Hello, I solved it in approximatively 40 minutes. For the strategie, I started like you, sorting the different shapes and counting how many "in" and "out" there is. But the result wasn't really helpfull, so I figure I should start somewhere. So I looked at a piece with the best chance to don't be a corner (for me it was the one with two club and two diamonds). After that I can't really explain how I solved it.
I cut out paper squares and colored the edges (then realized I did need ins and outs for the correct solution and cut square ins and outs and color coded them) did not have time to solve it, looked at the top left and right corner of your solution to get those pieces then did the rest
I finished in about 10min total with a mixture of logic and luck. I made the same table as Karen to find some edge information (spades had 5 outs but only 3 ins, so 2 spade outs must on the edge). I thought it would be easiest to determine the corner pieces first. There was one piece that had 2 spade outs, so I tried that in the corner. It just so happened that the first piece I tried was the correct placement. I finished the puzzle by finding which of the club outs connected to the corner piece since that was only 3 possibilities.
LOL its not up to her standards. its actually so funny. I was like watch you need to flip one of the pieces over.. that would be been a fun twist. especially if theres no hint for it. like the backing is still just cardboard
Karen, you inspired my 4-year-old to try a puzzle! It's a little too *tough* for him, though-- he picked out a 1000 piece Pokemon puzzle! We are about 1/3 of the way through after about 5 hours of puzzling. We are certainly no Karen Puzzles, but we are having a lot of fun employing some of your most-used puzzle strategies!
Karen, I'm going through a really tough time right now and your videos help me not dwell on my issues quite so much. I appreciate you and your positivity more than you'll ever know.
Karen, you're a smart cookie with excellent puzzling instincts, that's why you managed to figure out this tough puzzle so quickly. No further analysis needed :-D
I constructed squares and numbered the edges +1 through +4 for the outies, and -1 through -4 for the innies. I also lettered the pieces A though I to keep track of my trials on note paper. Like you, I discovered the most limiting integers (-1 and +4 in my case, just three of each). One piece had both -1 and +4. I started with that as my center, then systematically branched out attempts, eliminating connections as I came to dead ends. My time for this TOUGH puzzle was a bit over an hour.
I found it due to the middle piece being the only piece with all different suits making me put it in the middle then working around from there as my start point!
My grandma had this puzzle when I was growing up. I ended up solving it when she couldn't. I was so proud and it made me feel so smart. This puzzle brings back memories.
I remember I had one of those 9-squared "match-the-heads-and-tails-of-the-animals" puzzles, which is kind of similar, but not too *tough*. You'd use essentially the same strategy. It was just the right amount of challenge for 11 year-old me.
I thought I'd be smart and made a computer program in python to check every possible configuration. But it took me about an hour so just trying to get the puzzle to work like you did seems like a better strategy haha!
@@fos1451 a brute-forcing algorithm that tries to fit each piece one by one should do the trick, and I think that's the method they used on the Java code showed in the video. Would be interesting to obtain the solution using something like a directed graph, where each vertex represents a piece, and each edge represents a possible fit between an out piece and an in piece
With 300,000 and no obvious "trick," I'm surprised you were able to solve this tough puzzle as quickly as you did. And I get why, without the discovery of a "trick," it was somewhat unsatisfying. But fun as ever to watch and listen to your try!
the number of possible combinations being over 300000 is meaningless, frankly. since none of those combinations use all 9 pieces in a 3x3 square, an argument could be made for them to instead say there are "over 6 trillion combinations"
@@zachrodan7543 Number of unique arrangements of 9 things is 9! = 362,880, which is I guess where they got their 300,000 figure from (although they haven’t taken into account rotations). But you are right it is meaningless since a lot of those combinations do not fit together correctly, so you’d only ever start by trying pieces that *do* fit. So you have a much better chance of finding the solution since you don’t try every combination, only ones that appear as though they may at least be plausible. Ultimately you get to an almost correct solution with 8 pieces, as Karen did, and then chase pieces around the board until the last piece fits. And that 8 piece solutions was itself based an at least vaguely plausible 7 piece solution and so on.
This puzzle is essentially the same as a Scramble Square puzzle. Did you ever try one of those? They don’t interlock, but the images on them work only on one arrangement of a 3X3 square.
