2018-12-25.blocks

thingiverse

This is a recreation of one of my favorite puzzles up to this point. The problem is to fit a number of blocks inside a box. Puzzle parts ---------- The puzzle consists of these parts: * A box with 5 by 5 by 5 units of space in it. * 5 blocks, each with 1 by 1 by 1 units of size. * 6 blocks, each with 2 by 2 by 3 units of size. * 6 blocks, each with 1 by 2 by 4 units of size. Background ---------- I first stumbled upon this puzzle in 2007 when I found it on a shelf at my friend's parents' house, where it apparently sat unsolved for years. I felt challenged by this and tried to solve it for several hours without any luck. The next day, I took the puzzle to school to discuss it with some friends. Still, we had no luck solving it. However, I started writing a solver in Java, and a friend wrote one in C. It turned out that my solver was horribly slow and did not find a solution when running for more than 24 hours. However, my friend's solver was written in a more concise manner and found a solution. The next day at school, we assembled this solution during a break and were delighted by the arrangement of blocks. Since then, I've also had the pleasure of witnessing someone solving the puzzle using logical reasoning to find constraints. This approach is a bit more rewarding as the process and discussion about constraints turned out to be very exciting. If you have some time to spare, please feel encouraged to give this puzzle a try. There is a solution file provided in my GitHub repository for this project in case you decide to give up on solving it yourself. You can view that file with OpenSCAD or read it as text to retrace the solution. Still, I recommend this only as a last resort as it takes away from the joy of finding the solution yourself. Updates -------- * The box is now a bit higher to accommodate for a lid. * A lid has been added that slides on top of the box so that the blocks don't tumble all over the place. * The complete STL file has been updated to include the lid and have sane placements.