Dynetzzle

January 30, 2014 8:41 AM

A standard 6 sided die is a cube. It has eleven nets. The sum of the numbers on opposite faces of a die is 7.

A spacial Flash puzzle game (SL Kongregate).

posted by Elementary Penguin (26 comments total)

It's a little bit like a crossword for numbers, but where you have to fold the puzzle in to 3d in your head.

I'm not sure, yet, if I really like this or I'm merely about to have a massive aneurysm.
posted by BuxtonTheRed at 8:48 AM on January 30, 2014 [7 favorites]

I was actually disappointed when I finished it after posting this FPP, because there's only 10 levels. Sorry it's so short.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 8:50 AM on January 30, 2014 [1 favorite]

I saw this the other day and really like it. I was wondering if there were multiple solutions depending on if you fold down or up and all of a sudden I realised that it didn't matter you would just get a die of a different chirality and not one with a different order of faces.
posted by koolkat at 8:51 AM on January 30, 2014 [4 favorites]

Played this last night. At least three times I said "this is stupid" and closed the tab...only to come back and keep going within 5 minutes.
posted by Rallon at 8:58 AM on January 30, 2014 [1 favorite]

Can I get a book of these for when I'm stuck on a plane? I like them a hell of a lot more than your usual brand of sudoku or crosswords.
posted by themadthinker at 8:58 AM on January 30, 2014 [3 favorites]

I played it the other day and I really enjoyed it, though I would have loved it to be much, much less short.
posted by jeather at 9:01 AM on January 30, 2014 [1 favorite]

Good one!
posted by woodblock100 at 9:09 AM on January 30, 2014

Good use of half an hour or so. I hope the author creates more levels.
posted by talitha_kumi at 9:11 AM on January 30, 2014

i've always been good at this part of the IQ test.
posted by rebent at 9:12 AM on January 30, 2014

i've always been good at this part of the IQ test.

Myself also. I played one of the brain training games out on Wii quite a few years ago and when it came to the spatial reasoning I scored really highly on my first go. I think it comes from doing organic chemistry chiral synthesis and thinking about the specific reaction mechanisms. I know I can sit down and close my eyes and visualise a rather complicated molecule in 3d and move the parts as it reacts with another one just to figure out the ending chirality of the products. This is just a nice fun game compared to what I had to do on exams. I know people would try and build the molecules using modelling sets but I always found ti easier to just see them in my head. I always said that I had a good 3d card installed in my brain which is why I could do that.
posted by koolkat at 9:19 AM on January 30, 2014

This was great. Nice and relaxing and not too hard.
posted by cincinnatus c at 9:19 AM on January 30, 2014

Pretty cool. I started out "folding" in my head and identifying squares as top, bottom, left, right, front, back, but by the end was using patterns (3 in a row, 2&2 offset, etc) to identify opposing faces.

With only 11 nets, and 6*4*2=48 (I think) numerical configurations of each net, it seems like it shouldn't be too hard to write a script to generate more levels... hmm...
posted by enkd at 9:25 AM on January 30, 2014 [3 favorites]

Noooooo I had work to do today.
posted by BrashTech at 9:30 AM on January 30, 2014

Having spent a lot of time staring at dice in between combat rounds of DnD seems to help.
posted by FatherDagon at 9:36 AM on January 30, 2014 [3 favorites]

Thank goodness, it was short. :) Cool puzzle!
posted by BrashTech at 10:05 AM on January 30, 2014

Yeah once I figured out the 2x2 offset pattern it decreased the difficulty a ton.
posted by googly at 10:16 AM on January 30, 2014

I'm ready for the 12 sided dice now1
posted by Obscure Reference at 10:29 AM on January 30, 2014 [1 favorite]

I very much enjoyed this and am glad it was only 10 levels or my day would be shot.
posted by rouftop at 11:22 AM on January 30, 2014 [1 favorite]

Higher levels become more of a logic game rather than a spatial game. Interesting tho. I like it, took about 20 minutes or so.
posted by twjordan at 11:50 AM on January 30, 2014

A fun, pleasant diversion; nice because it doesn't take up the combinatorial headspace of Sudoku or Nonograms. I can imagine it'd wear thin much faster than either of those, for that reason, but it's a nice relaxing sort of thing rather than a thinky thing because the propagation of patterns is direct and straightforward.
posted by NMcCoy at 12:08 PM on January 30, 2014

Hi

Other facts about nets: the octahedron and the cube have the same number of nets, as do the dodecahedron and the icosahedron. This reflects the duality between regular solids (tetrahedron is autodual). Such identities for the number of nets are also true for higher dimensional polytopes.

I proved 15 years ago (with computer) that there are no self-overlapping net for the icosahedron (and the same for the dodecahedron by hand).
posted by b9492e7f929dab23426aa2b344d3d5bef083f7e1 at 12:10 PM on January 30, 2014 [2 favorites]

This thing makes me visualize the Gamecube splash screen over and over again.
posted by ignignokt at 12:48 PM on January 30, 2014 [1 favorite]

This was lots of fun. Thanks.
posted by ob1quixote at 1:31 PM on January 30, 2014

You don't really have to do any folding, just follow a few rules:
- every net contains one of each digit
- squares in the same net that are two apart from each other horizontally or vertically are complementary
- squares in the same net where you can trace a Z from one to the other (e.g., (0,0) -> (0,1) -> (1,1) -> (1,2)) are complementary

Once I figured these rules out I could do all the levels by rote, like finishing a Sudoku. I can't visualize so coming up with tricks like this is the usual way I solve visualization puzzles.
posted by dfan at 6:44 PM on January 30, 2014 [1 favorite]

Fun and clever puzzle, but I think 10 puzzles was about right. By that time I feel you'd pretty much seen the the entire interesting puzzle space. (Honestly, the last few were more about seeing where the nets were amid a sea of colors than about determining what number went where on the cube.) I'm pretty sure that there's no way to add another layer of deduction, really once you get to the point where the nets are instinctive that's it.
posted by aspo at 8:51 PM on January 30, 2014 [1 favorite]

I enjoyed it quite a bit. 10 seems just about right.
posted by scottymac at 8:07 AM on January 31, 2014