I have wonderful memories of going to my elderly neighbours house and be doing them all day hahaha ☺️ I'd forgotten what they were called though! Thanks
@@AuntyAwesome I went to a weeklong away summer camp for a couple years when I was a tween and two of those years, I took one of their programs called adventure challenge. One of the "challenges" one year was navigating a blindfolded person to find the color coded pieces for your scramble puzzle and then guiding them back to you so you could do it. My best friend and I were the ones tasked with putting the pieces together when we got them. Our team solved it first because my best friend and I are natural puzzlers (and we'd both done those sorts of puzzles before) :P Those are my wonderful memories of these puzzles.
If I still want to try to solve it myself, I don't think watching the whole video spoiled anything for me -- unless I try to memorize the positions. Since it's just trial and error, if I don't solve it in 20 minutes, it's just my tough luck!
I came up with the same strategy you did related to the pieces around the perimeter. I definitely felt like I needed more of a strategy before actually attempting the puzzle, so I went ahead and watched the video. But you forged ahead and succeeded! Maybe this puzzle wasn't as tough as it looked 😉 or may you just have so much experience putting single-color puzzles together that it came naturally to you.
Since the in and out bits are symmetric, you can flip a piece over and it can still fit. IIRC there are several additional solutions if you allow for both black and red sides showing.
@@lazyhomebody1356 if it’s not the intended solution it’s fine, I’m not saying she should have solved it this way. I’m just saying, that if a puzzle was intended with a “you actually need to take a piece and put it the other way”, I would not see the problem with it. I don’t understand why you’re being so snarky.
@@lazyhomebody1356 Since the official solution does not include flipping any piece, "red must be on top." should be in the rules because the cuts are symmetrical across the midline and hence, pieces can fit after flipping. Photo on the box can't be the argument because if flipping a piece is the catch of the puzzle, they are not gonna give that away in the photo.
I had this puzzle some 30 years ago when I was just a small lad. I remember solving it in about 30 minutes without using any tricks with the cut, but my memory of the solution was a tad off when watching this. My brain seemed to recall the solution involving following the hearts so it was quite amusing to see how little I actually remembered. Got this one, one of the earlier 3d puzzles your sis does regularly, and one of the earlier crystal puzzles as part of a christmas gift from my aunt and was one happy youngster indeed. Anyhow, thanks for the fun trip down memory lane :)
Hi everyone! Karen you are amazing person and you seem so friendly! It is so interesting to watch your videos. I crafted this puzzle as well and it took me 23 minutes
Wait I just stumbled across this video, but this unlocked a vivid memory! I used to play with this at my grandma’s apartment when I was little! It was really fun to me because I loved puzzles and also playing cards so having the suits be the ins and outs was a neat idea. It definitely could be tough putting it together to get the intended solution, but it was fun to just recombine the pieces in whatever ways I could find. Sadly, I played with it so much that eventually the outs started breaking off.
I was feeling bored this morning so I actually made it on paper and managed to solve it in ~15 minutes!! 🤩 (I didn't time myself but I think it took about this much) My strategy was pretty much the same in the beginning, I counted all the ins and outs for each suit, and then since the spades had the least occurrences I just picked one piece with a spade in (which turned out to be the center piece) and tried building the solution from there 🌟 I thought it was gonna be tough but it worked out pretty well! It's definitely easier on paper though, since I could color each suit to see them better, compared to a solid-colored puzzle! It was a lot of fun, thank you for the lil challenge 😝
Wow, for me that would be a *Tough* puzzle to complete! ;) My O.C.D. is not okay with the unevenness of the puzzle LOL xD I'm so happy I found someone who loves jigsaw puzzles as much as me! Thank you for always making me smile with your videos! Keep up the great work! :)
I don't really like doing brain teasers because it's more a "trial and error" than really logic as normal jigsaw puzzles. I really like watching you doing it though, because when you do it (like the other one that you accidentally finished) it's so funny because it's totally random 😂 I don't think it's tough, it's just luck. You did it and you didn't believe because it didn't have any logic. Anyway, perfect video as always!! My sundays are always bright because I can puzzle and watch you puzzle!!
I always love these videos of you trying to solve tough puzzle jigsaws! They're a whole nother beast, but I think overall you're always doing such a phenomenal job with them.
