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Culture: Game: Jigsaw
Rubik's Cube Jig Saw   (+6, -1)  [vote for, against]
grind your fingers as you while away your time in quarantine

Rubik's Cube Jig Saw is the hardest jigsaw type puzzle on the planet. It's hard because it requires multiple Rubik's cubes to be solved in sequence in order to complete the picture.

Here's how it works:
The completed image is composed as a print across one face of a square assemblage of 100 individual Rubik's cubes.

Each of the cubes is then scrambled, and it's the puzzler's job to solve them and place them together again to remake the original assembled image.

Ultra fiendish version features 6 different pictorial outcomes, one for each of the cube's faces
-- xenzag, Apr 12 2020

Artist generating mosaic images from Rubik's cubes http://www.storytre...isted-rubiks-cubes/
[Loris, Apr 13 2020]

<Picks up hammer/>

<Prolonged violent crashing noises/>

<Sound of fragments being arranged on a flat surface/>

"Finished !"

That was easy. What else you got ?
-- 8th of 7, Apr 12 2020


If you break up the cubes you will create a complete mess that adds exponential difficulty in fitting all of the splinters and fragments back together again. You'd be better off just admitting that the puzzle is beyond your limited capacity, and requesting the instructions for solving it.
-- xenzag, Apr 12 2020


Step 1: Image all faces of all puzzles.

Step 2: Apply pattern matching algorithms to individual puzzles.

Step 3: Dismantle* all puzzles.

Step 4: Arrange fragments according to plan created in Step 2.

Done.

*That's the best part.
-- 8th of 7, Apr 12 2020


Using a machine to solve a puzzle is an admission of defeat, but that’s ok. This is a tricky one. I’m actually not so sure that anyone could actually solve it, if the 100 individual cubes were all mixed up, after they were scrambled.
-- xenzag, Apr 12 2020


//Picks up hammer//

Don't forget to wipe off any fragments of Scintillating Jewelled Scuttling Crab.
-- pertinax, Apr 12 2020


We have a special Iron Mallet Wiper made from the silken coats of elegant gazelle-like creatures. It's the only bit that's useful after they've been sat on.
-- 8th of 7, Apr 13 2020


//Using a machine to solve a puzzle is an admission of defeat,//

Well, either that, or a triumph of ingenuity.

//I’m actually not so sure that anyone could actually solve it, if the 100 individual cubes were all mixed up, after they were scrambled.//

Assuming :
a) that the image on each face is a photo print, or at least has significant continuity over the 9 regions of each face, and
b) that the 6 full images are reasonably distinguishable,
I don't think solving most such cubes would be very much harder than solving a standard rubix cube, for a decent cuber.

Either a single cube can be fully solved with all 6 images simultaneously, or not. If the latter, solving for a single face is easier than solving the full cube, so that's not an impediment.
(I think it would make sense for solving one face to 'scramble' the others, since then there would not be reduced complexity in solving the remaining images)

For a 100 square-piece puzzle, the image, if rectangular, must be 10x10, 5*20, 4x25, 2*50 or 100*1 (in either orientation). Again assuming some continuity over the junctions, and also limited repetitiveness over the image, that's not a particularly hard puzzle.
-- Loris, Apr 13 2020


... particularly if you have a big hammer.
-- 8th of 7, Apr 13 2020


This would need special cubes as a Rubic's cube can be dismantled.

What [Loris] said. Isn't there a Rubic's cube cheat as to make this trivial? A blind set of instructions that solves the cube. Solve all 100, jigsaw together what's left.

Fiendish would be to have the pictures the same but a couple of degrees out from each other. Just enough position change to make the picture not work.
-- wjt, Apr 13 2020


I agree with Loris that if the six images are easily distinguishable, then solving each jigsaw individually should be relatively easy. A single face on a Rubiks cube can be solved with few skills, and then the 10 x 10 square is a very simple jigsaw.

Solving each cube in advance so that all 6 jigsaws can be made without any further cube manipulation, is slightly trickier, but easy enough with some cube skills and enough differences between each side.

The whole puzzle would be a lot trickier if the six completed images were similar enough to each other that one could not be sure that a single completed side belonged to any specific image.
-- Lemon, Apr 13 2020


When in the process of solving the cubes, I think it will be very difficult to keep track of fragments of images instead of limited and clearly distinct areas of solid colour.
-- xenzag, Apr 13 2020


<Reviews imaging of fragments/>

No.
-- 8th of 7, Apr 13 2020


//Using a machine to solve a puzzle is an admission of defeat//

So where does that leave the Borg, who are by definition partly machine, and lost as an amalgam of species without them?
-- RayfordSteele, Apr 13 2020


Maybe each cube picture needs a raised or slightly slotted texture that does not obscure the picture .This locks the side pictures into having to jigsaw to surrounding cubes. Hence each cube needs to be done completely which makes them unique. Some cube pics will be flat for a certain overall picture edges. This will confused edge framing start used by puzzlers.
-- wjt, Apr 15 2020


// So where does that leave the Borg //

With a puzzle completed in record time, smug expressions, and an iron mallet waiting for something new to hit on.
-- 8th of 7, Apr 15 2020



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