7 ms·

The Flummoxagon

135 points by robinhouston 1y ago

smokel 1y ago
Very interesting, but I have a hard time differentiating the colors. The gradients seem to be there for aesthetics only, but they confuse me to no end :)
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- nervous_jessica 1y ago
  Fair point. The gradients are just to be pretty. We could make you a solid color version if you would like. Email orders@nervo.us and we can set up a custom order.
fjfaase 1y ago
Nice article, which also explains the mapping of the puzzle to an exact cover problem and how those can be solved with dangling links as in Knuth's Algorithm X.
- MontagFTB 1y ago
  A blast from the past! I once wrote an implementation of dancing_links in C++ as part of a Sudoku solver: https://github.com/stlab/adobe_source_libraries/blob/main/adobe/dancing_links.hpp https://github.com/stlab/adobe_source_libraries/blob/main/ad...
jeffrallen 1y ago
Oh my god, take my money, please. These types of tactile puzzles are the ideal nerdsnipe for me.
colordrops 1y ago
Looks amazing but getting 500 errors from the payment flow and the FLUMMOX discount code doesn't work as advertised.
- nervous_jessica 1y ago
  hi colordrops! the flummox coupon works in the shopping cart. often folks try to apply it in the gift card box in the checkout procedure. Let me know if you already placed and order and I can apply the coupon retroactively for you. If you would like to provide any more info on the checkout errors you can email me at orders@nervo.us
  - phinnaeus 1y ago
    As an aside, nervo.us is way easier to type than the hyphenated domain. Just curious if you ever considered reversing the redirect?
    - nervous_jessica 1y ago
      I'm somewhat ignorant about the search ranking implications of changing our domain. I bought the nervo.us domain much later and we've had the n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com domain since 2007.
- mannykannot 1y ago
  I paused at the statement "Add $55 for free domestic shipping" on the order form.
cadamsdotcom 1y ago
Absolutely love this. Amazing creativity! Totally feeling like vibe-coding a web version of the game and plastering it with giant BUY THIS THING links that send people to the real thing.
rendaw 1y ago
Tangential, but does anyone know good places to find other physical puzzles like this? Also, recently there was an article on elastic knots I was hoping someone would productize into a novelty puzzle.
- robinhouston 1y ago
  Be careful! There's a whole world of mechanical puzzles out there, and it can get very expensive and start to take over your life. Here's an assortment of links to places where you can buy interesting puzzles. This isn't exhaustive of course: it's just a few places that came to mind. https://www.puzzlemaster.ca/ https://www.puzzlemaster.ca/ https://puzzleparadise.net/ https://puzzleparadise.net/ https://www.pelikanpuzzles.eu/ https://www.pelikanpuzzles.eu/ https://twobrassmonkeys.com/ https://twobrassmonkeys.com/ https://www.etsy.com/shop/PuzzleguyStore https://www.etsy.com/shop/PuzzleguyStore
  - jonahx 1y ago
    Also: Tavern Puzzles, high quality metal entanglement puzzles: https://tavernpuzzles.store.turbify.net/puzzle.html https://tavernpuzzles.store.turbify.net/puzzle.html Craighill. These puzzles are beautiful and double as art objects: https://craighill.co/collections/play https://craighill.co/collections/play
- RheingoldRiver 1y ago
  https://www.gamepuzzles.com https://www.gamepuzzles.com has some great ones
MontyCarloHall 1y ago
So many puzzles like this basically require you to brute-force the solution [0], which just isn’t all that fun. I’m glad the designers explicitly acknowledge they’re trying to avoid this, and really hope that their claim that this actually can be solved with logic holds true: What if instead of doing the full colored puzzle, we find partial sets of tiles where there is only one unique solution? This adds enough constraints to the problem that it becomes feasible [without resorting to brute force]. [0] https://www.puzzlemaster.ca/search/?c=woodpacking%2Cwoodtangram&difficulty=8%2C9%2C10 https://www.puzzlemaster.ca/search/?c=woodpacking%2Cwoodtang...
peterpuzzle 1y ago
Recently I designed a calendar puzzle with 10 tetris-like pieces. When you place all the puzzle pieces on the board, three squares/rhombuses are still open and together they form a date. Can you arrange the puzzle pieces in such a way that it shows todays date? See https://praxispuzzles.com/calendar_puzzle_rhombus https://praxispuzzles.com/calendar_puzzle_rhombus Disclaimer: I sell these puzzles for a little more than the raw material.
- xyzzy_plugh 1y ago
  This is quite clever.
- teraflop 1y ago
  Very cool! Unfortunately the interactive demo doesn't work for me (Firefox 143.0.4 on Windows): > Uncaught TypeError: can't access property "inverse", this.puzzlemat.getScreenCTM() is null
  - peterpuzzle 1y ago
    Fixed. On some puzzle pieces there is still a small offset in Firefox, but I can't find the reason...
- rawling 1y ago
  Can you arrange them to make dates that don't exist, or is it designed so you can't?
  - peterpuzzle 1y ago
    You can arrange the puzzle pieces to make dates that don't exist, like Monday February 31. Actually there may be "impossible" dates, because I didn't check for them, but I think all combinations of days of the week, day of the month and month are possible.
- malnourish 1y ago
  I love this. Do you ship to the US?
phinnaeus 1y ago
Love Nervous System design. I have quite a few pieces from them including one of their infinity puzzles. Very high quality work.
tromp 1y ago
Reminds me of the 1 million pound first solution prize Eternity puzzle ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternity_puzzle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternity_puzzle
fjfaase 1y ago
It would be nice, if they could publish the exact cover. I have written some algorithm that can estimate the number of solutions to an exact cover base on the number of solutions it found and the size of the 'tree' that has been explored. I could write a program myself to calculate the exact cover, but I guess, it will take me about a day to do so. It would not surprise me if the exact cover will be a few hundred mega bytes (when using one character per position).
- nervous_jessica 1y ago
  We haven't actually run the thing to completion. We ran it for a couple days and then stopped after finding tens of thousands of solutions. Might explore again if we have time to improve the solver efficiency.
  - fjfaase 1y ago
    I did write a program to generate an exact cover. Thr output is a little over 5 megabyte when using a notation that list the indices of the positions that have a 1. I have not yet verified that it is correct. My solver found one solution so far and edtimates that the number of solutions is more than 10^50.
amiga386 1y ago
https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/map.html https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/map....
waltbosz 1y ago
I have a smaller version of this puzzle. It's fun and easy to get lost in. My wife was convinced we were missing a piece until I solved it.
fjfaase 1y ago
I wrote a program to produce the exact cover for the puzzle and I did some experiments with my exact cover solver to find solutions and generate an estimate of the number of solutions. I am not very sure on the estimate. One run returned a number of 10^50 and another one (with a slightly different, but more successful search strategy) returned a number of 10^148. The generated exact cover is about 5 megabytes using a notation the positions for the ones in the vector are listed. The second run has now found about 200 solutions in about six hours, which is far less than the ten thousands that they have found [2]. I do not know of any other programs that can estimate the number of solutions of an exact cover. [1] https://www.iwriteiam.nl/D2510.html#16 https://www.iwriteiam.nl/D2510.html#16 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45559402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45559402