Yeah this was *tough* for me! I did pause, thank you! I cut simple puzzle piece shapes with semicircular knobs and I colour coded the ins and outs with marker. Then I counted the ins and outs shapes and decided that the clubs definitely need to have at least three outs on the edge. After a bit of random tries, I numbered the pieces. I numbered the piece with two clubs ins as "1" and just tried all possible combinations in order. Weirdly I didn't find the solution while I was trying with 1 in the corner although I went through all the pieces (except the one correct combo I missed... obviously), but I found the solution while piece 2 was the start corner. Piece 2 turned out to be the opposite corner from piece 1. In total it took me 1h02'. So although I should have paid more attention, I think numbering them was a good strategy to keep track of the ones I tried. I hope this makes sense. And a propos of *tough* puzzles... I bought the "world's most difficult" with cats and I'm absolutely DREADING it.
I didn't try this myself, but I would've thought for sure that the solution would have had you flip some of the pieces over to use the black side, almost as if you were making a checkerboard pattern! This really did look like one "TOUGH" puzzle though!
I thought that would've made it 10x harder if you could flip the pieces over, but I saw only one side was red and the other side I think was just the cardboard, so that only meant it would've been red side face-up.
I think the reason Karen didn't find this puzzle satisfying is because she is just so used to brute forcing puzzles, and that happened to be the way you solve this one. Definitely not as tough as it was advertised though.
She didn't find the puzzle satisfying because she doesn't feel like she actually solved it. She feels like she stumbled across the solution randomly, which is probably 50% true. Even with normal jigsaw puzzles, she uses logic to pick out pieces and then feels a sense of accomplishment when she finishes the puzzle.
I tried it! I did the same thing as you, counted all the types and figured out that clubs had like 3 ins on the edge. I tried a few different combinations of clubs but gave up because it became boring!
I enjoyed this video about this TOUGH puzzle. Brain teasers give me headaches, so I don't do them. I'm glad you solved it in such a short time. Nice work Karen!
My first thought was to solve this through code as well. It's an example of the "N Queens Problem". There's a good wikipedia article about "8 Queens". Writing code and doing these kinds of puzzles go hand-in-hand. Coding is really just puzzle solving. You know what the solutions should be, so you have to put together the pieces to get there.
I made my own "puzzle" according to this pattern - instead of shapes I used letters, marked when the shape is in and when out, and numbered each piece (in my case a square). Then I started trying all variants from number 1. I'd probably do it for a few weeks. :-D Finally, I looked at your solution and chose one of your corner pieces. Then I started from it and I had it done in a few minutes. I really enjoyed it, I'll try again. Thanks for the fun. :-)
I've got a similar "tough" puzzle where it's pictures of railroad locomotives. It's nine pieces, and the pictures overlap the edges where one half of the picture is on one piece and the other half is on the adjoining piece. It's a bit of a challenge to solve it, which I usually do through trial and error. Speaking of tough puzzles, I finished my Van Gogh puzzle a couple days ago, and I'm going to be recording my own puzzle video later today.
It was a tough puzzle but I managed to solve it in about 30ish minutes, I didn't use a timer. My strategy involved focusing on the double spade out piece and seeing if it connected to any of the only 3 spade in pieces. Once you figure out it is a corner piece it was a simple solve from there.
Oh my god! I live in New Zealand, and I went on a trip to my boyfriend's home town and on an op shop shopping spree we found this same puzzle! This is amazing! I cant believe we have the same puzzle. Im going to save this video and time myself to compare later
I solved this last night, took me like an hour and a half but I did use a strategy. First I started assembling the suit that had the smallest number of possibilities and combined that with seeing how easily the pieces would fit together. Once you have two pieces that are right and orthogonally adjacent you just work your way around them and everything will fit together perfectly. Since I did use a strategy I found the solution quite satisfying. You were just lucky and luck doesn't always satisfy the thinky 😉
Oh, really glad you're doing this one! You Tube recently started suggesting your videos and I've watched a bunch of them. It's a puzzle we've got hanging around our house, and I wondered if it's one you'd done.
