I was thinking about this puzzle the other day ($2 million in prize money is kind of attention getting), and I got to wondering how many different colors/edge patterns you would need in order for all pieces to be different. (The pieces are all square tiles, each edge can be a different color/pattern.) If you have only one color, then there is only one possible pattern: all pieces would be the same. If you used two colors, you could have 16 possible patterns (16 = 2 x 2 x 2 x 2), but rotating pieces will show that some are duplicates of each other. After that it gets complicated, so I wrote a little program to count up the possible patterns and eliminate all the duplicates. The results are in the "picture".
I am thinking there has to be a better way to calculate the number of unique pieces, but I'll be durned if I know what it is. I'll bet Stu knows, or maybe Jack.
Update January 2017 replaced missing image.
No, I (Stu) don't know that.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I DO know that there is some actually useful SW available which would do that as a by-product.
When East Germany collapsed, the Stasi fed lots of their secret documents through a shredder. Said SW sorts through these millions of shreded pieces, matches edges & reconstructs the documents a page at a time.
i have lost pieces 20,29 40 can anyone help me please
ReplyDeleteplease where can I get pieces 20,29,40 of the game urgent even if it is a web image
ReplyDeleteSorry, I don't have a copy of the puzzle. I have just been using randomly generated puzzles.
ReplyDeleteStill 31 days to win the $ 2 000 000 prize.
ReplyDeleteYou can try this solver for more chances :
http://eternity2blogger.over-blog.com/
Best Regards,
Eternity II Blogger