LATEST - Symmetric Shape Puzzles From IPP37

Three of around half dozen symmetric shape puzzles featured. Puzzles from Nick Baxter, Tomas Linden/Vesa Timonen and Emrehan Halici. Please follow the link below.

http://mechanical-puzzles.com/symmetric-shape-puzzles/

Square & Equilateral Triangle

I have never been a huge fan of shape forming puzzles. But after I played with Emrehan Halici's Four Triangles Five Shapes, and more recently Andrea Rover's Growing Triangle, this sort of puzzles, plus the "form-a-symmetrical shape" ones have gotten more of my attention (and liking). I have also recently designed something along similar lines and hopefully will be able to showcase it at IPP37 this coming August.

Square & Equilateral Triangle (SET) is Halici's IPP36 Exchange Puzzle. There are two goals here; use the five irregular shaped pieces to form a square and the same five pieces to form an equilateral triangle (a triangle with three sides of equal length).

It makes me wonder about the genius of Turkish Halici to be able to come up with a design for two different (and symmetrical) shapes using the same pieces; incredible! Unlike his Four Triangles Five Shapes which I failed dismally, I am proud to say that I managed to solve SET without any help, although it took me a number of short puzzling sessions over several days.

I managed to solve the square within a matter of minutes, but the equilateral triangle took about fifteen times longer...it simply eluded me despite my many attempts to try the different combination of putting the five pieces side by side. Finally the A-ha moment arrived one day during a lunch time break.

[Edit 20 April 2017 - Stanislav Knot has come up with an additional 9 different shapes using the 5 pieces. Thanks Stan!]

For folks who are into this sort of puzzles, the SET has just the "right level of difficulty" for an exchange puzzle; one relatively easy goal to get the juices going and a second much tougher challenge. Anyone keen to see the two solutions please PM me here.

Of Symmetry And Shapes

This weekend's puzzle play consisted of Symmetrick from Vesa Timonen of Finland and Four Triangles Five Shapes from Emrehan Halici of Turkey. 

Symmetrick

Symmetrick was a Top 10 Vote Getter during the IPP33 Puzzle Design Competition in Japan. It was also Vesa's exchange puzzle during IPP32 the previous year. In case you didn't know, vesa is a very prolific designer with a number of Hanayama Cast puzzle designs to his name.

Comprising of just two irregular shaped pieces made of Finnish Curly Birch wood in a raw finish, the goal here is to form a symmetrical shape. The instructions are clear....to place the two pieces on a flat surface to form a symmetrical shape...no tricks, no silhouette, hole in centre and the like.

One would wonder how difficult can that be with just two pieces right? Wrong...it is in fact a rather difficult puzzle, more so if you don't even understand what a symmetrical shape refers to. 

During IPP33 itself, I had already seen quite a number of puzzlers in the competition room trying to figure this one out.... and many couldn't solve it even by the end of the event. All round it received a lot of positive comments. I took about a couple of hours before hitting the jackpot. Please PM me if you would like to see the solution...it's really quite unexpected.

Symmetrick IMHO is really an example of a great puzzle design, so simple and innocuous looking with just two pieces, yet very challenging. For those who love this sort of shape forming puzzles, its a must have. Available from Mr Puzzle Of Australia and Sloyd of Finland.

Four Triangles Five Shapes

This puzzle came courtesy of Emrehan Halici. I had a privilege of meeting Emrehan the second time during IPP35 in Ottawa last year and his Four Triangles Five Shapes (FTFS) was his exchange puzzle to me.

The FTFS is made of 3mm red laser cut acrylic. The four pieces comprise of four triangles of different shapes. Nicely cut and pretty large pieces so easy to handle.

There are five different tasks here (hence the name "five shapes"). Using all the triangles to make the following shapes:-

1. 3 different Pararellograms

2. An Isoceles triangle

3. A Square

I was able to make just one of the parallelograms, the isoceles triangle and the square...or so I thought. I shot an email to Emrehan for the solutions to the other two parallelograms and when he replied I was in for a shock; I had only gotten the square correct!

How difficult is the FTFS? Well, I only managed to solve one of the five shapes, despite just four pieces. I would rate it as very challenging indeed. As this one is an exchange puzzle, it's only available from the designer (assuming he has any left), so please PM me if you would like to get a copy and I will link you up with Emrehan.