The last round of the '96 World Puzzle Championships consisted of
two puzzles to solved together by each team of four. The team
puzzles have been tough to design every year, because few puzzles
benefit from having eight hands working on them. These two,
however, were prime examples.
Skyscrapers are a Japanese puzzle by origin. Usually done on paper, a 6x6 (usually)
grid is presented which represents a city. Each square of the grid will be filled
with a number between 1 and 6, totaling 6 of each number. On the outside of
the grid are some numbers, which represent the number of buildings that can
be seen looking along that row or column. For instance, if a row had buildings
1,2,5,3,6,4, the number (if there was one) on the left would be 4 (1,2,5,6 "visible")
and the number on the right 2. With this puzzle, each team was presented with
a box with 36 square holes in a 6x6 pattern, and 36 wood blocks, with heights
of 1-6. Since 36 blocks had to be shuffled around to get to the solution, 8
hands were useful, as can be seen in the picture here. We attacked it by starting
with each person trying to satisfy the numbers on their own side, working together
after all sides were close. This seemed to work quite well, since we finished
in about half the time of the next fastest team, the Germans.
Time limit: 30 minutes
This puzzle was a "mystery" puzzle. Unlike all other puzzles in
the tournament, we never saw instructions until the puzzle was
handed out. This is a puzzle which will soon be for sale in Europe
and perhaps the U.S. The puzzle is a 3-D sculpture of a clock,
presented as 160 cut pieces of thin cardboard. To assemble the
clock, the 160 pieces (which do not interlock) must be stacked in
correct order on a central shaft. This again benefitted from 8
hands, at least for a while, when two people worked on the clock
face, one on the base, and one on the bell atop the clock. Some
shuffling around was required, and finally with 2 minutes to go,
all the sections were stacked on the shaft. (This took two minutes,
such that we finished with just one second remaining.) The clocks
were judged, with the best recieving 160 points, the next best 150,
and so on. The U.S. and Polish teams had virtually perfect clocks,
and no other team had more than about 2/3 to 3/4 assembled.
Time limit: 40 minutes
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Edited: 31 januari 2000
