I'm now slightly regretting having bought The Witness. So many of these puzzles are incredibly hard to figure out lol
How I think it's supposed to go, you are meant to maybe figure out what certain symbols and colors mean on kinda easier stuff and then as you go on, you got a better idea on what to do with harder ones, but far too often I'm just not figuring out what the black dots and the white really mean, even though I've gotten through a number puzzles with them or with any other symbol. Everytime I think I have the puzzle worked out, what the symbol could mean, I find out I absolutely don't. I also absolutely hate on some lines of puzzles, if you fail, it will close that one and make you redo the previous one, but its already still saved, so you just look at what you did, trace it really quick, power up the next one, and hope you get it right. I think this is terrible design as it's not punishing you, it's just creating more tedious busywork. I could understand it slightly as a way to keep people from brute forcing some puzzles, but it's very random when it does this too you.
I'm gonna keep trying, but I've been making my way around the island continually finding stuff that stops progression. Frustrating game for sure, but interesting.