Pavel's Puzzle Blog

A Holiday Discount Puzzle

Solve this puzzle for 10% off any order!

I had so much fun with last year's holiday-discount-puzzle promotion that I've decided to do it again! Who knows, maybe it'll turn into an annual tradition around here...

Just like last year, in honor of the holiday season, I've created a puzzle that you can solve to earn a discount on any order here at Pavel's Puzzles. Simply cut out the fourteen strips linked to by the image below, cutting along the heavy lines. Then weave them together into a square with seven strips placed horizontally and seven placed vertically, such that you can see all of the letters. (Ignore the orientations of the letters. I've scrambled them to avoid giving you too much information. Heh.) Finally, read out the message to learn the secret discount code!

Once you know the answer, make any order at Pavel's Puzzles and type the answer into the "Instructions to Seller" space on the PayPal checkout form. When I get the order, I'll issue you a refund for 10% of the cost of your order! (Sales tax and/or shipping excluded.) Even better, you can get the same discount on as many orders as you like between now and the end of this year!

To further spur you into action, I've just released three new puzzle designs:

Edgewise is just a simple little jigsaw puzzle, isn't it? With only a couple dozen pieces or so, how difficult could it be? This was my Exchange puzzle at the International Puzzle Party in Berlin this summer, and it's the latest in my series of multi-stage solving experiences, sure to keep your mind occupied for a little while.

World-renowned computer scientist Donald Knuth conceived of this puzzle a few years ago and I've designed this elegant physical realization of his five progressively more difficult challenges: can you fit the pieces into the tray such that the Tromino Trails form a single continuous loop? Each challenge has a unique solution and helps ‘train’ you to be ready to take on the next one.

This big, icy beauty is perfect for those coming winter nights in front of a fire. Icicle Jam was inspired by the startlingly blue ice of Alaskan glaciers and once you've assembled it you'll have a display piece that will be a striking addition to any room. Of course, first you'll have to survive its jagged interlocking challenge. Dress in layers, and make sure someone knows where you've gone!

Of course, I still offer all of my earlier designs, too. My holiday discount puzzle is a perfect way to satisfy (or frustrate) that puzzling person on your gift list while saving a little cash at the same time. Just imagine the look on their face when they find one of these puzzles in their stocking!

Posted by Pavel at 06:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A couple of years ago, I was privileged to be commissioned to produce a unique, custom puzzle for the 2009 Science Foo Camp, a eclectic annual gathering of scientists sponsored by the journal Nature, by Google, and by O'Reilly Media. I ended up producing 300 copies of a special version of my then-new puzzle Anansi's Maze, which they then handed out to all of the attendees that summer. I was also invited to attend the event myself, which was truly wonderful, and they asked me back again the next summer. At the event in 2010, I started discussing with the organizers the possibility of my producing another puzzle for them for the 2011 gathering, this time a puzzle that had been designed from the beginning specifically with that event in mind.

I spent some time brainstorming puzzle themes with Kay Thaney from Nature, and we hit upon what I thought was a great inspiration. Tim O'Reilly, the founder of O'Reilly Media and one of the organizers of the event, has a favorite saying that he brings up at the introductory session of each Foo Camp:

When Tim says this, he's referring to the edges between intellectual disciplines, and how Foo Camp is designed to bring together people from different areas and enable a kind of creative friction as the areas butt up against one another.

When we brought up the saying in our puzzle-theme brainstorming, however, it immediately took on an entirely different meaning for me, and my mind began chewing over all sorts of ideas for embodying that meaning in a puzzle design. Edgewise is the result of that chewing. (Hm. That sounded better in my head than it reads here. Oh, well...)

Edgewise consists of about two dozen jigsaw-puzzle pieces, most with large letters etched on them, and some with additional words of potential significance. As this is the latest in my series of multi-stage puzzles, I won't say anything more about the solving experience here, but I can tell you that it should keep you happily busy for a little while as you make your way through it.

In the end, ironically, Edgewise did not wind up being used as a Science Foo Camp gift, but I remain grateful to Tim and Kay for providing the inspiration for this puzzle. We did use it in this summer's Microsoft Intern Puzzleday event, and I also used it for my Exchange puzzle at the International Puzzle Party in Berlin, so I think it's getting the kind of exposure it deserves, particularly because now it's available here on the website for you to try out for yourself!

Posted by Pavel at 02:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A Holiday Discount Puzzle

Solve this puzzle for 10% off any order!

In honor of the holiday season, I've created a puzzle that you can solve to earn a discount on any order here at Pavel's Puzzles. Simply cut out the pieces below and assemble them into the shape shown; then find the clues to the one-word final answer. (Ignore any words shorter than four letters.) The final answer is just three letters long (or five, depending on which form you prefer).

