Puzzle "Glued cycles"
This puzzle's idea is borrowed from the book Mathematical Puzzles by V. N. Dubrovsky and A. T. Kalinin .
The task of the puzzle is to rotate Puzzled pieces so that they compose Wanted pattern, as for numbers.
The pieces are included in two glued cycles: left and right. Both are rotated clockwise or counter-clockwise.
To rotate a cycle, click and drag its piece and drop it on one of its neighbors.
Clicking a puzzle pattern or entering Difficulty value starts a new puzzle.
Clicking the button Restart restarts the current puzzle.
Other buttons allow:
- to save the current puzzle
- to restore the saved puzzle
- to undo/redo moves
- to show one of possible solutions
- to show rules
The puzzle can be run so:
tclsh gluedcycles.tcl ?RESOURCE?
where: RESOURCE - path to .rc file, by default ./gluedcycles.rc
Links
Pictures
Solving:
Solved:
What else
The puzzles are presented in sporadic way, with shuffling their pieces. The number of shuffles is displayed in Puzzled field, e.g. so: "Puzzled: moves 5 / 15", where 5 - currently made moves, 15 - number of shuffles.
Normally, the more shuffles, the harder.
The solution offered by the program is in no way the best. The solution moves are the same shuffles, just rolled back. Thus, the solution is often stupid in the sense that it contains unnecessary moves.
But sometimes the solution is smart. Also, some puzzles are trivial, while others are pretty hard, few being even beautiful.
When some puzzle seems to be interesting, you can save it with Save button, to restore it with Restore button some day. Anyhow, a current puzzle is saved "on fly" to be restored in the program's next session.
And when the puzzle seems to be hard, you can make it easier with clicking Show solution button till the horizon becomes clearer.
A good idea of this puzzle is to overcome the computer, making less moves to solution than the program offers. The saved puzzle of the program's repository illustrates this.
KPV 2025-01-06: this seems similar to Ring Master.