I was flummoxed for a strategy until you put them outside of the frame, then I thought approaching it in layers where instead of connecting the piece, you move it ever so slightly so it sits atop its connecting piece so that some pieces are on the table and some are stacked one layer above. This would allow you to see piece shapes more easily to adjust and move them. F5ve out of 5ive
Yes. A potential strategy is to make a block of pieces ten pieces long and two or three pieces wide. It doesn't have to be a rectangle. Position that block in about the middle of the puzzle. Move it up/down so that number of empty spaces above and below the block are each multiples of FIVE. (If that can't be done, try a differently shaped block.) Then repeat that process to divide the empty spaces on each side into smaller regions that are also multiples of five. Although this is not guaranteed to work every time, it should help one stumble on a viable solution significantly faster than completely random trial and error.
Karen: this isn't really a puzzle it's a brain teaser in the shape of puzzle Karen 10 minutes later: flips pieces over and turns it into an actual puzzle
@@ivanazirojevic3544 nah, it's just thinking outside the box. And that's exactly what you need to do with these kinda puzzles. The person who makes this could've easily covered the wood grain if he didn't want people to use that to solve the puzzle. I'm not even suprised if you're meant to do that like that
Even if they wanted to still make the puzzle out of wood, they could’ve cut a bunch of the same ones, but mixed and matched the set pieces so the pieces wouldn’t have been from the same piece of wood. Like cut them all, then package it so each set has like one A5, B8, etc etc, but not from the same piece of wood.
@@KarenPuzzles The puzzle comes fully solved, right? In the packaging. So I don’t think it’d be possible to give somebody an unsolvable one by accident since you have to solve it to package it up. P.S. love your content, you are the best Karen :)
i love when karen thinks outside the box, finds a clever solution and puts in practice her knowledge of a different dicipline and immediately goes like "is this cheating" no bestie u outsmarted a brain teaser lmao
Watching you come up with the wood grain strat reminds me of scientists studying crows putting stones in a beaker of water to raise the water level so they could drink. Using your brain and resources around you to solve a puzzle is genius not cheating. You go girl! ✌🏻
I just wanted to say thank you for sharing your videos, I have been doing puzzles all my life. I was that teenager that did jigsaw puzzles rather than party or go out. I got busy with life and hadnt done a puzzle in years when i found your channel. After watching you, I couldnt help but get back into puzzling. It has helped me pull out of depression and find a hobby again. It has given me a reason to get up and do my chores so I can have room to puzzle. Because of your videos i recently bought five+ new puzzles that I cant wait to get started on. Thank you for sharing!
It may not have been the way they intended the puzzle to be put together, but I don't know how you could use a strategy with this other than trial and error, which doesn't sound very fun to me.
There is no such thing as cheating, unless it's a last option. This is not cheating at all... I don't see it that way. You're doing awesome, by the way.
Imagine they used acrylic and ALSO etched the puzzle shapes into both sides, or neither side, and the pieces could be upside down, it would be even harder!!
If you keep just the unique ones (there are 12) and smooth out the edges so they are flat then you have pentominoes and there are lots of solutions to various rectangles but you are right - they can be very difficult to find.
@@richardfarrer5616 I actually bought the smoothed out version online earlier this week. I was wondering if the puzzle edges do limit the number of solutions, and I think they do, because two 'ins' and two 'outs' can't fit together if the pieces have puzzle edges. So actually some positions of the pieces would be possible smoothed and aren't possible in this case. Eg 2:43 she demonstrates attempting to fit two together when the ins and outs don't line up when they would if it were smoothed.
Doing it from the back was smart. Most of the pentaminos I've seen are plastic, so that's not an option. I've never seen puzzle piece shaped ones. A different twist.
Looks like this one would have been much easier to just all the pieces over so the piece shapes are easier to see, then work the whole thing outside the frame. EDIT: 9:21 Oh, I commented too soon!
