A puzzle is a puzzle which consists in reconstituting an object with two or three dimensions using parts which encase the ones in the others. The puzzles in two dimensions are reproductions of tables, photographs or drawings. Those in three dimensions are more often classified like Casse-tête and can represent for example known monuments.

The puzzle is a play which can only be practiced or with several and which in certain countries is played in family at the time of the festivals.

Puzzles 2D

The parts of a puzzle, made paperboard or of wood, are the shapes of similar size presenting of the outgrowths and the hollows on their edges. To make a puzzle consists in posing the parts on a plane surface and encasing them the ones in the others so as to reconstitute an image by which the model accompanies the puzzle. The parts are designed to allow only one configuration. The puzzles are generally of rectangular or square form, but one finds also alternatives of all kinds.

The difficulty of a puzzle depends on the number of parts, and varies according to their size and from that of the complete puzzle. The ordinary puzzles starts with 300 parts then one finds versoins of 500,750 and: 1000 parts, the largest commercially distributed puzzle is composed of: 24000 parts and has a size of 428 cm out of 157 cm. A puzzle is generally accompanied by an indication of age referring to the public which will be most capable to solve it without it being neither too easy nor too difficile.

Resolution

The method of commonly practiced resolution passes by the following stages:

• research of the corners: the four parts forming the corners of the complete puzzle are located by their absence of outgrowth or hollow on two contiguous sides;
• research of the edges: the edges are located by their absence of outgrowth or hollow on one on the four sides;
• filling: it is then necessary to assemble the remainder of the parts, either starting from the edges, or starting from the elements most easily recognizable on the image. (for example the character or the principal monument);
• not to have to randomly pick a part among several hundreds, even several thousands, one can as a preliminary sort the parts by dominant color or the shape of their outgrowths and their hollows.

History

The invention of the puzzles is allotted to John Spilsbury, a cartographer and London engraver which, towards 1760, had the idea to cut out charts representing various countries of the world and to sell them like ludic means to learn the Géographie. The first puzzles were done by painting an image on the surface of a fine plank of wood which one then cut out using a Scie to jig-saw, called in English jigsaw . From where the term of origin indicating a puzzle, jigsaw puzzle , the English word puzzle generally meaning enigma or headache.

There exist still today manufacturing puzzles out of wooden, that the maker of puzzle saws by superimposing two, three, or five boards where the reproduction was stuck. Cutting is function of the image to reconstitute to bring a difficulty and an additional pleasure, in any case different.

The role of the maker of puzzle is difficult to define. In the majority of the cases - for all the puzzles out of paperboard in particular - the puzzles are manufactured with the machine and their cutting does not obey any need: a cutting press regulated according to an immutable drawing slices the plates of paperboard in an always identical way; the true amateur rejects these puzzles, not only because they are out of paperboard instead of being out of wood, nor because a model is reproduced on the box of packing, but because this mode of cutting removes specificity even puzzle; it is essential little in fact, contrary to an idea strongly anchored in the spirit of the public, that the starting image is considered easy (a scene of kind to the manner of Vermeer for example, or a photograph colors of an Austrian castle) or difficult (Jackson Pollock, Pissarro or - miserable paradox - a white puzzle): it is not the subject of the table nor the technique of the painter who makes the difficulty of the puzzle, but the subtlety of cutting, and a random cutting will produce necessarily a random, oscillating difficulty between an extreme facility for the edges, the details, the spots of light, the objects encircled well, the features, the transitions, and a tiresome difficulty for the remainder: sky without clouds, sand, the meadow, ploughings, remote regions, etc| Georges Perec | the life directions for use

Puzzle 3D

The puzzle 3D comes us from Montreal, Quebec, invented by Paul Galant in 1990.

There exist the various shapes of puzzles 3D:

famous
• Historic buildings or sites (Mount Saint-Michel, Empire State Building…)
• Ball representing various images (Globe, balloons, or animalist images…)
• cut Statue or another sculpture slices some (Baiser of Rodin, Réveil…)

Expressions with the word puzzle

• parts of the puzzle : multiplicity of elements having to be assembled in a whole to make direction.
• a puzzle to which it misses a part : together whose value is reduced to nothing or reduced considerably by the absence of an element.

Puzzlet

The term “puzzlet” was invented in 2000 by Xavier Paulik, creator of the Community site Puzzletfactory. Through the contraction of “puzzle” and “Internet”, it indicates the playable puzzles on line on Internet.

There exist several technologies to reproduce the concept and the realism of the puzzle into virtual through a navigator: puzzles Java, puzzles achievable to download, puzzles in Flash.

Many sites propose very elementary puzzles with a “square” cutting and little possibility of reproducing the feeling of the puzzle.

Nevertheless the last techniques 3D and multi-media make it possible to propose from now on puzzles of important size and with true effects 3D, reversal of parts, to add to it music, sounds of environment.

• to see examples of puzzle in flash

In the middle of Web 2.0, the increasing community of sites of puzzles on line allows any Net surfer to create his own puzzles on line, to divide them, to send them in the form of electronic Postcard (ecard puzzle) , and to measure its performances on line by constituting true community of players.

By its universal concept, there is extremely to bet that in the years to come any interactive support (mobile, TV, Web) propose the puzzlets like basic application.

References