Freeze 14

This may be a short blog post – but I am a MASSIVE fan of this puzzle!

I’ve been following the release of Yuu Asaka’s puzzles fairly closely since Louis gifted me a copy of Jigsaw Puzzle 29 just after IPP38… I’d enjoyed the roller coaster ride on 29, and pretty much enjoyed every single one of their designs since then… but Freeze 14 really is something else!

Eight larger frosted pieces and six small white pieces need to fit inside the simple octagonal tray… the frosted bits have some useful cut-outs and some less-useful protrusions – all of which seriously limit the ways you can put them together inside the tray – they do form a lovely snowflake-ish pattern in the tray which is very pleasing…

However, no matter how you try and combine and order the pieces, there’s never quite enough spaces for the little white bits… who knew that three little squares and three little circles would cause so much trouble?!

I end up spending quite a while experimenting with different orderings but somehow, I’m always one or more gaps short. I try and get creative, but that seems even less productive…

This process continues over the course of a couple of weeks as I dip in and out of trying to solve this puzzle… always at least one gap short and just not enough space to squeeze that final little white piece into place…

At some point I abandon all sense of orderliness and begin searching for what I can only describe as a truly chaotic solution – nobody said it needed to look like a lovely snowflake in a tray… that particular search path leads to even more frustration and sensing that my (not really-) “almost” solutions are nowhere near as good as they had been on the more orderly attempts, I abandon that search-space.

At some point, after an embarrassingly long time playing with this puzzle, I notice something interesting – it’s been there all along and I’ve just been studiously ignoring it – and it’s the key to a solution that is wonderfully elegant – making my chaotic experimentation all the more mortifying.

IMHO definitely the most pleasing A-Ha! yet from Yuu Asaka – after the initial period of experimenting and realising the obvious approach probably isn’t going to work, there are a few discoveries that unlock the path to a magnificently elegant solution.