I am a new subscriber as of like 2 weeks ago and in that time I have completed 4 puzzles two 300 piece 🧩 and two 500 piece 🧩! And I owe it all to you! I stumbled across your content randomly and was like “omg when I was younger I use to LOVE puzzles” so i hit watch and next thing you know I’m getting puzzles to do while your videos play (lol) and LOVING IT. Thank you for bringing these fun, mind exercising, back aching, satisfying creations back into my life...my husband and I are having a blast 💕
I don't think it's cheating. that would be like saying using the silhouette of an image (instead of the image itself) is cheating. 'cheating' is looking up the solution online. also, a five-block tetris piece is a pentomino and clearing five lines at once is a pentris. The More You Know ~
theoretically the puzzle has an image on it like other puzzle, only this image can not be seen very well. at other puzzles you can use the image. at this one it is a bit blurry, but that does not mean you can not use the image.
I love to put puzzles together. I’m glad your videos was suggested to me. It’s so relaxing to watch you put a puzzle together. Thank you to you for showing us your passion for puzzles.
I was thinking about doing it upside down, not for the woodgrain, but to eliminate the false sides of the "five" pieces, making it easier to see the pieces together.
Only just saw this 3 years late but FIVE and no not cheating at all, I wouldn't of even contemplated doing a hard puzzle like that, so well done and whatever works I say do it!!!
Oh my goodness I haven't watched it yet but when I saw that Karen put out a new video I just screamed yay out loud and now I paused it so I can get myself all excited to watch it oh my God Karen thank you so much for putting on a new video today for us to watch and enjoy! I'm wicked excited because it's almost 19 minutes long, that is so much goodness to enjoy!
You deserve a high five for the resourceful way you solved that puzzle! I would like to try to solve it without looking at the wood grain. But I think you are right -- if they didn't want puzzlers to use those hints, they should have made it out of some other material.
Five. Not a problem. When you showed the pieces early on, the way you did it of following the grain on the back was the way I thought about. Gotta do what you gotta do to get it done. .
this seems to be based on Pentomino or Penta puzzle which I actually had as a kid which is a set of all unique 5-square combinations that you are able to make, obviously without any innies and outies. so in the original you would not get any duplications, but on the other hand you could easily flip a shape over, cause they had no obvious "right" sides. the original challenge was a big rectangle, but there was a booklet challenging you to form other shapes as well. my first immediate though for a strategy for this one would have been to copy the shapes to paper, color each peace for visibility, and play around with that, but at first I didn't realize they had a "wrong" side. so your approach would have been my next though ;D and looking for hints in the woodgrain is just a natural consequence :)
Actually I would have flipped it over because this way you can see the shape of the piece way better. Think this is part of the brainteaser. You could finish by not turning over, but why should you? Five 😉
Five. I definitely wouldn't have thought of flipping them over or using the wood grain to get it done. You did awesome 💯 I love your videos. Keep up the good work❤️
At first I thought it was kinda cheating, but when i saw you still had some trouble putting the pieces together, now I think it's not really cheating since it's still prett hard !
05:07 "reminds me of Tetris". Tetris uses tetrominoes, and this puzzle, Pento, uses pentominoes. So it would remind one. (-: The "tetra-" and "penta-" prefixes (which drop the "-a-" before the vowel in "-ominoes") just come from the Ancient Greek words for four and five.
I used to play blokus with my ex’s family over the holidays and stuff. I had forgotten about it until you mentioned here with five seconds left in your video!
I like the out of the box thinking. If it is not the intended solution, that is on the manufacturers problem. 1) They could have used plastic, or paint, to eliminate or hide the grain. 2) They could make them in batches of 6-7 and mix the pieces so the grains don't match. 3) They could even have cut the pieces out of a single board in a different configuration, so if you figured out the grains it would not fit the rectangle.
I sort of think it is cheating, in a way. When you said you didn't want to spend a long time trying to figure it out, that just cemented that your thing is jigsaw puzzles, not brain teaser puzzles.
I'm watching this while doing my first jigsaw in years, and decided to get 1000pieces to start with, brainteasers to tou are like this jigsaw is to me and I would take all the help I can get
I also thought of blokus! About when you said tetris is when I first thought of it. Blokus has a 1 player puzzle where all the pieces fit on the board with normal blokus rules applying
When I was around *five* years old, dad made a domino set out of plywood. I memorized almost all of the wood patterns on the backs of the pieces by heart. My family didn't suspect anything in the beginning, but when I was always getting the good pieces and winning they understood my trick. It must have been so frustrating to play with me. However I don't think it's cheating in your case because a packing puzzle is trial and error, but if you find some logic in it, it becomes more methodic and actually satisfying to put together. This is why I'm not a fan of packing puzzles as a pastime, but the ones with nice designs look great as decoration.
