Cracked! (Plato's Egg) puzzle

thingiverse

This is my entry for the 2015 IPP Puzzle Design competition. Read more about the story behind this puzzle in the "How I Designed This" section. The puzzle consists of three intricately nested layers of dodecahedra, each with its own unique challenge to overcome. To solve it, you'll need to crack Plato's egg into its constituent parts, disassemble the trisected dodecahedron at the center, and then reassemble it again. Each stage requires a specific type of coordinate motion, making it a complex and engaging puzzle to tackle. The white of the egg is notoriously difficult to disassemble by hand, but spinning the egg on a table makes it come apart with ease. To print this puzzle, you'll need to produce: 3 Shell pieces in light brown 2 White A pieces in white or clear 2 White B pieces in white or clear 3 Yolk pieces in yellow If you enjoy this puzzle and want more, please consider leaving a tip to encourage me to share even more of my creations. Print Settings: Printer: Mendel90 Rafts: No Supports: No Resolution: 0.15 to 0.2 mm Infill: 25% Notes: This is a challenging print that requires a well-tuned printer. If your printer is over-extruding, the pieces won't fit together perfectly. No support material should be required for any of the pieces, but a good part cooling fan is essential. The idea behind this puzzle came from asking one simple question: Can the surface of a dodecahedron be subdivided into identical interlocking parts? Because the dodecahedron has 12 faces, there are four possible ways to divide them into equal groups. I soon discovered that two pieces with six pentagonal faces each would interlock but be impossible to separate. I also ruled out six pieces with two pentagonal faces each as they wouldn't create an interlocking puzzle. I began experimenting with three chains of four pentagons and found it possible to wrap identical shapes onto the dodecahedron's surface. But could the pieces come apart? To find out, I used a computer program to extrude the shape outward from a central point, turning it into a solid object. I printed out three of these shapes and proved that they could be assembled into a dodecahedron using a coordinate sliding motion. Then, I tried four chains of three pentagons, but they wouldn't interlock without separate parts. Combining two complete sets of shapes, nested one inside the other, allowed me to create a puzzle with locking pieces. After several attempts, I finally managed to print a set of four pieces that could be assembled into a dodecahedron using a coordinate sliding motion. The final creative step came when I envisioned combining the puzzles into a nested set of shapes representing an egg's yolk, white, and shell. Can you crack Plato’s egg and put it back together again?