I had a version of this when I was a kid called "Impuzzable". I never managed to complete it because I didn't have the patience for it, so well done :)
I paused, printed & cut out the puzzle. I didn’t bother timing myself but played with it for a while. I made the same chart as you though! That was a win. That made me think all the hearts had to be used/on the inside. I wasn’t getting anywhere so I played your video again to get a clue about strategy. But that ended up being a bust! Haha! Too tough for me anyway. Still fun to play along. :)
I solved it by writing down how many outs and ins I have of each form like you. I thought since I have equal parts of hearts I start by connecting the hearts. I though that the pieces with one heart in and one out will be important and in the middle and tried to go around then. And after that step i found the solution in a few minutes. Printed the pieces out a few week ago, but I did not find the solution, and every know and than I tried again for a few minutes. Twice I started this video and spoil my self but both times you gave a little tip and then I thought I can do that. Haha I think if I calculated the time I needed more than an hour. Thank you for sharing with us. I had fun and feel great to have to finde the solution to this THOUGH one 😂
Karen! Have you seen the Dr. Livingston's Anatomy Jigsaw Puzzles? They are 7 puzzles that cover the anatomy of different parts of the body (head, chest, legs, etc), they fit together to make a 10 foot long puzzle at about 4,000 pieces (I estimated the numbers). I think you would have fun mixing all the pieces together and make a man (cue Rocky Horror song)!
I pause the video to do it! I am not sure about my time, I think about an half hour, maybe a little bit more. My final strategy was to put 4 piece in a square and try all the solution around with the other pieces until I was sure the square was not right. And then trying with an other square. I can say that it works even if it still tough :P
I guess the best strategy for one of these (atleast with only 9 pieces) is pick one as the middle piece try get everything to fit around it and if you really cant find a way to get them all in mark that one as not the center one and move onto another to try as the center one
My strategy was starting to check each piece if it could be the center piece. I took every possible arrangements into consideration, and eventually got into contradictions, and so I could surely tell that certain pieces couldn't be in the center. While I was checking the 7th piece, I finally didn't get into contradiction, and finished the puzzle once I checked if there are 6 ins and 6 outs indeed.
My first puzzle had those difficult shapes. 💕It was fun but took a long time. I think there was a shape I called sawtooth that was very perplexing. I think a gradient “holographic” puzzle would be fun.
The toughest puzzle ive done is a beekmon boys puzzle someone gave me. Its double sided but I was trying to do the top side of it. Its not easy since its darks and whites solid colors. So it gave me more of a head aiche and never finished it. I did a diff puzzle lol also pieces didnt interlock good. Very cheap.
I was expecting the "Trick" to be slotting two "hole" edge pieces against each other. So yeah had the same reaction as you when you found out that it was just moving pieces around to solve it.
I'm impressed that you solved that Tough puzzle so quickly! Do you think you will do the Ravensburger makeup puzzle on video some time? I'm always eyeing it on your shelf and would love to see you do it!
MAN I remember doing this puzzle and being so disappointed, it makes me feel better to know you were disappointed too! It ends up just being a brute force puzzle... Just trying combinations until it works...
I paused and did the puzzle. It took me about the same time as you (~20min). It actually took me longer to prepare the puzzle a little bit for printing in Illustrator and then cutting it 😂👀
I'm finishing up some crochet whilst watching, so I didn't try the puzzle - and I'm really glad I didn't! How is it possible for it to be so frustrating and so unsatisfying?! Not sure if this actually counts as a tough puzzle or whether you just need patience/stubbornness/luck!!!!!
This is a good puzzle to use some graph theory. Sadly my mathematic education is kind of limited and not suited to finish it completely. But the idea is that you start with the 4 invariants. Something you also did but can formalize: if you call the "in" negative and the "out" positive, you can give a number to the pool of cards: "in spades - out spades = -3-spades". This invariant will always stay true: as even if you put two pieces down that use spades they will remove one "in" and one "out". Similarly for hearts (= 0-hearts) and others. Another invariant you can notice is that for the whole puzzle there are always 6 "ins" and 6 "outs". So also the total sum of "hearts+spades+diamonds+clubs" = 0. Finaly per piece the sum of edges = 0 . Now the next step would be to label each piece, and make a graph of what piece can possibly be connected to what other piece. Once you constructed this graph (network), you need to use above invariants as well as the fact that one piece has 4 neighbours, 4 have 3 and 4 have 2.. I"m however truly under the level of mathematics to do these things. You need solid understanding of graph theory to do this, which I don't have, only being shown it a few times through numberphile and standupmaths; but I have a strong feeling that this approach should work towards a unique solution. Would be fun to see if one of the math channels here would gloss over it.
