Calendar Puzzle, Day of the Month, Square Grid, Multi-level Challenges

 

Introduction

Starting with a calendar puzzle featuring just the days of the month is a fantastic way for beginners, kids, or anyone else to get into this kind of puzzle. Pick a day number between 1 and 31 that catches your eye, like today’s or a particularly interesting day, and give it a shot! In this post, we’ll share a design using a square grid and polyomino pieces, along with a discussion about it.

You can find the svg file for laser cutting/engraving machine HERE.

The Design

The design features an asymmetrical board layout where the days of the month are arranged horizontally and downward from 1 through 31, as you can see below.

The board after gluing the top frame piece on the days base from laser cut file

This puzzle uses six polyomino pieces, which include four pentominoes, one hexomino and one tetromino. When you put them all together, they cover exactly 30 squares, and you get to pick one square to solve on your chosen Day. Out of these six pieces, three have special symbols—a star, a square, or a triangle—on one side, but not on the other. These symbols are used to add some extra fun challenges that we’ll talk about later.

six pieces to be placed on the board to solve the puzzle

How to Play?

Choose a day, like the 20th, and your task is to arrange (move, rotate, flip) and fit all six small pieces onto the board without overlapping, except for the square labeled 20. Here’s a solution for Day 20, and it turns out all three symbols are included. 

 

An example solution for Day 20

Here are a few ways to enjoy the game:

1. Easiest: Try to solve the puzzle by rotating, moving, and flipping six pieces, but don’t worry about the symbols.
2. Star Only: Show only the star while hiding the triangle and square. Turn and flip the pieces so only the star is visible, then try to rotate and move the pieces, without flipping, to solve the puzzle
3. Square Only: Show only the square while hiding the triangle and star.
4. Triangle-Only: Show only the triangle while hiding the star and square

You can find at least one solution each day for these four different playing modes. The table below shows how many solutions are available each day. You’ll notice that modes 2-4, which require showing only one symbol, are a bit more challenging than mode 1.

Available number of solutions by days and playing modes. Lower the number, harder to solve.

You might also want to give it a shot by either showing no symbols or showing all three of them. Just a heads-up, though—not every day is solvable, as some days have no solution, as shown in the last two rows in the table above.