My post did make it up! After posting I couldn't find it anywhere so figured I mustn't have posted right - so thanks to those that responded.
It's odd, because a negative of the game is having to go through those tough-love experiences, while a positive is knowing how to deal with them afterwards!
The puzzles are mostly non-newbie-tutorial-level-friendly, but it's great the game has that level of depth and complexity too.
I hadn't played for about a week, came back in and was trying to find the Witch in the East, which(!) I did and almost cleared the level and was doing really well until I made another simple stupid mistake - Fireball the Vampire so we both died. Then I re-did the level and ended up doing almost the same thing because I thought I had it all licked.
Really need that "idiot" button