I had a similar one in school as a kid. Instead of ins and outs it was animal drawings you had to complete and some didn’t fit so they were on the outside but the inside ones all had to match. I’m not sure if it had only one Solution or multiple but it was fun. Anyway great video and great solution for such a though puzzle 😊
Well i did not make my own puzzle but i did count the ins and outs like you did. Seeing that I assumed that one of the pieces with the 2 hearts would be in the middle because were the only one were the ins and outs matching. My gut said me that the one with hearts opposite of each other would probably be the center. Wiuld have trued to figure out the rest with trial and error. But well at leased there was some kind of strategy at the beginning. ^^
These remind me of those nice piece puzzles I used to do as a kid where each edge of each piece had either the front or back half of an animal and you had to find a way to put them together so it all matched. Those didnt have a requirement for how many backs or fronts you needed for the edges though.
Did you try to solve this puzzle yourself? How quickly did you solve it and what strategies did you use?
Strategy: Construct squares. Number the edges +1 through +4 for the outies, and -1 through -4 for the innies.
Hello, I solved it in approximatively 40 minutes. For the strategie, I started like you, sorting the different shapes and counting how many "in" and "out" there is. But the result wasn't really helpfull, so I figure I should start somewhere. So I looked at a piece with the best chance to don't be a corner (for me it was the one with two club and two diamonds). After that I can't really explain how I solved it.
I cut out paper squares and colored the edges (then realized I did need ins and outs for the correct solution and cut square ins and outs and color coded them) did not have time to solve it, looked at the top left and right corner of your solution to get those pieces then did the rest
i have 2 colors of this one also one of the "another tough puzzle" I found you have to watch the sides and make sure they really line up on the grid
I finished in about 10min total with a mixture of logic and luck. I made the same table as Karen to find some edge information (spades had 5 outs but only 3 ins, so 2 spade outs must on the edge). I thought it would be easiest to determine the corner pieces first. There was one piece that had 2 spade outs, so I tried that in the corner. It just so happened that the first piece I tried was the correct placement. I finished the puzzle by finding which of the club outs connected to the corner piece since that was only 3 possibilities.
This puzzle should be called ‘Not your Strong Suit’.
Lolol
@@shellyt556 😂
Karens resume: Good at puzzle that have more than 5000 pieces. if less, im good, but dont prefer it
Agreed
This is way better but I don’t know why they didn’t do it
I love the fact you found this puzzle’s solution unsatisfying.
LOL its not up to her standards. its actually so funny. I was like watch you need to flip one of the pieces over.. that would be been a fun twist. especially if theres no hint for it. like the backing is still just cardboard
Karen, you inspired my 4-year-old to try a puzzle! It's a little too *tough* for him, though-- he picked out a 1000 piece Pokemon puzzle! We are about 1/3 of the way through after about 5 hours of puzzling. We are certainly no Karen Puzzles, but we are having a lot of fun employing some of your most-used puzzle strategies!
Math and Science teachers: Thats the method call guess and check
Or bifurcation
My professor called a similar approach brute force
Trial and error for puzzles
Karen, I'm going through a really tough time right now and your videos help me not dwell on my issues quite so much. I appreciate you and your positivity more than you'll ever know.
Karen, you're a smart cookie with excellent puzzling instincts, that's why you managed to figure out this tough puzzle so quickly. No further analysis needed :-D
Agreed. She seems to breeze through these kind of puzzles every time. At this point I don't think it's coincidence anymore
I constructed squares and numbered the edges +1 through +4 for the outies, and -1 through -4 for the innies. I also lettered the pieces A though I to keep track of my trials on note paper. Like you, I discovered the most limiting integers (-1 and +4 in my case, just three of each). One piece had both -1 and +4. I started with that as my center, then systematically branched out attempts, eliminating connections as I came to dead ends. My time for this TOUGH puzzle was a bit over an hour.
Similar to what I did! Only I started with a corner. I guess there is a method to this madness.
I honestly love when you do brainteasers, they're like bite-sized episodes!
I found it due to the middle piece being the only piece with all different suits making me put it in the middle then working around from there as my start point!
Great strategy! I didn't even notice that!
My grandma had this puzzle when I was growing up. I ended up solving it when she couldn't. I was so proud and it made me feel so smart. This puzzle brings back memories.
“When I look at code, my eyes go blurry”
Yeah, mine too! Problem is that I’m a programmer and have to look at code all day long. 😅
I remember I had one of those 9-squared "match-the-heads-and-tails-of-the-animals" puzzles, which is kind of similar, but not too *tough*. You'd use essentially the same strategy. It was just the right amount of challenge for 11 year-old me.
I thought I'd be smart and made a computer program in python to check every possible configuration. But it took me about an hour so just trying to get the puzzle to work like you did seems like a better strategy haha!
