Well, I have no idea why I hadn't thought of this earlier.
It is a brilliant magic design and I had a lot of fun with some friends
at tonight's dinner.

I had no plans of making any new designs because of too many tasks to be done,
but last night while chatting with a friend from Singapore (hi Mike! LOL), I thought
that placing smileys on a magic folding puzzle would be an excellent creation!

I immediately came with the templates, but it seemed to be a bit incompatible
with the usual looks of a smiley. So I had to think of how to modify it and get
as many emotions as possible. The way the magic tiles move around was the
"forcing guide" for the design, so here I present it.

Every single state shows one emotion (while the other side is scrambled), so the total
is eight emotions. The solution of this puzzle, is to make Mr Magic to SMILE!
Of course, the similarities of the back and front pictures of the tiles, make it an even
more challenging puzzle.

Simplicity of the looks of the puzzle was also the key to achieve more emotions.
So here are the photos:


Happy (solution state) and Sad


Shy and Tired


Silly and Sick


Evil and Angry


Of course on the other side of each emotion, the puzzle will look scrambled and a bit like this:



So... would *you* be able to make Mr Magic to... smile?




Pantazis

lol i like it

He's so cool!
He have emotions^^

Nice EE (Exhibition of Emotions)!
I had to look twice to see why the faces sometimes smile or look angry.

That is...amazing. I love it.

Love it! Very simple idea but brilliantly done.

Very nice, it looks great! Does it ever mix up, or any way you turn it it's a different face?

Since it is a 4 tile, there is a very limited number of moves and positions. In fact, I believe there is only 8 positions for a 4 tile magic. Jaap's page confirms this.

http://www.geocities.com/jaapsch/puzzles/magicmini.htm

Ergo, yes, there is always one of the 8 faces on it.

Very nice idea!!!

It reminds me a bit of the Moody (skewb) Ball that was invented by Gerd Braun
(http://twistypuzzles.com/cgi-bin/puzzle.cgi?pid=1004)

Geert

Brilliant!!. It is a great marriage of art and puzzle. Very inventive!
Lee

Ahh yes, the Moody Ball. Back in high school I bought two directly from Dr. Christoph Bandelow. That had been my first ever taste of international commerce before the internet changed all the rules (i.e. I used good old fashioned snail mail correspondence).

This magic smile definitely reminds me of the Moody Ball.

Fun and simple, Great job!

I have a 4 tile magic and it does have very few states, I know he has made others that are always solved like the Twistypuzzles one, but I couldn't remember for sure if it could mix up.

Thanks to everyone for their nice words. Tonight I will post a diagram showing how the emotions are connected,
and you will see that all of this was nicely planned. I will also explain why going from the happy emotion to the
sad emotion uses the longest possible "minimum path" between two states of this puzzle.

I may design a second puzzle with Mr Magic's emotions, which will complement the rest eight emotions
(there are 16 emotion possibilities, so it will need two 4-tile magics - each of which has eight states - to cover them all).




Pantazis


PS Plus, a nice video is a *must* for this puzzle!

ok... as I promised, I am presenting a picture showing all the paths of this puzzle.
It is well known that a four tile magic has exactly eight positions, and two types of movement:

1. the circle move (which makes the puzzle to temporarily look like a squared "O").
2. the star move (which makes the puzzle to temporarily look like an "X").

Each of those moves can be performed vertically or horizontally, giving a total of four possibilities.
The interesting thing here is that when using the circle move (vertically or horizontally) the
outcome is the same. For example, as shown in the picture, if the puzzle is in Happy mode and
we perform the circle move, we will end up to the Sick mode, regardless if we do it vertically or
horizontally (and if we repeat it, we will end up back to the Happy mode).

I will use "O" to denote the two circle moves with the same outcome (hence the double line),
and "Xv", "Xh", to denote the star move when twisting the puzzle vertically or horizontally
(with respect to the face of Mr Magic).




From the image, we can directly see that if we only use "Xv" and "Xh" and we are in
the inside loop, we will always be going around the inside loop (similarly for the outside loop).
And we really need to use "O" to transfer from the inside loop to the outside loop, and vice versa.

By using the moves "O","Xv", and "Xh", we may see that the Happy emotion needs

1. minimum of one move to reach the Sick, Evil, Shy emotions,
2. minimum of two moves to reach the Silly, Angry, Tired emotions, and
3. minimum of three moves to reach the Sad emotion.