If they intended you to use the grain surely it would've been left as distinct on the front as it is on the back. They probably chose wood for it's other properties, it's light weight, can be laser cut, and it's a natural material.
I think it's cheating. I also think you seem too focused on the time it takes you to solve puzzles. You say "eleven minutes in" as if that's a super slow time for a level ten puzzle. Anyway this is just what I think. You do you.
In engineering, this would be considered an excellent way to solve the puzzle. The first rule of engineering is to not assume restrictions that are not stated. The problem was to solve this puzzle in the least amount of time. Your solution was brilliant.
“...but when im on the clock and when i have a new episode of WandaVision i want to watch...” hahaha totally understandable! Still a great video and exciting to see how you’re going to conquer the puzzle!
I don't think it was meant to be solved like that, but like you said, they could've made it out of different materials! Also, since it's a square, it didn't matter how you put it in (halfway through the video) and it would have been way easier to just add on the backpiece upside down and then flip it!! Instead of transferring all the FIVE pieces. ;) Great video!!
I'm reading a quote from Mr. Puzzle -- a great source for this. He said that a few years ago he took apart a puzzle and put it back together (different kind of "puzzle," but then this wasn't meant to be a jigsaw puzzle per se) in just under two hours. He called that a 7/10. You solving this in half an hour and it being labeled a "10" tells me it wasn't meant to be solved in this manner. (On the other hand, maybe the creator thought it would take someone a couple hours of frustration to figure that out, and you are uniquely perfect to find this solution faster being a jigsaw puzzler by nature.) That said, it's still not cheating. You met the terms of the puzzle. You did not look up a solution; you did not search Google for a hint. You solved it by yourself, so that is, by definition, not cheating. However, I'm not sure I agree with the majority of the top rated comments that say the puzzle was probably designed with that in mind. But, like I said, maybe that was the exact intention, and you just found it immediately because of who you are and what you do. I think the only thing to do now is to reach out to the creator and ask! :)
in terms of whether you cheated or not: absolutely not. as you said, they chose to use wood grain. as such, any clues gained from the wood grain should be considered intentionally provided.
I think looking at wood grain is allowed because it is not using any outside sources. In addtion, if the manufacturer would have wanted to avoid this method, they could have combined pieces from multiple original wood blanks. I wouldn't have even used same grain direction for all pieces.
I recently did a wooden puzzle, it was so hard that I would just do 5 minutes at a time. I totally used the wood grain as well. It was from Pure and Simple Australia
I have a few wooden fractal puzzles (5!), and I do use the woodgrain if possible. But I would not have made it backwards . nevertheless, you made it, in the end that is what is the most important
I think another way to help distinguish each piece would be to add some removable masking tape on top of the upper sides, I mean to turn it completely into a brain teaser to solve and then take the tape away... Btw I love the structure of your videos, it just makes a lot of sense 🤩
Definitely not cheating! For all you know, that is the strategy the puzzle maker considered correct. I also thought of Blokus and also the puzzle game Katamino, a real favorite in my family. Five.
I think you re clever for spotting the grain clue, just like doing a pictured puzzle, you find lined clues, like wall edges, road edges etc... The only strategy I can think of to help stave off hours of frustration is to toss it into a roaring fire, problem solved, no cheating.
I think I would have done it the same way if someone challenged me to do it as quickly as possible, but if I had done the puzzle for myself then I would have done it with the front up and by shape. BUT I'm pretty sure I would have been annoyed by sticking the pieces into one another for every try, so I imagine I would have put them on the table with some space in between them and just look if they would fit. I hope that makes sense, it's very difficult to describe without showing and especially in English. High Five to y'all :D
For strategies, there are none really, it really is trial and error, that is what makes it a puzzle. Though you could try to find all the pieces that would fit in a corner, since that would narrow things down, and the corners all look the same in the sense that if a piece fits in one corner it fits in all corners, and so you need 4 such pieces, though it looks like most of them would fit a corner.