How are you able to check something like this in python…
@@fos1451 a brute-forcing algorithm that tries to fit each piece one by one should do the trick, and I think that's the method they used on the Java code showed in the video. Would be interesting to obtain the solution using something like a directed graph, where each vertex represents a piece, and each edge represents a possible fit between an out piece and an in piece
Learn to code in c++ ://
With 300,000 and no obvious "trick," I'm surprised you were able to solve this tough puzzle as quickly as you did. And I get why, without the discovery of a "trick," it was somewhat unsatisfying. But fun as ever to watch and listen to your try!
the number of possible combinations being over 300000 is meaningless, frankly. since none of those combinations use all 9 pieces in a 3x3 square, an argument could be made for them to instead say there are "over 6 trillion combinations"
@@zachrodan7543 Number of unique arrangements of 9 things is 9! = 362,880, which is I guess where they got their 300,000 figure from (although they haven’t taken into account rotations).
But you are right it is meaningless since a lot of those combinations do not fit together correctly, so you’d only ever start by trying pieces that *do* fit. So you have a much better chance of finding the solution since you don’t try every combination, only ones that appear as though they may at least be plausible.
Ultimately you get to an almost correct solution with 8 pieces, as Karen did, and then chase pieces around the board until the last piece fits. And that 8 piece solutions was itself based an at least vaguely plausible 7 piece solution and so on.
This puzzle is essentially the same as a Scramble Square puzzle. Did you ever try one of those? They don’t interlock, but the images on them work only on one arrangement of a 3X3 square.
I have wonderful memories of going to my elderly neighbours house and be doing them all day hahaha ☺️ I'd forgotten what they were called though! Thanks
@@AuntyAwesome I went to a weeklong away summer camp for a couple years when I was a tween and two of those years, I took one of their programs called adventure challenge. One of the "challenges" one year was navigating a blindfolded person to find the color coded pieces for your scramble puzzle and then guiding them back to you so you could do it. My best friend and I were the ones tasked with putting the pieces together when we got them. Our team solved it first because my best friend and I are natural puzzlers (and we'd both done those sorts of puzzles before) :P Those are my wonderful memories of these puzzles.
I did not attempt this TOUGH puzzle. I enjoyed watching you riddle it out while I crafted. 😂 As always, I enjoyed your video! Have a great day!
I love that everytime Karen uploads a new video is when I'm enjoying my Sunday breakfast!
I love hearing your thought process, its always so different to what i expect! Very interesting
If I still want to try to solve it myself, I don't think watching the whole video spoiled anything for me -- unless I try to memorize the positions. Since it's just trial and error, if I don't solve it in 20 minutes, it's just my tough luck!
I came up with the same strategy you did related to the pieces around the perimeter. I definitely felt like I needed more of a strategy before actually attempting the puzzle, so I went ahead and watched the video. But you forged ahead and succeeded! Maybe this puzzle wasn't as tough as it looked 😉 or may you just have so much experience putting single-color puzzles together that it came naturally to you.
Since the in and out bits are symmetric, you can flip a piece over and it can still fit. IIRC there are several additional solutions if you allow for both black and red sides showing.
At the beginning, I really thought the solution would be to flip some pieces!
@@lazyhomebody1356 as long as the end pattern kinda looks like something interesting, I really don’t see the problem with that.
@@lazyhomebody1356 if it’s not the intended solution it’s fine, I’m not saying she should have solved it this way. I’m just saying, that if a puzzle was intended with a “you actually need to take a piece and put it the other way”, I would not see the problem with it. I don’t understand why you’re being so snarky.
@@lazyhomebody1356 There was no rule about the color on top.
@@lazyhomebody1356 Since the official solution does not include flipping any piece, "red must be on top." should be in the rules because the cuts are symmetrical across the midline and hence, pieces can fit after flipping.
Photo on the box can't be the argument because if flipping a piece is the catch of the puzzle, they are not gonna give that away in the photo.
I had this puzzle some 30 years ago when I was just a small lad. I remember solving it in about 30 minutes without using any tricks with the cut, but my memory of the solution was a tad off when watching this. My brain seemed to recall the solution involving following the hearts so it was quite amusing to see how little I actually remembered. Got this one, one of the earlier 3d puzzles your sis does regularly, and one of the earlier crystal puzzles as part of a christmas gift from my aunt and was one happy youngster indeed.
