Notes from Puzzle Palace

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Rectangling of the triangles

This one is a bit of a funny. I purchased this puzzle at IPP in August on a whim and a pass by a very nice man. See, as much as I hated 'the toilet' (little ducks) last year, I equally loved it. As such I vowed to go back to Vladimir's table and buy more at IPP. I got home and tossed it into the box with the rest of my IPP purchases and thought nothing more of it other than I need to buy bags to store it in because the packaging it came in, while great for traveling isn't great for storage.

I got home, made my way to my favorite wholesale street and bought my bags for those puzzles without good packaging. Then promptly left for a conference. This puzzle was in my initial carry along, but when I did the packing it didn't make the cut.

While in NZ I met with fellow puzzler Paul Dudding. As I was dipping into his bag I pulled this puzzle out. I fiddled for a bit but something else caught my eye and I handed the puzzle over to my research partner and best bud Mr. B. now he's not a puzzler so this really wasn't a nice thing for me to do. But I'll give him credit. He played around for about twenty minutes before giving up again.

When I got back home I spent a night playing with all these packing puzzles I purchased and this was but one I pulled out of the pile. Now I like my version better than Paul's. His was wooden. Mine is acrylic. Smoother edges and less danger of slivers.

It's a nice little puzzle because there is more than one challenge and because you need to think a bit to solve it. There are four challenges on the instruction sheet provided.

Me? I started with what appears to be the easiest make 4 triangles.  Yep.  That was easy.  It took just a few minutes.  Next...a few more minutes to make 3 triangles.  The last two puzzles?  I lost patience and the movie Matt put on was actually good for a change.  I got lost in 'Love and Other Drugs' and forgot about puzzling.

As Mr. B. was playing with this puzzle he said it would be a great one for Mr. Kok who came along on the trip with us (different presentation)  That got me thinking.  Now I've got to go get a few of these made for some math teachers I know.   Yep.  It's a good un.  Worth the pittance I paid for it.  Worth the price to get more.

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