When my grandfather came to visit me nearly six years ago, he brought me a set of disentanglement puzzles—you know those small twisted pieces of metal that you try to separate somehow. To most, this would not sound very exciting: it would almost be like another chore and waste of time and energy. My initial reaction to the puzzle was different, however. Starting with a “P-shaped” puzzle (i.e., two “P-shaped” pieces interlocked together), I initially pulled them apart with sheer brute force, hoping to see one piece would slide through the gap in the other piece. (As a side note, please never do this; this isn’t the proper technique and you’ll end up damaging them… I have experience. 😅) As I eventually realized that strength wasn’t the way to go (that’s why everyone says “brains over brawns”), I knew I had to tackle the problem from another way.
When I went to my grandfather for a hint, he told me to figure it out by myself and forbade me from consulting a puzzle guide, as he saw that it was “cheating on the fun” as he used to say. After spending a week fidgeting with the pieces to no success, I came close to the verge of giving up. That’s when I decided to take a small break and relax my brain muscles. Thereafter, I retried it by cleverly maneuvering the pieces. One day, I tried to implement a strategy that I came up with the previous night before going to bed: I pulled the right ring from the top and through the left loop, only to see that… it came off! After two long, gruesome weeks, I finally solved it! The feeling of thrill was indescribable. As I became more invested in disentanglement puzzles, I set out to solve horseshoe rings, double-Ms, and other various sorts, which sometimes took several months before I realized the ingenious technique.
In general, solving these brain teasers has helped me gain focus, determination, and patience (as I stressed upon in earlier blog posts). Applying the same logical and levelheaded approach, I also find that strategy games like chess, Risk, and Settlers of Catan give me an opportunity to exercise logic in a creative way (details on these board games in a future blog post). As a matter of fact, my love for science and programming mainly originates from this plaything; as we all know very well, these two disciplines require the same approach as solving a puzzle does. I like most puzzles, but I tend to draw the line at dot to dots.
Great work! I have never been able to solve any of those. My friends usually rip it out of my hands and solve it within a second. I can definitely tell you have a large passion and hobby for puzzles of all sort.