Hello Puzzlers,

I am pleased to introduce my latest puzzle, Fracture-6:Fracture-6 is a triangular dipyramid with bandaged cuts, similar to my Fracture-10 puzzle. It has three axes of rotation, and each axis is capable of 90 degree turns, but only when the edges are properly aligned on that axis. This bandaging makes Fracture-6 very difficult to solve. Here are a few more pictures of Fracture-6:

This vertex must be turned by 180 degrees to prevent blocking other turns:

This vertex may be turned 90 degrees in either direction:

Here is the puzzle fully scrambled:
Watch the video to see Fracture-6 in action.

You can buy Fracture-6 at Pitcher Puzzles on Shapeways. Despite the difficulty of the solving challenge, it's my most affordable puzzle yet.

I hope you enjoy, and have a very merry Christmas!
Dave

Thanks for the early Christmas present Dave! A deceptively simple looking puzzle, but as you say, it could be a nasty one to solve. And other Shapeways sellers take note: Dave has posted links on the Shapeways page for sticker templates and fixing screws for those who want to DIY it.

Oh yes finaly another of your puzzles . Look's very nice .

Great puzzle !



Is it more difficult to slove than Shim's Constellation6 ?

Excelent Puzzle!

this is bandaged Constellation Six???

Yes, although Constellation Six is a fudged puzzle.

David, great puzzle! I like how all of your puzzles are somewhat untraditional. You are really thinking outta the box! Very nice!

Really nice puzzle, Dave!
If that is the case, then how far can the Fracture-6 be unbandaged without requiring fudging?

-Eitan

Extremely cool puzzle! This is quite possibly my favourite from you, and I think I'm going to have to buy this as a late Christmas present to myself.

Congratulations on the good work; I was getting a little impatient seeing as you haven't shown any new puzzles recently. I hope we'll see more puzzles and new concepts from you soon.

From mathematical point of view, you can unbandage it to any degree that you like. You will just get smaller and smaller pieces in the circular region around the central piece, but the puzzle is always going to stay bandaged. Fudging is actually pouring out all this "sand" (with infinitesimal grains) after infinite unbandaging.

Thanks for all the nice comments! And thanks to those who have already answered some of the questions above.
Due to the bandaging, the algorithms required to solve Fracture-6 are certainly going to be longer than those needed for Constellation-6, so in that regard Fracture-6 is probably more difficult. I say probably because I haven't solved it yet, although I can say that one of the algorithms I developed to solve Fracture-10 was over a hundred moves long. There is likely to be some similarity between Fracture-10 and Fracture-6 in this regard.
Sorry about that, I must admit I've been bad about taking the time to "publish" lately . I do have a few new creations that I will be introducing soon!

I received the Fracture-6 from Shapeways a couple of weeks ago, but have only just got around to dyeing and stickering it:
It turns really smooth, and I accidentally mixed it up. I couldn't solve it without taking it apart and re-assembling it I hand cut the stickers, but I used some craft scissors (the ones used to cut fancy edges) to cut the corners off. This is much easier than using a knife or normal scissors.

Thanks for a very nice puzzle David.

Hi Gus,

I just finished building mine too, here's what it looks like in white..

Cheers,
Burgo.

Burgo, I thought that non-dyed WSF was a bit of a dirt magnet. Have you treated the surface in any way?

Yeah, I read that it's supposed to brown a bit with the oils from your hands.. I guess I'll see `how much`. I kind of have a philosophy that things obtain wear through use, and the look of `that kind of thing` is OK to me, it adds character to the thing. There's a difference between that and dropping and breaking or dog-earing stickers by picking them off etc (that annoys me).

I just thought it looked really nice white. If it gets too bad I'll try something else like painting it, or a really thin layer of epoxy putty sanded and polished (you can apply it watered down). WSF is a strange material, it can be so thin, light and flexible, I'm still getting used to it.

How are you going with your solving.. I just half scrambled it and solved it, and by that I mean I did it properly but left a few edges attached (you'd say edges, centres and corners, I think?) so I had less to rebuild, just to get an idea of the solve and watch what I was doing. Next comes a full scramble, but I think I have a technique. I will say it's a really unusual little puzzle, very interesting .

Cheers,
Burgo.

I want to do this minor bump to ask a very theoretical question:
Does this puzzle jumble?

A puzzle is jumbling when is can NOT be unbandaged into a doctrinaire puzzle. A doctrinaire puzzle is one which does not change its appearance after peeling of all stickers.

We agreed so far it is a bandaged Constellation Six.
Constellation does fit into the definition of a doctrinaire puzzle but it is a fudged puzzle.
Should fudged puzzles really considered as doctrinaire?
This question can't be answered logically. It is about which way we define something and therefore it is a matter of taste. And my taste says: "Fudged puzzles are fudged but not doctrinaire" => Fracture-6 is not jumbling.
Any other comment?

Well, it's NOT a bandaged Constellation Six... If I took a Constellation Six and bandaged all the pieces together, I wouldn't get a Trigonal Dipyramid... I'd get a Trigonal Dipyramid with some volume missing. So the Fracture-6 is not a bandaged Constellation Six, since we need to add extra volume to achieve that bandaging. Of course, we can simulate a Fracture-6 as a bandaged Constellation Six, but once you start unbandaging you end up with a different puzzle.
So fudged puzzles can be doctrinaire without any problems, since it's not possible to bandage a fudged puzzle back to the non-fudged original.

The post I always go to for questions like this is this one.

http://twistypuzzles.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=171260#p171260

So I would say that yes the Constellation Six is a doctrinaire puzzle. However I would have to modify Bram's definition of jumbling to cover this case.

A jumble puzzle is one which is non-doctrinaire but where it isn't possible to shape mod or unbandage it into a doctrinaire puzzle (without fudging).

I either have to add the parenthetical phrase above or really look at Bram's definition of bandaging.

A bandage puzzle is a non-doctrinaire one where by cutting the pieces into smaller parts it's possible to transform it into a doctrinaire puzzle.

If we take "cutting" here to mean cutting with a 2D surface that has no width, then I might even go so far as to say this is NOT a bandaged Constellation Six. You can NOT "cut" this puzzle up into a Constellation Six without the removal of some real volume which isn't possible with just 2D cuts.

So in that sense it fits Bram's definition of jumbling even without the parenthetical phrase.

If we go your direction then something like my Doctor Skewb wouldn't be considered doctrinaire. To me it clearly is.

Carl

P.S. Just read TomZ's post. He just said the same thing I said in a totally different way. So yes, I agree with him. It leaves Bram's original definitions intact.