven’t really solved the puzzle. I only made a crude association in my mind, like “peg leg is made of wood + saw cuts wood => use saw on peg leg”.
So I drag the skull around and I learn it can be combined with this object. Accidental puzzle solving.
Note I’m not talking about cheating, here.
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And don’t forget that the verb interface is less intuitive. Especially for casual gamer.
Actually the verb interface was already a simplification of the parser in text adventures and the Sierra games.
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Have you noticed that a big red 
appears when the cursor is dragging an item over a non-interactive zone of the scene?
Well, from the video clip it’s not completely clear to me if the appears also when the cursor is over non-puzzle-related interactive hotspots. 
We know that from Delores… X will appear anytime you are dragging the skull on any unhandled object. (= any object for which a custom response has not been written)
I mean when there’s an unhandled combination.
I didn’t remember that. Does that mean that I can just drag the object around and release it as soon as I don’t see the X, hoping that it did something meaningful?
So, in theory, a workaround would be to handle a lot of combinations …
A lot of custom text for senseless combinations.
Exactly. Unless the writers handled a lot of senseless combinations (e.g. use skull on tree, use skull on vine).
Unlikely. But they could do this in just that critical location…
Wow. Casual indeed…
Not very obviously casual. Because you could argue that if you drag the object around you are cheating, and you are free to do so anyway. ( I for one won’t do it)
And then we need to get into psychology to respond.
In some sense, the problem is the UI makes it much easier to cheat, and does not communicate to the user they are cheating. There is no clear separation between cheating and playing normally.
I recently played Great Ace Attorney and they punish the player for wrong combinations. You can only miss 5 times. Then you need to restore a savegame. That would solve it 
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But isn’t that a little bit frustrating too?
No, it’s wonderful. It does something subconsciously to you, that keeps the tension high.
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But aside from cheating, there is the other problem: the case where I have a hunch that these two objects could be related, because they more or less seem to make sense together. So I combine them to see if I’m right. There, I am not cheating. I combine them without knowing there is something else to understand, that I failed to understand. (example: I don’t understand why I am sawing off the peg leg).
Trying everything with everything isn’t cheating, it’s a time-honoured tradition passed down from adventurer to adventurer and used by those with the steeliest of determination.
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It depends on your definition of “cheating”. 
Some games refuse to combine two objects if you couldn’t know why to combine them. For example if you haven’t spoken to the guy with the bike you can’t combine the pot with the rope (to build a helmet).
Generally speaking the game should give you all information that you need to solve a puzzle.
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Only when you’ve already solved it but you have to hold the game’s hand to tell it that you know.
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Yeah, I’m not sure what the definition of cheating is here. In the heady days, when we were playing MI2 Part 2 across three islands with several screens of inventory? I guarantee that if I was stuck, it means I had already tried combining every inventory item with every other inventory item, and I had moved on to trying probable inventory items with everything I came across.
That’s why I don’t fully understand how so many non-American gamers consider the monkey wrench puzzle so unfair. I mean… you just added a monkey to your inventory. You’re not trying to use that monkey on every object that looks like it needs an inventory item? I might’ve thought to use the monkey on the pump because maybe the monkey would operate a machine, even!
I can’t really criticize, because my big stumper was Use Saw on Peg Leg. But I solved it the same way a lot of foreigners probably solved Jojo: “This is my most probable inventory item, and I unleash it upon the known world!”
EDIT: And if it required us to load a saved game after we failed 5 times? We would save before starting the attempts! 
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No it doesn’t. The Great Ace Attorney gives you an option to retry when you lose, which resets you directly before the problem where you failed and with full health.
The original Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney game had that “five strikes and its game over” system. And it wasn’t really great. For the reasons other people have stated. AA is a series where losing isn’t compelling, and the series has struggled with how to treat player failure. I don’t even think TGAA’s method is great, but I prefer it over savescum strats.
Wow, they really are adventure games, aren’t they?
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