Through the KrazyDad blog, I discovered a new puzzle called QFold. QFold is essentially a variation on a type of puzzle with which we’re all familiar that involves looking at two different pictures and finding the differences. These puzzles show up every year in the US Puzzle Competition with variations including multiple pictures and reflected pictures.
QFold puzzles are divided up into four quadrants. They’re supposed to be symmetrical across both the horizontal and the vertical axes, but they’re not… not quite anyway. So, in a QFold puzzle, you have four different pictures. The first occupies one quadrant; the second is reflected horizontally and occupies another quadrant; the third is reflected vertically and occupies a third quadrant; and the fourth is reflected both horizontally and vertically and occupies the final quadrant. Each of these pictures has slight differences from the others.
The puzzle designer calls these differences “outs” and there are 10 different kinds of outs: lone, gone, grow, shrink, light, dark, flip, turn, move, and flex. To get an idea of what these correspond to, it’s best to look at the example puzzle. For each puzzle, you are told how many “outs” there are with a maximum of three “outs” in each category.
The design for the puzzles is very well done and the drawings are extremely detailed making the puzzles quite challenging. Right now, there are five puzzles available on the site and they’re free to download. So I recommend checking them out.
Tags: puzzles,qfold
