Today's blog post is a plea for ideas and help. I have been studying the Hordern-Dalgety classification system and have run into a few problems. I applaud James for all the work he has done on this. I know I could never have accomplished this.
The first issue I have is that the sequential puzzle section seems to be very vague when it comes to twisty puzzles. I'm trying to work out how to catalog these. James has also mentioned having this same problem. Should it be by shape, by number of sides, by mechanism? What would you do? How do I make this a user-friendly section that can be navigated by the non-puzzler?
Another section that has not really been fully classified is sequential discovery puzzles. I'll be honest, I'm not a huge fan of these types of puzzles, but I do know we have quite a few and will be receiving more this summer. How does one catalog these? What main classification should they fall under? Are they opening puzzles? Are they assembly puzzles? Or do we need another classification that has only sequential discovery puzzles in them?
My next thoughts run to databases. There are databases all over the world: Rob's puzzle page, Goetz page, The Lily Library...The list goes on. Each one of these is unique and stands alone. While we could link to each one, it seems a lot of extra pages for people to go through. George has this idea of allowing people to link their collections to ours while still having it be a separate page. By this I believe he wants it to be something along the lines of the twistypuzzles.com collections page. Unlike that one though, he wants people to be able to add their own puzzles to their own database. He envisions people working together to help develop the webpage interface. He's looking for a world standard I think. We of course would host the database. Any thoughts on this?
My final question is more of a mini-competition. We have a rather large 2 (1/2) car garage (23'x22') and a golf cart garage (10'x12') Both of which have a rather boring grey floor. You see, we have no need for a garage here so we plan to use it to display yet more puzzles. Yes, it is temperature controlled and even has its own powder room (dedicated to wire disentanglement puzzles). We want to have something puzzle related epoxied into the floor. My thought was a maze in the large garage and a couple of pentomino puzzles in the golf cart garage. There was an arrow maze done for the IPP in San Francisco, but George vetoed that one. We'd like to open this up to the public to come up with a puzzling idea. If we choose your design/idea for the floor, we'd like to invite you to stay a weekend in the Puzzle Palace Museum. Send your ideas to katsmom01 (@) gmail (dot) com. We plan to leave this offer open until the end of May. At that time we will choose a design to place on the floor before the puzzles arrive. Based on our experience with the floor at Puzzle Palace, this process takes up to one month to finish. Forgive the messy photographs. Right now the workmen are storing all materials in there.
On to the weekly update. George has finished installing all of the bookcases in the Library, Guest bedroom and closets. The lights have all been converted over to low UV emitting LED lights. The putting green is finished and it is great fun! The landscape lighting has been finished and security lighting is up and running. We have holes all over the walls that need patching, but this is my fault for moving too many switches around the house. We found some odd switching in the house and have begun working on fixing the problems. One set of lights had the switch buried in the wall. Even the previous owner didn't know where it was. One light has 4! switches to run it. And the worst infraction is 3 rooms on one switch. The electricians and I have a love hate relationship. They love the work and the food, but they hate the work and the changes when they think they have all but finished the job. All but one of the ancient (circa 1985) intercom systems have been removed. I have learned how to use the kitchen built in radio. The old phone jacks have been removed bar one or two for humorous sake (my 19 year old didn't know what they were used for). The old pool equipment has disappeared and a new pump is sitting waiting to be installed. And me? I still cook for all the workmen every day and run back and forth to the big house while the lighting system there is being updated.
Sequential Discovery Puzzle (SD) - A puzzle that takes you on a journey through a set of sequential and generally non-repeating challenges involving the discovery of hidden mechanisms or devices to reach a final goal. Most popularly, hidden tools are to be discovered and used to progress through subsequent steps. In the absence of discreet tools, other mechanisms are sometimes employed that provide a similar experience. The SD puzzle type can fall within or incorporate elements from many traditional puzzle categories and is defined by a special type of solving experience rather than by a specific physical form or end goal.
ReplyDelete