Cool! You mentioned blockus at the end... I love that game! But I probably haven't played it in like FIVE years! Oh wait .. I played it with my Mom like a year or two ago, oh well, thought it was a cool use of the code word. BTW, I love coming up with comments with the codeword in it, even though I don't usually post them. But I think I'm going to try to with all of your future videos. :)
Cheating or not cheating is very subjective. You solved a 20 pieces jigsaw puzzle but not a 20 pieces brain teaser puzzle. I am glad that I watched your video. For sure I won't invest in a 20 pieces jigsaw puzzle. For the brain teaser puzzle, I don't have time for it.
Five! I too am OBSESSED with Wandavision! I don't you cheated. I think you used your existing talent and the design of the puzzle to solve it. Actually, in the Anne D Williams puzzle book you recommended, she wrote that a First Lady was so good at jigsaw puzzles that she would turn them picture-side down and use the wood grain to assemble them. So there is precedent.
What do you think of this puzzle? Do you have any other strategies you would have used?
Five
I was flummoxed for a strategy until you put them outside of the frame, then I thought approaching it in layers where instead of connecting the piece, you move it ever so slightly so it sits atop its connecting piece so that some pieces are on the table and some are stacked one layer above. This would allow you to see piece shapes more easily to adjust and move them. F5ve out of 5ive
Five.
I don't think I would use a different strategy, but I do think it would be fun to have off to family members and watch them try.
He isunique and very interesting
Yes. A potential strategy is to make a block of pieces ten pieces long and two or three pieces wide. It doesn't have to be a rectangle. Position that block in about the middle of the puzzle. Move it up/down so that number of empty spaces above and below the block are each multiples of FIVE. (If that can't be done, try a differently shaped block.) Then repeat that process to divide the empty spaces on each side into smaller regions that are also multiples of five. Although this is not guaranteed to work every time, it should help one stumble on a viable solution significantly faster than completely random trial and error.
Karen: this isn't really a puzzle it's a brain teaser in the shape of puzzle
Karen 10 minutes later: flips pieces over and turns it into an actual puzzle
Its not cheating, its “Thinking outside the box” 😋
Outside "the Box" gets a new meaning
😅😅 I agree.
Literally!
defintley! it's not cheating
more like outside the wood
The only thing that's cheating is looking at the solution for answers
That's what I think, too. I would've used the woodgrain from the very beginning without ever thinking it would be cheating.
if they didn't want you looking at wood grain they would have put a colour on it or made the pieces out of plastic
And using tools that is not included in the puzzle unless specified
Wood grains show the solution which is basically looking at the solution.
@@ivanazirojevic3544 nah, it's just thinking outside the box. And that's exactly what you need to do with these kinda puzzles. The person who makes this could've easily covered the wood grain if he didn't want people to use that to solve the puzzle. I'm not even suprised if you're meant to do that like that
You deserve a high "five" for figuring out an easier way to do the puzzle.
Even if they wanted to still make the puzzle out of wood, they could’ve cut a bunch of the same ones, but mixed and matched the set pieces so the pieces wouldn’t have been from the same piece of wood. Like cut them all, then package it so each set has like one A5, B8, etc etc, but not from the same piece of wood.
That's a great point! I'd just be worried about some pieces getting mixed up and some people getting an unsolvable puzzle 😂
Especially since they thought to cut the border out of a different slab. I seriously think it was intentional
@@KarenPuzzles The puzzle comes fully solved, right? In the packaging. So I don’t think it’d be possible to give somebody an unsolvable one by accident since you have to solve it to package it up.
