Another day of testing

On a testing day, what does one do besides test?  Why puzzle of course!  And today was no exception to that. Same old same old.  5 minute breaks in between and this time a 8-7 day of it.  Can you say long!

Well this time I got smart and brought along a few puzzles that I knew would stay the distance.
The first is a Lampos Cosmic creatures.  (the second I will post on tomorrow) I purchased these a few years ago in Japan and have not gotten around to playing with them until this past weekend.  I'm not sure what the instructions tell me to do, but I can work it out from past experience with this type of puzzle.  (How do I make that photo show up with the correct orientation-frustrating)  This one has relatively small number of pieces compared to others of this type.  12 in all as you can see.  Each is also marked a-l to help you when placing the pieces as per the booklet.  There are a large number of challenges in the booklet, but again, no Japanese so I can't tell how many, and I was too lazy to count.  

Typical of these kinds of puzzles, you choose a challenge, insert the first of the pieces as given and off you go.  I did about 15 of these and got bored.  That seems to be a recurrent theme with me and these packing puzzles.  I can only do so many at a time and then I've had enough.

The Lampos Cosmic Creatures is a bit different in the shapes-no two are the same, and well, the area that needs to be filled is not symmetrical.  This seems to add a bit to the challenge.  I'm sure there is some sure fire method to solve these consistently, but I've yet to work out what it is. So for me, it's a trial and error puzzle-and there is nothing wrong with that now is there....

I was so bored this weekend that I have 3 more of this type of puzzle to review....stay tuned!