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Four Cubes Two Puzzles (Instant Insanity)

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  Fig 1 - Four cubes with all faces decorated by 1, 2, 3 or 4 dots Fig 2 - Puzzle #1: 1x1x4 (left), Puzzle #2: 1x2x2 (middle), pictures shown do not meet dot arrangement requirements described in text.  Orientations F, B, L, R, T, D used in this post (right) Introduction I was introduced to Instant Insanity puzzles by Mr. James Kerley, and I’m excited to share my design with you here. After learning, coding, and optimizing the design several times, here’s one I created for DIY laser cutting. This puzzle uses four cubes, as shown in Fig 1 above, and all the faces (24 in total, 4x6) are decorated with 1, 2, 3, or 4 dots (we’re using dots instead of colors for laser engraving, while traditional Instant Insanity puzzles use color). The goals for the two puzzles are:: puzzle #1 - (same as a typical Instant Insanity puzzle) stack all four cubes into a 1x1x4 block as shown in Fig 2 (left). Then rotate each cubes until  all four 1x4 large vertical sides (F, B, L, R) each contain ...
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Ten Hoes Puzzle

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  Laser cut, assembled board at bottom and ten "hoe" pieces at top Introduction After the design of  Nine Pointy P puzzle , I continue to explore polyiamond and triangular grid, in especially this hexiamond  (contains six triangular units) piece shown below. Following AI's recommendation, I've named it "hoe". The  replication puzzle  in this post is called "Ten Hoes" because ten of this piece are used. A hexiamond piece, AI said it looks like a garden hoe The board of this puzzle, as shown below, features a large triangular frame and instructions on how to play. Inside the frame, there are eight small triangles, each labeled with a number from 1 to 4, with each number appearing exactly twice. To solve this puzzle: choose a number 1, 2, 3, or 4, then find the two small triangles on the board that match that number. while keeping those two triangles open, move, rotate, or flip the ten hoe pieces as needed to fill all of them into the large triangle ...
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P&P Puzzle

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  Laser cut and assembled P&P puzzle, showing seven small pieces and a board with two frames to solve Introduction Ready to dive into the world of P's? This geometric dissection puzzle demonstrates the transformation between a "P"entagon frame and a "P" pentomino frame, through seven small pieces, as illustrated in above picture. The challenge is to move, rotate, and flip these pieces to fit them into one of the frames one at a time.  There are two frames, so you’ll have two puzzles to tackle. The seven small pieces are all convex irregular polygons - two triangles, four quadrilaterals, and one pentagon. Laser cut files are available at ATOMM .  Once you’ve laser cut them, you’ll need to glue the large top frame piece onto the bottom base piece to create the board; and the results are shown in the pictures above.
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TW (Triangle-W) and HL (Hexagon-L) Puzzles

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Laser cut and assembled TW puzzle Laser cut and assembled HL puzzle Introduction TW and HL puzzles are both  geometric dissection puzzles. They each have seven small pieces, and their boards feature two frames with different shapes. TW’s frame has a triangle on the left and a W pentomino on the right, while HL’s frame has a hexagon on the left and an L pentomino on the right. So, you’ll need to solve two frames per puzzle. That means you can transform the shape of the left frame into the shape of the right frame, and vice versa, using these seven dissected pieces. Just a heads-up: don’t mix up the pieces between the two puzzles—it won’t work! I’d rate these puzzles as medium difficulty. The laser cut files are available here: TW puzzle - ATOMM HL puzzle - ATOMM Once you’ve laser cut them, you’ll need to glue the large top frame piece onto the bottom base piece to create the board; and the results are shown in the pictures above.
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Nine Pointy P Puzzle

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  Nine Pointy P puzzle, laser cut and assembled Introduction This puzzle is a fun  replication puzzle  using a triangular grid and a polyiamond piece that resembles a pointy letter P. We’ve got nine of these P pieces in total! The goal is to fit all nine small pieces into the triangular frame and around the fixed triangle. Each small P piece has a round dot on one side. There are three levels of difficulty:: easy - just ignore the dots harder - use only the dot sides harder - use only the sides without dots Note: the large triangle frame contains 49 unit of triangular units. Excluding the triangle island, the open area is 48 triangular units. Since each pointy P piece contains 5 triangular units (yeah, it is a pentiamond ), 9 of them can only cover 45 triangular units. Hence, there are 3 triangular units (48 - 45 = 3) of open space after filling in the 9 pointy P pieces. Locations of those 3 open triangles are unknown and are part of the puzzle to solve. Laser cut file i...
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Eight T Challenge

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Laser cut and assembled puzzle Introduction A combination of loose-packing puzzle and replication puzzle , this puzzle has two frames and 8 identical T pentomino pieces. The goal of this puzzle is to put 4 T pieces in the left smaller square (2 known solutions), and 8 T pieces into the right larger square (1 known solution). SVG file for laser cutting is available at ATOMM and MakerWorld .
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Hexagonal Calendar Puzzle

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  Introduction This is a beautiful  calendar puzzle  on hexagonal grid with two panels. Similar to the  square grid version , the left panel has months, and days of the week; and while the larger panel on the right displays the days of the month, as shown in the picture below.   Laser cut and assembled board at left, and ten pieces of polyhexes at right. This puzzle features ten polyhexes , as you can see in the image above. The two panels aren’t connected, so each polyhex piece can only fit in one of them. The goal of this puzzle is to show three hexagons representing the date (month, day of month and day of week), while covering all other hexagons (including the empty one next to 31) using the ten polyhexes. You can find the svg file for laser cutting/engraving machine at ATOMM  and  MakerWorld
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