P.S. love your content, you are the best Karen :)
i love when karen thinks outside the box, finds a clever solution and puts in practice her knowledge of a different dicipline and immediately goes like "is this cheating" no bestie u outsmarted a brain teaser lmao
Watching you come up with the wood grain strat reminds me of scientists studying crows putting stones in a beaker of water to raise the water level so they could drink. Using your brain and resources around you to solve a puzzle is genius not cheating. You go girl! ✌🏻
I just wanted to say thank you for sharing your videos, I have been doing puzzles all my life. I was that teenager that did jigsaw puzzles rather than party or go out. I got busy with life and hadnt done a puzzle in years when i found your channel. After watching you, I couldnt help but get back into puzzling. It has helped me pull out of depression and find a hobby again. It has given me a reason to get up and do my chores so I can have room to puzzle. Because of your videos i recently bought five+ new puzzles that I cant wait to get started on. Thank you for sharing!
totally not cheating lol. work smarter not harder (five)
i like the fact that in every comment section of every video i watch is at least one kpop fan xD
@@laura_332 haha yes we’re everywhere
yoongi 🥺
@@laura_332 kpop stars are kinda modern day slaves
@@ivonastrukar4715 ?? Elaborate?
That's not cheating, it's being observant and thinking outside the box
One strategy is to complete the puzzle outside of the box, then place the puzzle inside, completed and piece by piece.
(my theory was correct... Hee hee)
Not cheating! Definitely thought "I would flip those over" right at the beginning! Good thinking on the wood grain!!
It may not have been the way they intended the puzzle to be put together, but I don't know how you could use a strategy with this other than trial and error, which doesn't sound very fun to me.
It's what the youtube gamers would call "cheesing," which is definitely a distinct thing from cheating :)
Here's the bottom line; you were given a puzzle, and you used your brain to figure it out.
Well done!!
P.s. no, you did not cheat! :)
I agree
I agree too. 5
There is no such thing as cheating, unless it's a last option.
This is not cheating at all... I don't see it that way.
You're doing awesome, by the way.
Imagine they used acrylic and ALSO etched the puzzle shapes into both sides, or neither side, and the pieces could be upside down, it would be even harder!!
If you keep just the unique ones (there are 12) and smooth out the edges so they are flat then you have pentominoes and there are lots of solutions to various rectangles but you are right - they can be very difficult to find.
@@richardfarrer5616 I actually bought the smoothed out version online earlier this week. I was wondering if the puzzle edges do limit the number of solutions, and I think they do, because two 'ins' and two 'outs' can't fit together if the pieces have puzzle edges. So actually some positions of the pieces would be possible smoothed and aren't possible in this case. Eg 2:43 she demonstrates attempting to fit two together when the ins and outs don't line up when they would if it were smoothed.
I think making them double sided actually makes it easier to hit a correct solution.
Doing it from the back was smart. Most of the pentaminos I've seen are plastic, so that's not an option. I've never seen puzzle piece shaped ones. A different twist.
Looks like this one would have been much easier to just all the pieces over so the piece shapes are easier to see, then work the whole thing outside the frame.
EDIT: 9:21 Oh, I commented too soon!
That's what I thought too. :)
Not cheating I bet it was part of the brain teaser part. They did that on purpose. Well done.
citation for "they did that on purpose". Some designers just like how wood looks.
I am a new subscriber as of like 2 weeks ago and in that time I have completed 4 puzzles two 300 piece 🧩 and two 500 piece 🧩! And I owe it all to you! I stumbled across your content randomly and was like “omg when I was younger I use to LOVE puzzles” so i hit watch and next thing you know I’m getting puzzles to do while your videos play (lol) and LOVING IT. Thank you for bringing these fun, mind exercising, back aching, satisfying creations back into my life...my husband and I are having a blast 💕
I don't think it's cheating. that would be like saying using the silhouette of an image (instead of the image itself) is cheating. 'cheating' is looking up the solution online.
also, a five-block tetris piece is a pentomino and clearing five lines at once is a pentris. The More You Know ~
What fun words!
tetris plus /hj
theoretically the puzzle has an image on it like other puzzle, only this image can not be seen very well. at other puzzles you can use the image. at this one it is a bit blurry, but that does not mean you can not use the image.
I love to put puzzles together. I’m glad your videos was suggested to me. It’s so relaxing to watch you put a puzzle together. Thank you to you for showing us your passion for puzzles.
I loved that you solved a jigsawpuzzle that wasn't supposed to be a jigsawpuzzle as a jigsawpuzzle XD It's the most Karen thing you could have done
Is anyone else bothered by the one piece in the globe on the bookcase that's not flush with everything else?!
