Instructables has a nice article about how to create your own interlocking puzzle using legos. First you build the pieces of the puzzle with legos and then you try to solve the puzzle. It’s nice. Particularly for those who have a lot of legos sitting around and don’t want to pay for mechanical puzzles that might not be much fun after the first time they’re solved.
I also notice that there are quite a few lego puzzles on Instructables that are worth checking out.
Erno Rubik, inventor of the Rubik’s Cube, has developed a new puzzle that is coming soon to a store near you. The puzzle is called Rubik’s 360. There aren’t a whole lot of details about the puzzle, but from pictures it appears to be a clear plastic ball with smaller colored balls inside. The goal is to get each ball into the appropriately colored ring on the surface of the larger ball.
ThinkFun is having a contest to see who can solve their 36 Cube puzzle. The 36 cube puzzle requires you to arrange a collection of “towers” in a 6X6 block. Each tower is a different color and a different height, which leads us to the two rules you need to follow. The first is that a color may appear only one in each row or column. The second is that all of the towers must be placed so that they are all a uniform height. The places for the towers in the cube are already at varying elevtions, such that each row or column will have only have one tower of a particular height. The completed puzzle will then be a cube.
The first 36 contestants who can prove that they solved the puzzle will win a ThinkFun Game Club kit for the school of their choice.
From the MAKE blog: A new puzzle called Trigears. Trigears is a set of three gears that must be positioned so that all three gears mesh at a single point and the gears do not jam when they spin. One of the creators notes that there are no other puzzles like it. I can’t think of one. The puzzles were made in a very limited run so, if you want to buy one at Puzzle Palace, it will cost you $425.
There is a new puzzle up at Smartkit called Untouchable that was written by Peter Grabarchuk. The goal is to arrange a group of hexominoes in a grid so that they don’t touch. Smartkit is giving away prizes for those who can solve the puzzle first.
I found a blog post entitled “The Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever” and, naturally, it piqued my interest. The post points to a Wikipedia entry of the same name. Apparently, there is a puzzle commonly know as “The Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever” and it is attributed to Raymond Smullyan and John McCarthy.
It’s a kind of puzzle that most will be familiar with. The puzzler is presented with three gods. One that always lies, one that always tells the truth, and one that sometimes lies and sometimes tells the truth. Your task is to come up with three questions that will help you determine the identity of each god. The additional trick is that the gods speak their own language and you have to decipher that as well.
The solution to the puzzle is on the wikipedia page, so don’t read it all if you want to figure it out for yourself.
Over at onigame’s blog, there is a Penrose Sudoku posted. The main trick to solving the puzzle seems to be discovering the row/column equivalents. Go check it out and, please, post tips if you have them.
If anyone has ever tied to solve the peg solitaire puzzle, you’ve probably reached a point where you wondered if there really was a solution. Here’s a video that demonstrates how to solve the puzzle.
There’s a new sudoku variation over at The Griddle called Curve Doku. The puzzle combines a killer sudoku with a greater-than sudoku. It’s called Curve Doku because the two puzzles are connected by curves that also serve as blocks in the sudoku grid.
I got an email today about a web site dedicated to pentominoes. Currently, the site is running a competition for readers to solve a pentomino sudoku. It is similar to a standard sudoku, but the grid is made up of pentominoes and the numbers in each pentomino sum to 22. Enjoy!
There’s an article in the Times Online about an art installation going in at the Stanmore Underground station in northwest London. The installation is part of an Art On The Underground project that is sponsoring installations in a number of stations around London. What’s interesting about the Stanmore station is that it focuses on crossword puzzles.
Serena Korda, the artist behind the installation, chose crossword puzzles as a theme because the Stanmore station is near where code breaking computer were housed during World War II. Solving a Times crossword puzzle in less than 12 minutes was a requirement to join the codebreakers at Bletchley Park. The installation was also inspired by information leaflets handed out in the underground during World War II. These leaflets featured a crossword on the back.
Along with installation, there are a number of crossword puzzles themed around Stanmore. The installation itself provides clues for the puzzles. The installation is called The Answer Lies at the End of the Line. And, apparently, this is also true for any who can’t solve the puzzles.
There’s a nice video on the Britannica Blog about a new digital puzzle. The puzzle is four blocks with a grid of LEDs on top. The LEDs light up in specific patterns and the object is to arrange the blocks so that all of the edges match up properly. The puzzle is timed and can also tell when it has been correctly solved.
Andrew M. Greene emailed me a link to some puzzles that he made up for the Jewish holiday of Purim, which is today. Enjoy!
I have a thing for puzzles based on games where knowledge of the rules of the game help you to solve the puzzle. I’ve been trying for a while to come up with a good puzzle based on Texas Holdem Poker. (For Texas Holdem neophytes, instructions for the game can be found at the previous link.) The idea that kept coming to my mind was the climactic poker scene in Casino Royale when James Bond wins all of the chips. There are four or five players left at the time and they all have cards that make up good hands with the common cards, and still they are all hands of very different values. I wondered if you could figure out what the four common cards were if you were shown each players individual cards and given the final rankings. As a proof of concept I came up with the puzzle below. There are six hands. Hand 1 ranks highest with the common cards and hand 6 ranks lowest. The object is to determine the common cards.
I this puzzle is fairly easy and, of course, the idea would be to provide as little information as possible and still have a unique solution. I’m not sure yet if really challenging puzzles can be made, but I think there is potential here.
Oh yeah, and here’s the answer.
A new puzzle game has been launched to promote the upcoming sequel to Batman Begins, The Dark Knight. The puzzle begins at a site called whysoserious.com and it seems to involve finding and photographing actual locations around the country. Enjoy!
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