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Celebrating Puzzles

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the puzzles-on-parade dept.

Doofus writes "The New York Times is running an article, Celebrating puzzles, that is about a puzzle exhibit opening at the Lilly Library at Indiana University. The primary collector, a Mr. Slocum, has been collecting interesting and challenging 3D puzzles for many years, and has helped to curate the exhibition. The article describes one variation of the towers of Hanoi puzzle that involves 65 rings and has a mind-blowing 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 moves in a perfect solution. A twist on the standard museum exhibition — the puzzles on exhibit are stored each night in drawers — that must be puzzled open by the first visitors the following morning."

4 of 87 comments (clear)

  1. Something seems strange with the move numbers by kevinatilusa · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The 65 ring puzzle is claimed to take what turns out to be exactly 2^64 moves. This makes some sense sense for a recursive puzzle, since we could be in a situation where the two ring puzzle finishes in 1 move and each additional ring doubles the length.

    However, it's not consistent with the 9 move puzzle, which is supposed to require 341 (2^8+2^6+2^4+2^2+1) moves. Perhaps the 65 ring puzzle instead requires 2^64+2^62+2^60+...+2^2+1=24,595,658,764,946,068,82 1 moves to solve?

    1. Re:Something seems strange with the move numbers by Sarastrobert · · Score: 5, Interesting
      When you say that formula out loud...


      "Two to the power of N minus one"

      ...you can't really tell if they mean 2^N-1 which is correct or 2^(N-1) which is incorrect but in the article). Perhaps that is what happened?

  2. Re:Greatest puzzle ever by Pzychotix · · Score: 2, Interesting

    42.

  3. Verbing weirds language... by necro2607 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Wow.

    "the puzzles on exhibit are stored each night in drawers -- that must be puzzled open by the first visitors the following morning"

    "Puzzled open"? What? So now "puzzle" has become a verb that is essentially a redundant synonym for.... "solve"? *sigh*