Variable "AttemptCount"

Hi Walt.  It is a quiz with all hot spot areas.  I created a system recording of all the steps a learner is supposed to have learned in a prior video.  I imported the screen capture in Test Mode so that it would make it a quiz.  So each hotspot on each slide is graded that way.  We want the users to have 3 attempts, but after 2 attempts, we give the users a "hint" by adding a highlight box where we they are supposed to click on the screen.  I changed the attempts on each of these slides to 3 attempts.  I then had the highlight box initial state as "hidden" and created a trigger to change the state of this shape to "normal" when user clicks outside of the hotspot if the AttemptCount value is 2.  Only on some of the slides, for whatever reason, when I go to create this trigger, there is no variable for AttemptCount.  I did some research and found that the AttemptCount variable gets created when you indicate that the learner has a certain amount of attempts.  Yet for some slides, which are no different than the other slides with the hotspots, this variable AttemptCount does not get created.  Is there a way to create this variable manually?  I have to get this done and I am just at a loss.  Thanks!