135 points by robinhouston 1y ago

Very interesting, but I have a hard time differentiating the colors. The gradients seem to be there for aesthetics only, but they confuse me to no end :)

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
nervous_jessica 1y ago
Fair point. The gradients are just to be pretty. We could make you a solid color version if you would like. Email orders@nervo.us and we can set up a custom order.

fjfaase 1y ago

Nice article, which also explains the mapping of the puzzle to an exact cover problem and how those can be solved with dangling links as in Knuth's Algorithm X.

MontagFTB 1y ago
A blast from the past! I once wrote an implementation of dancing_links in C++ as part of a Sudoku solver: https://github.com/stlab/adobe_source_libraries/blob/main/adobe/dancing_links.hpp https://github.com/stlab/adobe_source_libraries/blob/main/ad...

jeffrallen 1y ago

Oh my god, take my money, please. These types of tactile puzzles are the ideal nerdsnipe for me.

colordrops 1y ago

Looks amazing but getting 500 errors from the payment flow and the FLUMMOX discount code doesn't work as advertised.

nervous_jessica 1y ago
hi colordrops! the flummox coupon works in the shopping cart. often folks try to apply it in the gift card box in the checkout procedure. Let me know if you already placed and order and I can apply the coupon retroactively for you. If you would like to provide any more info on the checkout errors you can email me at orders@nervo.us
- phinnaeus 1y ago
  As an aside, nervo.us is way easier to type than the hyphenated domain. Just curious if you ever considered reversing the redirect?
  - nervous_jessica 1y ago
    I'm somewhat ignorant about the search ranking implications of changing our domain. I bought the nervo.us domain much later and we've had the n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com domain since 2007.
mannykannot 1y ago
I paused at the statement "Add $55 for free domestic shipping" on the order form.

cadamsdotcom 1y ago

Absolutely love this. Amazing creativity! Totally feeling like vibe-coding a web version of the game and plastering it with giant BUY THIS THING links that send people to the real thing.

rendaw 1y ago

Tangential, but does anyone know good places to find other physical puzzles like this? Also, recently there was an article on elastic knots I was hoping someone would productize into a novelty puzzle.