I WASN'T ... till you mentioned it.
I was thinking about doing it upside down, not for the woodgrain, but to eliminate the false sides of the "five" pieces, making it easier to see the pieces together.
Five,
I love these kind of puzzles. I am one day hopping to do a 40000 + piece puzzle and to have a dedicated room and table to do puzzles
I don’t think that is cheating that is a great Resource
Only just saw this 3 years late but FIVE and no not cheating at all, I wouldn't of even contemplated doing a hard puzzle like that, so well done and whatever works I say do it!!!
I think this is the solution and good strategy for lvl 10 puzzle. And putting pieces randomly is not what you should do here.
Oh my goodness I haven't watched it yet but when I saw that Karen put out a new video I just screamed yay out loud and now I paused it so I can get myself all excited to watch it oh my God Karen thank you so much for putting on a new video today for us to watch and enjoy! I'm wicked excited because it's almost 19 minutes long, that is so much goodness to enjoy!
i always use wood grain to "cheat" in puzzles and i begin to think that i just may really like doing wood textures. five!
You deserve a high five for the resourceful way you solved that puzzle! I would like to try to solve it without looking at the wood grain. But I think you are right -- if they didn't want puzzlers to use those hints, they should have made it out of some other material.
Hi Karen! I don't think it's cheating at all! Those are the tools they gave you. I've been enjoying your videos! Happy Valentine's day! 5
9:05 - wood has no imperfections, only features :)
I am full of mock outrage at the immoral display of cheating I just witnessed. I’m so upset I’m going to go make a sandwich.
lol
Five. Not a problem. When you showed the pieces early on, the way you did it of following the grain on the back was the way I thought about. Gotta do what you gotta do to get it done. .
this seems to be based on Pentomino or Penta puzzle which I actually had as a kid which is a set of all unique 5-square combinations that you are able to make, obviously without any innies and outies. so in the original you would not get any duplications, but on the other hand you could easily flip a shape over, cause they had no obvious "right" sides. the original challenge was a big rectangle, but there was a booklet challenging you to form other shapes as well.
my first immediate though for a strategy for this one would have been to copy the shapes to paper, color each peace for visibility, and play around with that, but at first I didn't realize they had a "wrong" side. so your approach would have been my next though ;D and looking for hints in the woodgrain is just a natural consequence :)
I love Blockus! High FIVR for finishing that one, Karen!
Actually I would have flipped it over because this way you can see the shape of the piece way better. Think this is part of the brainteaser.
You could finish by not turning over, but why should you?
Five 😉
Five.
I definitely wouldn't have thought of flipping them over or using the wood grain to get it done. You did awesome 💯
I love your videos. Keep up the good work❤️
At first I thought it was kinda cheating, but when i saw you still had some trouble putting the pieces together, now I think it's not really cheating since it's still prett hard !
I played Blokus and I managed to get all of the pieces in it. Results in a totally symmetric placing of the pieces.
05:07 "reminds me of Tetris". Tetris uses tetrominoes, and this puzzle, Pento, uses pentominoes. So it would remind one. (-: The "tetra-" and "penta-" prefixes (which drop the "-a-" before the vowel in "-ominoes") just come from the Ancient Greek words for four and five.
me thinking from the first moment she showed the backs: USE THE WOOD GRAIN
i don’t think it’s cheating haha
I used to play blokus with my ex’s family over the holidays and stuff. I had forgotten about it until you mentioned here with five seconds left in your video!
I definitely give both the puzzle and the way you solved it a five out of five! Keep up the great work Karen!
I like the out of the box thinking. If it is not the intended solution, that is on the manufacturers problem.
1) They could have used plastic, or paint, to eliminate or hide the grain.
2) They could make them in batches of 6-7 and mix the pieces so the grains don't match.
3) They could even have cut the pieces out of a single board in a different configuration, so if you figured out the grains it would not fit the rectangle.
Omg I was thinking of how much this reminds me of Blockus the whole time! I didn’t know anyone else played 😂
I sort of think it is cheating, in a way. When you said you didn't want to spend a long time trying to figure it out, that just cemented that your thing is jigsaw puzzles, not brain teaser puzzles.
