Glass Puzzle - Pineapple
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Pineapple is another interesting design from the Glass Puzzle collection, designed by the genius of Nob Yoshigahara and launched by Beverly Enterprises. There are eight different puzzles in this collection, each with a unique take on packed food in a jar. A piece of advice: don't play with them if you're hungry, as they're almost identical in appearance to the real thing which can be mouth-watering.
The Pineapple, like all the other puzzles in the Glass series, comes in a real glass jar, about 7cm in height and 7cm in diameter (2.8"), and inside are 12 irregular-shaped pieces in the form of pineapple slices. The puzzle doesn't come already solved though, as the pieces are just randomly fitted for the packaging. This is a good thing, because you'll feel the need to have all the pieces neatly packed inside the jar.
I noticed a very cool thing as I was touching the pieces for the first time. It almost felt as if you were in the presence of real pineapple slices, only with less moisture, but featuring the same rugged texture. This goes to show how far they went just to simulate the real textures of the food items in their puzzle series.
I actually found an interesting fact that I had completely overlooked when I was playing with it and only saw it when looking at the solution. The pieces are a distorted view of pentominos - A pentomino is a piece comprised of five equal units, and there are exactly 12 different ways to build one. When analyzing the pieces more carefully, I found out that the 12 pieces in the Pineapple puzzle are indeed all 12 possible pentominos. It's fascinating how by looking at things in a different way you can miss the obvious things right in front of you. Nob was indeed a genius in the puzzle making and designing.
Solution: Click here to download the solution.
Closing Comments:
The Glass Puzzle - Pineapple is an amazingly designed puzzle, and an example of how making a slight change in the appearance of a puzzle can have a totally different outcome. I strongly recommend this one to all puzzle enthusiasts out there. It's a great puzzle to study visual perception and spatial cognition.
Availability: You can buy the Glass Puzzle - Pineapple at PuzzleMaster for $16 CAD. You can also get all the others here.
I noticed a very cool thing as I was touching the pieces for the first time. It almost felt as if you were in the presence of real pineapple slices, only with less moisture, but featuring the same rugged texture. This goes to show how far they went just to simulate the real textures of the food items in their puzzle series.
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These Glass Puzzles are also known for their high difficulty level, and the Pineapple is no different. It's a level 8/10, and even though it's not the hardest one in the series, it can still pack a punch. This one took me a little over half an hour to solve. As far as multiple solutions go, I'm not sure it has many, because the one I came up with was the same as the solution found on PuzzleMaster's website, only reversed.
I actually found an interesting fact that I had completely overlooked when I was playing with it and only saw it when looking at the solution. The pieces are a distorted view of pentominos - A pentomino is a piece comprised of five equal units, and there are exactly 12 different ways to build one. When analyzing the pieces more carefully, I found out that the 12 pieces in the Pineapple puzzle are indeed all 12 possible pentominos. It's fascinating how by looking at things in a different way you can miss the obvious things right in front of you. Nob was indeed a genius in the puzzle making and designing.
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| (Click to Enlarge) - All 12 Pentominos with a Twist |
I wouldn't have been able to discover all these interesting facts if I hadn't downloaded PuzzleMaster's solution. And I was just curious to see if my solution was the same as the official one. This proves how looking up the solution to a puzzle you already solved can still be positive even though you don't need to. There's so much you can learn about your puzzles this way.
Solution: Click here to download the solution.
Closing Comments:
The Glass Puzzle - Pineapple is an amazingly designed puzzle, and an example of how making a slight change in the appearance of a puzzle can have a totally different outcome. I strongly recommend this one to all puzzle enthusiasts out there. It's a great puzzle to study visual perception and spatial cognition.
Availability: You can buy the Glass Puzzle - Pineapple at PuzzleMaster for $16 CAD. You can also get all the others here.
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8 comments:
Gabriel, I played with this a while back and found it the easiest (not easy tho') amongst the glass puzzles I have, eg Peanuts and Plums, these two which I could not solve without the solution
Very interesting observation about the pentominos. It looks like the packing is 6 layers tall, so apparently this puzzle is equivalent to packing the pentominos into a 10x6 rectangle with periodic boundaries on the side of length 10!
On the side of length 6, I mean ...
Hi George, you're exactly right. The representation of the solved puzzle is like if we were to unfold the round pieces to a flat surface. It's a great puzzle.
Jerry, I actually found the Rice Crackers to be a little easier. I also have three puzzles from the series.
BurrTools finds several thousand packing of the pentominos in a 10x6 rectangle! However, the Pineapple puzzle is more constrained because you can't rotate a piece by 90 degrees, only 180, which will vastly decrease the number of solutions.
Yes, I suspected there weren't too many solutions. It would be interesting to know the real number, probably a few dozen, maybe a couple of hundred.
I can't seem to find a simple way to enter this puzzle into BurrTools ... maybe in the Triangular Prism geometry?
Triangular pieces instead of round ones. That could work, but I don't know much about BurrTools to help you there...
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