robinhouston 1y ago
Be careful! There's a whole world of mechanical puzzles out there, and it can get very expensive and start to take over your life. Here's an assortment of links to places where you can buy interesting puzzles. This isn't exhaustive of course: it's just a few places that came to mind. https://www.puzzlemaster.ca/ https://www.puzzlemaster.ca/ https://puzzleparadise.net/ https://puzzleparadise.net/ https://www.pelikanpuzzles.eu/ https://www.pelikanpuzzles.eu/ https://twobrassmonkeys.com/ https://twobrassmonkeys.com/ https://www.etsy.com/shop/PuzzleguyStore https://www.etsy.com/shop/PuzzleguyStore
- jonahx 1y ago
  Also: Tavern Puzzles, high quality metal entanglement puzzles: https://tavernpuzzles.store.turbify.net/puzzle.html https://tavernpuzzles.store.turbify.net/puzzle.html Craighill. These puzzles are beautiful and double as art objects: https://craighill.co/collections/play https://craighill.co/collections/play
RheingoldRiver 1y ago
https://www.gamepuzzles.com https://www.gamepuzzles.com has some great ones

MontyCarloHall 1y ago

So many puzzles like this basically require you to brute-force the solution [0], which just isn’t all that fun. I’m glad the designers explicitly acknowledge they’re trying to avoid this, and really hope that their claim that this actually can be solved with logic holds true: What if instead of doing the full colored puzzle, we find partial sets of tiles where there is only one unique solution? This adds enough constraints to the problem that it becomes feasible [without resorting to brute force]. [0] https://www.puzzlemaster.ca/search/?c=woodpacking%2Cwoodtangram&difficulty=8%2C9%2C10 https://www.puzzlemaster.ca/search/?c=woodpacking%2Cwoodtang...

peterpuzzle 1y ago

Recently I designed a calendar puzzle with 10 tetris-like pieces. When you place all the puzzle pieces on the board, three squares/rhombuses are still open and together they form a date. Can you arrange the puzzle pieces in such a way that it shows todays date? See https://praxispuzzles.com/calendar_puzzle_rhombus https://praxispuzzles.com/calendar_puzzle_rhombus Disclaimer: I sell these puzzles for a little more than the raw material.

xyzzy_plugh 1y ago
This is quite clever.
teraflop 1y ago
Very cool! Unfortunately the interactive demo doesn't work for me (Firefox 143.0.4 on Windows): > Uncaught TypeError: can't access property "inverse", this.puzzlemat.getScreenCTM() is null
- peterpuzzle 1y ago
  Fixed. On some puzzle pieces there is still a small offset in Firefox, but I can't find the reason...
rawling 1y ago
Can you arrange them to make dates that don't exist, or is it designed so you can't?
- peterpuzzle 1y ago
  You can arrange the puzzle pieces to make dates that don't exist, like Monday February 31. Actually there may be "impossible" dates, because I didn't check for them, but I think all combinations of days of the week, day of the month and month are possible.
malnourish 1y ago
I love this. Do you ship to the US?

phinnaeus 1y ago

Love Nervous System design. I have quite a few pieces from them including one of their infinity puzzles. Very high quality work.

tromp 1y ago

Reminds me of the 1 million pound first solution prize Eternity puzzle ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternity_puzzle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternity_puzzle

fjfaase 1y ago

It would be nice, if they could publish the exact cover. I have written some algorithm that can estimate the number of solutions to an exact cover base on the number of solutions it found and the size of the 'tree' that has been explored. I could write a program myself to calculate the exact cover, but I guess, it will take me about a day to do so. It would not surprise me if the exact cover will be a few hundred mega bytes (when using one character per position).

nervous_jessica 1y ago
We haven't actually run the thing to completion. We ran it for a couple days and then stopped after finding tens of thousands of solutions. Might explore again if we have time to improve the solver efficiency.
- fjfaase 1y ago
  I did write a program to generate an exact cover. Thr output is a little over 5 megabyte when using a notation that list the indices of the positions that have a 1. I have not yet verified that it is correct. My solver found one solution so far and edtimates that the number of solutions is more than 10^50.

amiga386 1y ago

https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/map.html https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/map....

waltbosz 1y ago

I have a smaller version of this puzzle. It's fun and easy to get lost in. My wife was convinced we were missing a piece until I solved it.

fjfaase 1y ago

I wrote a program to produce the exact cover for the puzzle and I did some experiments with my exact cover solver to find solutions and generate an estimate of the number of solutions. I am not very sure on the estimate. One run returned a number of 10^50 and another one (with a slightly different, but more successful search strategy) returned a number of 10^148. The generated exact cover is about 5 megabytes using a notation the positions for the ones in the vector are listed. The second run has now found about 200 solutions in about six hours, which is far less than the ten thousands that they have found [2]. I do not know of any other programs that can estimate the number of solutions of an exact cover. [1] https://www.iwriteiam.nl/D2510.html#16 https://www.iwriteiam.nl/D2510.html#16 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45559402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45559402