Slashdot Mirror
Celebrating Puzzles
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."
I like making the patrons open up the shop, but I wonder if part of the puzzle is for them to figure out that they must do so?
"You're young, you're drunk, you're in bed, you have knives; shit happens." -- Angelina Jolie
"Perhaps the most famous class of physics-based puzzles is one of the most ancient: puzzle vessels. Usually built in the form of a cup or a jug, these vessels offer the challenge that one must drink from them, or fill them up, without spilling any liquid"
I think I came across one of these last night in the pub. The funny thing was it seemed to get more difficult as the night went on.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
> 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."
Wow, that sounds as original and...uh..fun...as those tedious games where you get crappy cars/characters until you've played for ages and improved them. As a paying customer/gamer I expect to be having fun straight out of the box. I guess if I visit this place I'll turn up in the afternoon and hope some sad bastards got there early!
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.
2 1 moves to solve?
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=24,595,658,764,946,068,8
http://www.geek.com/techupdate/jul99/pacman.htm/
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
42.
Figure out why hot dogs come in packages of 8 whereas hot dog buns come in packages of 6.
A mathematical analysis can be found here with some cool pictures, but it doesn't explain the rules, unfortunately.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
FTA: "...A perfect solution in that case would take 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 moves, Mr. Slocum said..." Remarkable Mr. Slocum actually managed to pronounce this...
http://www.gravitation3d.com/magiccube5d/
Five dimensional rubix cube. That has actually been completed.
Goten Xiao
I hadn't a clue what a Slocum puzzle was when I first heard about this. However, Wikipedia to the rescue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Slocum
e .htm. It's a frustratingly sweet way to waste yet another workday. :)
Also, there is a page where you can play many different Slocum puzzles while you're supposed to be working: http://www.puzzleworld.org/SlidingBlockPuzzles/ab
The Chinese Rings puzzle is not a variant of the Towers of Hanoi. It's this.
_ puzzle.html
http://www.puzzles.ca/puzzle_data_3/chinese_rings
They are both recursive puzzles, but that's where the similarity ends.
You have our sincerest apologies.
Yes, quite. Unfortunately, there are people like Hyacinth Bucket in the UK.
We call them "Daily Mail readers".
women
It requires an infinte number of correct moves to solve. Also, the correct sequence changes according to mood, surrounding, etc.
$1,000,000 reward for anyone who can correctly solve this puzzle.
When I have a kid, I want to put him in one of those strollers for twins and then run around the mall looking frantic.
MathException: Division by zero error.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
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*