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Endless Puzzle

 The unbounded, panoramic, jigsaw puzzle
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Imagine standing on the top of Mount Everest and viewing the grandeur of the Himalayas while doing a slow pirouette. This 360 degree vista and other breathtaking landscapes are now available as challenging, jigsaw puzzles.

Though all the pieces fit together, the puzzle can never be completed (unless they’re glued to the wall of a cylindrical room). You choose the central scene and shift it by moving puzzle pieces from one side to the other.

Even more fantastic is the spherical puzzle that, if completed, would present an IMAX view of the sky above, the surrounding horizon and the ground below. The pieces arrive in a plastic ball, and are put together on the inside surface of one or both of its halves. The images vary from an above-and-below bird’s-eye-view of stunning nature landscape to a double fisheye lens, city scene from asphalt to skyline to sunset-stained heaven.

In the same way, you can choose the center of the image as you build or modify the puzzle. Our deluxe edition features a metal sphere, magnetic pieces and a laparoscope-like web cam that enables you to view your finished, globular work from all angles.

—FarmerJohn, Jun 19 2003

(?) rough sketch http://www.geocitie...ohnnie/endless.html
[FarmerJohn, Oct 17 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]

Atlanta Cyclorama http://roadsidegeor...site/cyclorama.html
[Amos Kito, Oct 17 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]

(?) and one portion of it: http://www.rosestud...m/cyclorama-lg.html
[Amos Kito, Oct 17 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]

Tetrod http://www.hexatron.com/tetrod
A digital version, sort of [Tabbyclaw, Feb 20 2005]


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Annotation:







       The Master is back on form.
—egbert, Jun 19 2003
   

       Great idea! I especially like the idea of the panoramic puzzle. It can be brought in stages, which will eventually rival the bayeux tapestry.

Croissant for the image of you //doing a slow pirouette// on the top of a mountain, in a tutu.
—silverstormer, Jun 19 2003
   

       I love the idea. Although putting one of these together would probably drive me nuts.   

       Every day I wake up to another peice of an endless puzzle, some of the peices fit, some of the peices don't and sometimes I think that some peices have fallen out of a different box and don't belong to my puzzle at all. Too late, to much thinking, going to bed. +
—Gulherme, Jun 19 2003
   

       Fabulous!
—snarfyguy, Jun 19 2003
   

       Could you make it endless horizontally *and* vertically?
—phundug, Jun 19 2003
   

       Well, that was the spherical puzzle, but it could be done as a flat puzzle with some picture distortion and very flexible pieces.
—FarmerJohn, Jun 19 2003
   

       Hee hee, "Where are the dang corner pieces to this thing?!?"
—RayfordSteele, Jun 19 2003
   

       Gulherme- Life is a puzzle, but the pieces NEVER fit...
—althyr, Jun 19 2003
   

       If you had a panoramic view puzzle that you could keep building surely all the interlocking pieces would need to be the same so that it would fit together no matter where you started from? Or is that me being wrong?
—Morals, Aug 04 2003
   

       If you mean the 360 degree view from one point or even a really endless passage like the scene from a train window, each piece could and should be unique, since it only fits to its three or four specific neighbor pieces.
—FarmerJohn, Aug 04 2003
   

       //the resulting puzzle rendered in 2D would have gaps between the pieces// That’s why I was thinking of flexible pieces for a flat 3D depiction. If the puzzle was a map of the world, Antarctica could be a strip along the bottom or a circular continent in the middle. I'm not clear on your solution with //same image front and back//.   

       A related idea would be an actual size puzzle of the world, seen from above. The impression would come from satellite imaging during 24 hours. The billions of pieces could be assembled on earth covering land and sea, or in space, creating a twin planet.
—FarmerJohn, Aug 05 2003
   

       Wow FJ, I'm humbled. You'll have to loan me your idea fairy sometime.
—madradish, Aug 05 2003
   

       Dudey
—slarti, Oct 20 2004
   

       Didn't Buckminster Fuller suggest something like this?   

       What about M.C. Escher's "Transformations" tesselation drawings . . . rather puzzle like, no?   

       If not a form of this idea, a great subject for the endless puzzle, besides cyclorama pictures.
—TD3, Oct 21 2004
   

       I've seen these on the market now, both the 2D and 3D.
—RayfordSteele, Nov 20 2009
   


 

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