Once you know the answer, make any order here and type the answer into the "Instructions to Seller" space on the PayPal checkout form. When I get the order, I'll issue you a refund for 10% of the cost of your order! (Sales tax and/or shipping excluded.) Even better, you can get the same discount on as many orders as you like between now and the end of this year!

To further entice you, I've just released two new puzzle designs:

This puzzle is shaped like a magnifying glass, but the glass has been broken! Reassemble the glass in two different ways to reveal clues to a mystery! "Get a Clue!" was my Exchange puzzle at this summer's International Puzzle Party in Japan, and I've finally finished the minor revisions I wanted to make before releasing it on the website.

Easy Eight / Hard Eight is a lovely little tray puzzle designed by my friend Bob Hearn: just pack the letters of the word "EIGHT" into each side of the tray. The "easy" side isn't too tricky, but the "hard" side will keep you busy for a while...

These two join two more new designs I released late this summer:

In Derrick Schneider's Square Dance puzzle, there are just four simple-seeming pieces to fit into each side of the tray, but they're much trickier to get your head around than you'd think, and there's only one solution per side! This award-winning puzzle design is available again for the first time in many years!

The Calibron 12-Block Puzzle was originally copyrighted in 1932 by the son of Thomas Edison; it has been unavailable for over half a century. Can you assemble the 12 blocks into a single, solid rectangle? Just how easy a puzzle do you think an Edison would design?

Of course, I still offer all of my earlier designs, too; it's a perfect way to satisfy (or frustrate) that puzzling person on your gift list. Just imagine the look on their face when they find one of these puzzles in their stocking!

Posted by Pavel at 11:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As I write this, I'm helping to host the first Microsoft Non-Intern Puzzleday, a re-run of the puzzles from this year's regular Intern Puzzleday, just to give the actual Microsoft employees a whack at them. I'm sitting outside a room in which I've set up six "solving stations" for the multi-stage mechanical puzzle I contributed this year, Anansi's Maze. (The Intern Puzzleday actually has a budget, so I could afford to give each team a copy of the puzzle; for the non-interns, they have to timeshare.)

This year, I wanted to play with transparency, as you could probably guess from the picture. I started out with a much more complex puzzle idea, but whittled it down, stage by stage, to get something that was a more appropriate level of difficulty and that hung together more completely. The result, I think, is my best multi-stage puzzle yet, so I decided to also use it for my 2009 Exchange puzzle at the International Puzzle Party in San Francisco.

Anansi the Spider is the trickster spirit of Caribbean and Western African myth and legend, known for his creative mischief making. This puzzle will tease you with its ambiguities and lead you on a merry chase to find its hidden meaning.

Here is a maze, Anansi tells us, but there are no walls, no paths to follow, let alone any dead ends or cycles. Our treasured ‘right-hand rule’ is useless in these uncharted territories.

Anansi’s Maze is a multi-stage solving experience: finding the solution to one stage leads to a new puzzle, and that one to another! Where does this pathless path lead? Can you see through all of Anansi’s tricks and find the answer he’s left for you at the end of your journey?

Posted by Pavel at 06:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My orignal plan, when designing the Octamaze puzzle, was that it would serve double duty, being both my gift to everyone at Gathering for Gardner 8 and something to torture the interns with at the 2008 Microsoft Intern Puzzleday. Sadly, though, it became quite clear during initial playtesting that Octamaze would be too difficult for the intern event. (I was willing to make the mathematicians, puzzlers, and magicians at G4G8 work harder...)

Still, I thought I could at least reuse the primary mechanical idea of Octamaze, and so I started from there when designing the Gamesters of Triskelion puzzle; I did, though, make that part a bit easier. The 2008 Puzzleday theme, for those of you who didn't recognize it immediately from the title, was Space, including many science-fiction references. I was put in mind of the Gamesters of Triskelion episode from the original Star Trek series by the triangular shape of the pieces from Octamaze, and somehow it occurred to me to check whether or not "triskelion" was actually a normal English word. As it happens, it is: a triskelion is a (sometimes quite literally) three-legged motif from heraldry and graphic design. I particularly liked some of the more modern interpretations of the motif, so I incorporated one into the etching on the pieces.

Gamesters of Triskelion is the third in my series of multi-stage puzzles, where solving one stage of the puzzle creates another puzzle for you to solve, on through some number of stages until you reach a single-word or short-phrase final answer. I'm having a lot of fun designing such puzzles, so you can expect the series to continue for quite a while.

Unlike most of my puzzles, this one comes with some "flavor text", not essential to solving the puzzle, but perhaps helpful:

Captain's log, stardate 3211.9: We are leaving starsystem M-24 Alpha, having convinced the three disembodied Providers, the one-time Gamesters of Triskelion, to help their former gladiators to form a new, free civilization. This should end the deadly gambling in their obsessively triangular fighting arena.

