Friday, May 04, 2007

A really cool puzzle


I found this neat puzzle at Hastings in Rock Springs today. It's called Gordian's Knot. It comes assembled. The challenge is to get it apart. That took me almost an hour. Then the challenge becomes to reassemble it. After about two hours, I gave up, and read the (included) solution book.

Although the assembly solution is the disassembly solution in reverse, there are a lot of steps to follow, and I couldn't remember them to follow backwards. Also, there is only one solution.

Once I'm done playing with it, I'm going to give it to Phil.

UPDATE: There is only one proper disassembly solution. The one I found wasn't it. I wasn't intentionally cheating, but there are some points where the pieces are very loose, and their releative orientation can change, which apparently isn't supposed to happen. I did this without really noticing. I only realized what must have happened because it didn't go back together in the same order I took it apart.

Later,

3 people have spouted off:

Kyle Szklenski said...

Wow, that's like a cat toy for Philips. -Jackie

John said...
When I first got it, I thought "It may be tricky, but I can take anything apart."

I started to doubt after about 45 minutes, then inspiration struck.

Putting things back together is a totally different story.
5/4/07, 9:45 PM
phil said...

Wow, that's like a cat toy for me