You should do what you enjoy, not what the world wants you to do. I totally stand by her decision, even if its technically cheating
I'm watching this while doing my first jigsaw in years, and decided to get 1000pieces to start with, brainteasers to tou are like this jigsaw is to me and I would take all the help I can get
Absolutely fair! You used any/all the clues provided by the manufacturer. Who's to say that isn't exactly how they intended you to solve the puzzle?
I think it was definitely cheating to use the back of the pieces, but I would never attempt this, so I can’t criticize!
My first thought was to solve it upside down. Not because of the wood grain, but because I could see the shapes better.
Karen, you didn't cheat! You just solved the alternate jigsaw puzzle first. :P
I also thought of blokus! About when you said tetris is when I first thought of it. Blokus has a 1 player puzzle where all the pieces fit on the board with normal blokus rules applying
When I was around *five* years old, dad made a domino set out of plywood. I memorized almost all of the wood patterns on the backs of the pieces by heart. My family didn't suspect anything in the beginning, but when I was always getting the good pieces and winning they understood my trick. It must have been so frustrating to play with me. However I don't think it's cheating in your case because a packing puzzle is trial and error, but if you find some logic in it, it becomes more methodic and actually satisfying to put together. This is why I'm not a fan of packing puzzles as a pastime, but the ones with nice designs look great as decoration.
If they intended you to use the grain surely it would've been left as distinct on the front as it is on the back. They probably chose wood for it's other properties, it's light weight, can be laser cut, and it's a natural material.
18:42- Ah, "BLOKUS"! I always used to pronounce it 'BLO-cuss' :)
I think it's cheating. I also think you seem too focused on the time it takes you to solve puzzles. You say "eleven minutes in" as if that's a super slow time for a level ten puzzle. Anyway this is just what I think. You do you.
You were being resourceful for sure! I think you were very clever to come up with the solution!! You get a high "Five" for finishing it so quickly!!
I think that it would be fun to do it for long time. To just have it on table, and, from time to time, just came back to it and try few other pieces.
I think that is cheating, but I would do the same 😂
In engineering, this would be considered an excellent way to solve the puzzle. The first rule of engineering is to not assume restrictions that are not stated. The problem was to solve this puzzle in the least amount of time. Your solution was brilliant.
If you have to flip the pieces over, that's cheating, yes.
I think someone who plays a lot of tetris would have it easy for knowing the pieces better and how they can be put together to form lines
I think is cheating but is not your fault. The final objective is to have fun so I think you did it great
I think there are fractal jigsaw puzzles that are made with acrylic. You should try that
I love watching you doing these puzzles.
“...but when im on the clock and when i have a new episode of WandaVision i want to watch...” hahaha totally understandable! Still a great video and exciting to see how you’re going to conquer the puzzle!
Five! Well done on being so resourceful x
I don't think it was meant to be solved like that, but like you said, they could've made it out of different materials! Also, since it's a square, it didn't matter how you put it in (halfway through the video) and it would have been way easier to just add on the backpiece upside down and then flip it!! Instead of transferring all the FIVE pieces. ;) Great video!!
I'm reading a quote from Mr. Puzzle -- a great source for this. He said that a few years ago he took apart a puzzle and put it back together (different kind of "puzzle," but then this wasn't meant to be a jigsaw puzzle per se) in just under two hours. He called that a 7/10. You solving this in half an hour and it being labeled a "10" tells me it wasn't meant to be solved in this manner. (On the other hand, maybe the creator thought it would take someone a couple hours of frustration to figure that out, and you are uniquely perfect to find this solution faster being a jigsaw puzzler by nature.)
That said, it's still not cheating. You met the terms of the puzzle. You did not look up a solution; you did not search Google for a hint. You solved it by yourself, so that is, by definition, not cheating.
However, I'm not sure I agree with the majority of the top rated comments that say the puzzle was probably designed with that in mind. But, like I said, maybe that was the exact intention, and you just found it immediately because of who you are and what you do. I think the only thing to do now is to reach out to the creator and ask! :)
this reminds me of pentaminos! my original mix of jigsaw and logic puzzles
in terms of whether you cheated or not:
absolutely not. as you said, they chose to use wood grain. as such, any clues gained from the wood grain should be considered intentionally provided.