As we left orbit, the Providers transported a small octahedron onto the bridge, along with an engraved tablet (three sided, of course) in what appears to be their language. During transport, the faces of the octahedron detached from one another, so now we have eight triangular pieces.

Spock believes it will be straightforward to reassemble them since, he says, they can only fit together in one way. He is more puzzled about the meaning of the etchings on the faces, and how they might relate to the tablet, but assumes that this will become clear once the octahedron is back together.

Posted by Pavel at 09:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Back in 1994, some folks decided it would be a cool idea to give a special 80th birthday present to Martin Gardner, long-time author of the very popular and significant Mathematical Games column in Scientific American magazine, as well as many books of mathematical puzzles and articles.

What better way to mark the occasion, they thought, than to bring together a lot of people who had enjoyed, and been influenced by, Martin's work? So they invited a bunch of people from the fields nearest to Martin's heart, from mathematics, puzzling, and stage magic, to come to Atlanta for the "Gathering for Gardner": several days of talks, performances, and exhibitions in celebration of Martin's 80th birthday. That first Gathering was such a huge success that the organizers decided to keep doing it and, every two years since then, there's been a Gathering.

I've known about the Gathering for some time now, through contacts at the International Puzzle Party, but I was pleased to be invited for the first time this year, for "Gathering for Gardner 8", or "G4G8". Similar to the Puzzle Exchange every year at IPP, the organizers of the Gathering ask that everyone provide a gift of some sort for all of the other participants. Many people fulfill this obligation by giving a talk and writing up a short article for the conference proceedings book, but many others bring puzzles, magic tricks, or other entertaining objects.

You know, of course, what I did, right?

Every Gathering for Gardner has a theme; I think you may be able to guess what all of the previous themes were when I tell you that this year's was "8, or the crazy lazy 8 (infinity)". I wanted to bring a new puzzle design that would strongly incorporate the theme, of course, but I also wanted to continue down the path I'd forged with my Ooo Tray puzzle last year. I wanted to design another multi-stage puzzle, with each solving stage revealing clues to the next stage, culminating in a "final answer" that was somehow satisfying.

I'd been idly thinking about three-dimensional edge-matching puzzles for a while (What? Don't try to tell me you don't think about such things, too.), and I'd wondered if it would work to make a polyhedron where the sides fit together with tabs and slots. With a theme like "8", this was a perfect (some might say Platonic) opportunity!

A little software work and many design iterations later, Octamaze was born. There are at least four stages in solving this puzzle, providing a good hour or two of "play time". If you buy a copy of Octamaze and get stuck, I've created a sequence of web pages giving a progression of hints for solving it. (Don't worry: clicking on that link won't immediately reveal any spoilers. If you keep clicking on the links at the bottom of each page, though, you'll eventually see all of Octamaze's secrets, so be careful.)

Posted by Pavel at 10:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Every year, a group of volunteers puts on a one-day puzzle event for Microsoft's summer interns here on the Redmond campus called Intern Puzzleday. It's kind of a scaled-down version of the more well-known (and ambitious) Microsoft Puzzlehunt events. Although Puzzlehunt traditionally begins at about 10am on Saturday and continues straight through to dinner time on Sunday, Intern Puzzleday is a kinder, gentler one-day affair, almost exactly 24 hours shorter than Puzzlehunt.

This year, I had the great fun of joining the team of volunteers putting on Puzzleday 2007, and I designed or co-designed five different puzzles for the event, three of which we finally used on the day itself. Perhaps I'll write a fuller description of the event later, but for now I'll just show one of the puzzles I designed for it.

Traditionally, Puzzlehunt and Puzzleday puzzles are designed to have a short, one- or two-word answer that solvers can type into email or a web page to prove that they've finished. All of those answers are later used in one or more layers of "meta-puzzles" leading eventually to a final "hunt" somewhere on campus for an artifact specific to that hunt's theme.

I wanted to find some way to incorporate a mechanical puzzle into this domain that's typically dominated by paper-and-pencil or on-site-event puzzles. To do so, I started with the tray and piece design from my "Perkinson Guest Bathroom Tile" puzzle and laser-engraved some additional information on both. The result is, I think, something new in the world of mechanical puzzles: a puzzle with an answer, not just a solution. In this case, the answer is just four letters long, and finding it takes you through a multi-layer solving experience; guidance for the first layer is etched right onto the tray ("Place all twelve pieces flat in the tray"), and solving each layer reveals more guidance on how to attack the next one. There are a total of three or four layers to this seemingly simple puzzle, depending on how you count. During Puzzleday, the Ooo Tray was solved by all 28 teams of interns, and it was the first puzzle that many teams worked on.

Update:
I'm now making this puzzle in beautiful natural cherry! I've also tightened up the design slightly from the original to give the puzzle a somewhat more nicer look and an even more satisfying ending.

Posted by Pavel at 07:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)