Double Squared

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Double Squared is another great invention from the Finnish puzzle designers Tomas Lindén/Vesa Timonen (Sloyd Puzzles) and also entered in this year's 30th IPP Design Competition by the name of Black or White. For more reviews and information, refer to this post.

This is one of the most difficult challenges in the Sloyd Puzzle series. Don't be fooled by it's simple presentation and, most importantly, don't underestimate its difficulty.

Six pieces, with a light and a dark side, three of each orientation, make this very simple and yet, clever design. The goal is trivial: make a square with either side of pieces, but only one of the two sides must be used to do this. If you use the dark side of a piece, all of the others have to be placed with the dark side as well. This is where it gets complicated, because you can make the square easily, with one of the pieces showing the opposite side of the others in place. But that's not the case, as the designers wanted you to make the square with a specific orientation for the pieces. That's why they made every piece with two colors, forcing you to use just one of its sides, no matter which one, at a time. 

Without the possibility of flipping a piece, in order to change its orientation, it gets extremely difficult to work out a solution within minutes. You will for sure, spend a few hours (or days) studying the puzzle and trying to understand how to make an ordinary square out of those pieces.

As with the other Sloyd Puzzles, I will not reveal the solution, as it would spoil all the fun it takes to solve a hard challenge. And I couldn't, even if I wanted, because I'm still trying to solve it (3 days and counting...). 

I will, almost certainly edit the post once/if I solve it. Not to tell the solution, but with the necessary insight to share a few tips to guide you in the right direction.

Bottom line, if you want a seriously hard challenge at a very fair price, this is a highly recommended one. I can promise you hours of entertainment, frustration, cursing and also a few headaches...

Extra Challenges:

If you're tired of trying to solve the main challenge without success, there's at least two more challenges that you can make with the puzzles' pieces.

One is to make a light or dark square with a single piece. Easy, right?
You can use a pocketbook as a table for this.

The other one is to make a cube with the six pieces. There's two ways to achieve this, though you have to figure them out for yourself.

See which one of the three challenges you can solve first...

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