Puzzle

I’m good at puzzles. Puzzles like the ones that ask you to remove the metal ring, or put the blocks together to form whatever shape, or even the standard put the pieces back together to form a picture puzzles, although I always figured those more based on experimentation and doggedness than any particular talent.

My folks used to buy me new puzzles for Christmas and birthdays, but gave up a few years ago when it took me forty-five minutes to solve a ladder ring style puzzle that was supposed to be wicked difficult. The company told my mom to call them if I managed to solve it in less than three hours. They apologized and offered a refund.

Most recently I found the Scorpion’s Sting, which is rated ‘Level 10 – Mind Boggling’ and took me a little under three minutes to solve. Although I already know how such puzzles work. I do still enjoy solving them though, as it’s something of a self confidence aggrandizer, despite the fact that I have yet to find any practical function for this skill.

I have, as yet, not solved Rubik’s cube. I am still working on it and have recently made some significant advances. I will solve it someday.

This photo depicts a puzzle I was given some time ago. It consists of sixty four wooden cubes in rows of one to four connected with an elastic of some sort than runs through their middles, making a serpentine coil-like thing over a meter long. It is supposed to twist together into a four by four by four block cube. It is not the kind of puzzle that can be solved on logical principals and, failing the blind luck of tentation, requires significant three dimensional spatial reasoning. It vexes me.