In other words, I have deliberately made the Sad emotion to be as far as possible
from the Happy emotion.
(an "antipode" in mathematical terms)

Some other neat part I did when constructing the emotions, is that whenever Mr Magic feels
positive (inside loop) he has a green nose, and whenever he feels negative (outside loop)
his has a red nose!


Regarding the rest eight emotions, those will not be performed by Mr Magic, but by... Mrs Magic!

(I plan to make this puzzle tomorrow, as the templates are ready and I just need to print them LOL)




Pantazis


PS Going around the internal loop is done the same way as shown for the outside loop,
by swapping the "Xv","Xh" moves.

I cannot wait to see the video and Mrs. Magic

So... after presenting the Magic Smile (aka Mr Magic), here I present Magic Style (aka Mrs Magic).

You may observe that Mrs Magic's emotions are different from Mr Magic's emotions:




Naughty (this is the solved state LOL) and embarrassed.




Satisfied and Relieved.




Disappointed and Mean.




Worried and Irritated.


As promised, I have already placed a video on YouTube with both Mr and Mrs Magic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGaWqGnrqnI


Finally here is the Magic Couple together with the... Moody Ball! Aren't they all sooooo cute?








Pantazis

I like them!

But what are the little things in Mrs. Magic's eyes?

It shows the letter "Pi" which is the initial for my first name (in Greek),
and the "08" for the year of its design (which is 2008).
The other eye just has the reflection, to have some symmetry.




Pantazis

Ha! Great idea!

I have a question in regards to the Moody Ball actually.

Is it possible to get the Greens Smiling, the Reds Frowning and the Yellows half and half?

I'd be interested in owning one, but I'm guessing they are far to rare for my budget.

Oh ok!
I just get it^^

would you be willing to post the template for the mr. magic?

Although I won't dare to try (the puzzle is not easy to move and I don't want to wear off the stickers),
I believe it is possible, and with more than one ways/combinations of colors.
(This is by examining the way pieces can be swapped and rotated)






Good question!

I have answered it before, but I will repeat it again because there are more new members this time.
First of all, it is obvious that I drew from scratch every tile paper (as an image, it is extremely simple to make).

If someone is serious about puzzles and likes the design, I am sure he/she will not have any trouble in making a similar template.
The template is more than an image anyway, it is like a signature of my drawing style.
There might be some difficulty in making the sad emotion to be as far as possible from the happy emotion, but I will not
explain everything from scratch of how to build magics and where to place the paper tiles. There are enough guides already.

Now if he/she is serious about making money (and not much about the puzzle) I would prefer not to give anything.
Since I came up with the idea, wouldn't you think it would be fair for me to take advantage of this, at least in the short-term?
I know and I regret that some genuine people will feel sad about it, but at least I am not encouraging theft of ideas.
And by knowing that people will contact me for the magics, and keeping nice relations with them, it motivates me to do more.

All in all, I do not mind if someone makes it by himself/herself and uses it for personal use. But sadly, I had experienced
at least four cases of people copying my designs, and selling them to a third party without giving any credit whatsoever.
That said, I can't stop people from doing it, but I also chose to never deal with them for anything, while making sure others
learn about who they are and what they do. And trust me, it is *very* easy to find out who copies and sells them
- some genuine collectors always alert me - but this is not something to do or discuss further in this forum.

At certain times, for people who seek quality cut paper tiles, as well as "round stringing" (my own technique), I always
make my magics available through this forum. For those willing to wait for long time, they can tell me anytime.
This is how it works.

You don't want Mr Magic to be sad and Mrs Magic to be irritated, do you?




Pantazis

amazingly simple yet awesome idea!

I was asking so i could try and make one as a gift for my girlfriend's sister who turned six this weekend. I'll definetly keep this in mind next month when her two year old sister turns three. We'll see how I do making my own templates; I'm not nearly as good with photoshop as I would like.

Some after-thoughts. This puzzle seems to be the most enjoyable for *all* ages I have made.

The last days:

(1) It has already stopped three babies from crying (QUINBLZ is right... it *does* make babies happy).
(2) It occupied some high school kids and stopped them from being naughty for a while.
(3) It became the main topic in the middle of a seminar series (and even delayed one seminar!)
(4) It made some elders (including my parents) act like teenagers.

Like a friend said, for a puzzle to win, it should not be a difficult one and frustrate,
but it should be solvable by a few, and also provide a lot of fun for a large range of ages.

That's it, I am sending it to a puzzle competition!




Pantazis