Whilst browsing the excellent Google Patents archive, I stumbled upon this

Puzzle amusement device

It's a fresh take on the flexagon (which I know to be fairly popular with some people here), where many triflexagons are linked in a way such that they can be moved or 'slipped' and then folded to produce a great number of different shapes. I've never seen such an idea before. My favourite is the 'hexagonal trihexaflexagon slipagon' (working title ), Fig 13. I'm currently making it and I include a basic template for it.

The illustrations in the patent should be sufficient to aid construction, follow them very carefully though, I did make a couple of mistakes so far. It can seem correct but actually be folded incorrectly.

Now who can come up with the best design?

Basic template for the hexagonal trihexaflexagon slipagon (apologies for artifacts)

If you're building one of these, I can't wait to see it!

(off topic alert) -- Douglas Engel, by the way, invented the "turnstile" moving tile puzzle, I think.

I see they're closely related to the hexaflexagon...
http://twistypuzzles.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=9831
I look forward to seeing this one.

Well, yes a trihexaflexagon is a hexaflexagon but differs from the hexahexaflexagon by the fact that it has only 3 and not 6 faces that can be flexed to.




Don't expect anything fancy yet - this is just a rough blank prototype that will allow me to
a) see if this thing is any good
b) try and mockup some sort of colour/pattern

Just an update, I made this and... well as I suspected it is a little bit impractical. You can't see where to slide them and paper isn't really the best material. Some fun though. Certainly a lot of different configurations, but it's hard to move. Maybe this is why I've never seen it before.