Newer subscriber here. Really enjoy unwinding with your videos at the end of the day. I’ve already watched FIVE today.
Five starts for thinking outside the box. Great work, not cheating.
Karen, have you tried any Romero Britto puzzles? I think you would like them, the images are super fun.
You were being resourceful, using your smarts, thinking outside the box, if you will. Five. Good job!
Do you know Pentomino puzzle? This are two of them together. So nice 😊 I played so much with Pentomino when I was young.
I think looking at wood grain is allowed because it is not using any outside sources. In addtion, if the manufacturer would have wanted to avoid this method, they could have combined pieces from multiple original wood blanks. I wouldn't have even used same grain direction for all pieces.
Iam just here to watch you put it together. I dont care how you get there i just love seeing you finish it. Five🤩🤩🤩
I recently did a wooden puzzle, it was so hard that I would just do 5 minutes at a time. I totally used the wood grain as well. It was from Pure and Simple Australia
Five! Smart strategy I wouldn’t have thought to look at that lol
Love the video, can you please push the pink piece on the sphere puzzle in.
I have a few wooden fractal puzzles (5!), and I do use the woodgrain if possible. But I would not have made it backwards . nevertheless, you made it, in the end that is what is the most important
I think another way to help distinguish each piece would be to add some removable masking tape on top of the upper sides, I mean to turn it completely into a brain teaser to solve and then take the tape away... Btw I love the structure of your videos, it just makes a lot of sense 🤩
That's a great idea! You could use all different colors of washi tape to help visually separate the pieces once they're on the board.
Definitely not cheating! For all you know, that is the strategy the puzzle maker considered correct.
I also thought of Blokus and also the puzzle game Katamino, a real favorite in my family. Five.
I think you re clever for spotting the grain clue, just like doing a pictured puzzle, you find lined clues, like wall edges, road edges etc... The only strategy I can think of to help stave off hours of frustration is to toss it into a roaring fire, problem solved, no cheating.
I think I would have done it the same way if someone challenged me to do it as quickly as possible, but if I had done the puzzle for myself then I would have done it with the front up and by shape. BUT I'm pretty sure I would have been annoyed by sticking the pieces into one another for every try, so I imagine I would have put them on the table with some space in between them and just look if they would fit. I hope that makes sense, it's very difficult to describe without showing and especially in English. High Five to y'all :D
For strategies, there are none really, it really is trial and error, that is what makes it a puzzle. Though you could try to find all the pieces that would fit in a corner, since that would narrow things down, and the corners all look the same in the sense that if a piece fits in one corner it fits in all corners, and so you need 4 such pieces, though it looks like most of them would fit a corner.
Cool! You mentioned blockus at the end... I love that game! But I probably haven't played it in like FIVE years! Oh wait .. I played it with my Mom like a year or two ago, oh well, thought it was a cool use of the code word. BTW, I love coming up with comments with the codeword in it, even though I don't usually post them. But I think I'm going to try to with all of your future videos. :)
FIVE
Reminds me of the Last Piece Puzzle, an old 2000s puzzle. There are some still on eBay if you want them. I had the Flight of Fancy one
1998 actually.
Cheating or not cheating is very subjective. You solved a 20 pieces jigsaw puzzle but not a 20 pieces brain teaser puzzle. I am glad that I watched your video. For sure I won't invest in a 20 pieces jigsaw puzzle. For the brain teaser puzzle, I don't have time for it.
It's totally not cheating to complete a puzzle - however your brain figures out how to do it- (five)
love your videoos ahaha and your personal debates i discover you like 1 month ago and saw all the videoos! Five hugs from Dominican Republic! x'D
I count it as being resourceful! Five is a good numbers, my grandkids play blokus
Five! I too am OBSESSED with Wandavision! I don't you cheated. I think you used your existing talent and the design of the puzzle to solve it. Actually, in the Anne D Williams puzzle book you recommended, she wrote that a First Lady was so good at jigsaw puzzles that she would turn them picture-side down and use the wood grain to assemble them. So there is precedent.