[HN Gopher] The Flummoxagon
___________________________________________________________________
The Flummoxagon
Author : robinhouston
Score : 107 points
Date : 2025-10-07 15:40 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com)
| fjfaase wrote:
| Nice article, which also explains the mapping of the puzzle to an
| exact cover problem and how those can be solved with dangling
| links as in Knuth's Algorithm X.
| MontagFTB wrote:
| A blast from the past! I once wrote an implementation of
| dancing_links in C++ as part of a Sudoku solver:
| https://github.com/stlab/adobe_source_libraries/blob/main/ad...
| jeffrallen wrote:
| Oh my god, take my money, please. These types of tactile puzzles
| are the ideal nerdsnipe for me.
| colordrops wrote:
| Looks amazing but getting 500 errors from the payment flow and
| the FLUMMOX discount code doesn't work as advertised.
| nervous_jessica wrote:
| hi colordrops! the flummox coupon works in the shopping cart.
| often folks try to apply it in the gift card box in the
| checkout procedure. Let me know if you already placed and order
| and I can apply the coupon retroactively for you. If you would
| like to provide any more info on the checkout errors you can
| email me at orders@nervo.us
| phinnaeus wrote:
| As an aside, nervo.us is way easier to type than the
| hyphenated domain. Just curious if you ever considered
| reversing the redirect?
| nervous_jessica wrote:
| I'm somewhat ignorant about the search ranking implications
| of changing our domain. I bought the nervo.us domain much
| later and we've had the n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com domain since
| 2007.
| mannykannot wrote:
| I paused at the statement "Add $55 for free domestic shipping"
| on the order form.
| smokel wrote:
| Very interesting, but I have a hard time differentiating the
| colors. The gradients seem to be there for aesthetics only, but
| they confuse me to no end :)
| nervous_jessica wrote:
| Fair point. The gradients are just to be pretty. We could make
| you a solid color version if you would like. Email
| orders@nervo.us and we can set up a custom order.
| cadamsdotcom wrote:
| Absolutely love this. Amazing creativity!
|
| Totally feeling like vibe-coding a web version of the game and
| plastering it with giant BUY THIS THING links that send people to
| the real thing.
| rendaw wrote:
| Tangential, but does anyone know good places to find other
| physical puzzles like this? Also, recently there was an article
| on elastic knots I was hoping someone would productize into a
| novelty puzzle.
| robinhouston wrote:
| Be careful! There's a whole world of mechanical puzzles out
| there, and it can get very expensive and start to take over
| your life.
|
| Here's an assortment of links to places where you can buy
| interesting puzzles. This isn't exhaustive of course: it's just
| a few places that came to mind.
|
| https://www.puzzlemaster.ca/
|
| https://puzzleparadise.net/
|
| https://www.pelikanpuzzles.eu/
|
| https://twobrassmonkeys.com/
|
| https://www.etsy.com/shop/PuzzleguyStore
| jonahx wrote:
| Also:
|
| Tavern Puzzles, high quality metal entanglement puzzles:
|
| https://tavernpuzzles.store.turbify.net/puzzle.html
|
| Craighill. These puzzles are beautiful and double as art
| objects:
|
| https://craighill.co/collections/play
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| So many puzzles like this basically require you to brute-force
| the solution [0], which just isn't all that fun. I'm glad the
| designers explicitly acknowledge they're trying to avoid this,
| and really hope that their claim that this actually can be solved
| with logic holds true: What if instead of doing
| the full colored puzzle, we find partial sets of tiles where
| there is only one unique solution? This adds enough constraints
| to the problem that it becomes feasible [without resorting to
| brute force].
|
| [0]
| https://www.puzzlemaster.ca/search/?c=woodpacking%2Cwoodtang...
| peterpuzzle wrote:
| Recently I designed a calendar puzzle with 10 tetris-like pieces.
| When you place all the puzzle pieces on the board, three
| squares/rhombuses are still open and together they form a date.
| Can you arrange the puzzle pieces in such a way that it shows
| todays date? See
| https://praxispuzzles.com/calendar_puzzle_rhombus Disclaimer: I
| sell these puzzles for a little more than the raw material.
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| This is quite clever.
| teraflop wrote:
| Very cool!
|
| Unfortunately the interactive demo doesn't work for me (Firefox
| 143.0.4 on Windows):
|
| > Uncaught TypeError: can't access property "inverse",
| this.puzzlemat.getScreenCTM() is null
| rawling wrote:
| Can you arrange them to make dates that don't exist, or is it
| designed so you can't?
| phinnaeus wrote:
| Love Nervous System design. I have quite a few pieces from them
| including one of their infinity puzzles. Very high quality work.
| tromp wrote:
| Reminds me of the 1 million pound first solution prize Eternity
| puzzle ...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternity_puzzle
| fjfaase wrote:
| It would be nice, if they could publish the exact cover. I have
| written some algorithm that can estimate the number of solutions
| to an exact cover base on the number of solutions it found and
| the size of the 'tree' that has been explored.
|
| I could write a program myself to calculate the exact cover, but
| I guess, it will take me about a day to do so. It would not
| surprise me if the exact cover will be a few hundred mega bytes
| (when using one character per position).
| nervous_jessica wrote:
| We haven't actually run the thing to completion. We ran it for
| a couple days and then stopped after finding tens of thousands
| of solutions. Might explore again if we have time to improve
| the solver efficiency.
| amiga386 wrote:
| https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/map....
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-10-12 23:01 UTC)