Anyhow, thanks for the fun trip down memory lane :)
Hi everyone! Karen you are amazing person and you seem so friendly! It is so interesting to watch your videos. I crafted this puzzle as well and it took me 23 minutes
Wait I just stumbled across this video, but this unlocked a vivid memory! I used to play with this at my grandma’s apartment when I was little! It was really fun to me because I loved puzzles and also playing cards so having the suits be the ins and outs was a neat idea. It definitely could be tough putting it together to get the intended solution, but it was fun to just recombine the pieces in whatever ways I could find. Sadly, I played with it so much that eventually the outs started breaking off.
Karen brings immense joy to my sunday mornings. its TOUGH to not be happy when watching her video :)
Holy Smokes ! I’d still be sitting here next week trying to figure this out. Great job, Karen.
Tough.
Yeah same. I did a 300 piece pac man puzzle. That took me like 10 hours total in a span of 2 days.
KAREN!!!! Your energy is infectious!! I love your videos, they make me feel so comfortable!!!!! You are a treasure, thank you so much for sharing!!!
I truly love watching you put all of these puzzles together, whether they be "Tough" or just generally fun to put together.
My Grandma had this puzzle when I was growing up. I loved getting frustrated by it lol! Loved this video.
I was feeling bored this morning so I actually made it on paper and managed to solve it in ~15 minutes!! 🤩 (I didn't time myself but I think it took about this much)
My strategy was pretty much the same in the beginning, I counted all the ins and outs for each suit, and then since the spades had the least occurrences I just picked one piece with a spade in (which turned out to be the center piece) and tried building the solution from there 🌟 I thought it was gonna be tough but it worked out pretty well!
It's definitely easier on paper though, since I could color each suit to see them better, compared to a solid-colored puzzle!
It was a lot of fun, thank you for the lil challenge 😝
Wow, for me that would be a *Tough* puzzle to complete! ;) My O.C.D. is not okay with the unevenness of the puzzle LOL xD I'm so happy I found someone who loves jigsaw puzzles as much as me! Thank you for always making me smile with your videos! Keep up the great work! :)
are you actually diagnosed with OCD?
Yeah I did a 300 piece pac man puzzle...It took me like 10 hours total...Going to stick with 100 pieces and under
I don't really like doing brain teasers because it's more a "trial and error" than really logic as normal jigsaw puzzles. I really like watching you doing it though, because when you do it (like the other one that you accidentally finished) it's so funny because it's totally random 😂 I don't think it's tough, it's just luck. You did it and you didn't believe because it didn't have any logic. Anyway, perfect video as always!! My sundays are always bright because I can puzzle and watch you puzzle!!
It’s Sunday. Karen is there. There are puzzles. Yes, thank you.
I always love these videos of you trying to solve tough puzzle jigsaws! They're a whole nother beast, but I think overall you're always doing such a phenomenal job with them.
Yeah this was *tough* for me! I did pause, thank you! I cut simple puzzle piece shapes with semicircular knobs and I colour coded the ins and outs with marker. Then I counted the ins and outs shapes and decided that the clubs definitely need to have at least three outs on the edge. After a bit of random tries, I numbered the pieces. I numbered the piece with two clubs ins as "1" and just tried all possible combinations in order. Weirdly I didn't find the solution while I was trying with 1 in the corner although I went through all the pieces (except the one correct combo I missed... obviously), but I found the solution while piece 2 was the start corner. Piece 2 turned out to be the opposite corner from piece 1. In total it took me 1h02'. So although I should have paid more attention, I think numbering them was a good strategy to keep track of the ones I tried. I hope this makes sense.
And a propos of *tough* puzzles... I bought the "world's most difficult" with cats and I'm absolutely DREADING it.
This makes how many tough solid red puzzles you have done now?!?!! Impressive!
I didn't try this myself, but I would've thought for sure that the solution would have had you flip some of the pieces over to use the black side, almost as if you were making a checkerboard pattern! This really did look like one "TOUGH" puzzle though!
My guess was that there was some trickery and the diamonds could also fit in the clubs or something hahaha
I thought that would've made it 10x harder if you could flip the pieces over, but I saw only one side was red and the other side I think was just the cardboard, so that only meant it would've been red side face-up.
I think the reason Karen didn't find this puzzle satisfying is because she is just so used to brute forcing puzzles, and that happened to be the way you solve this one.
Definitely not as tough as it was advertised though.
She didn't find the puzzle satisfying because she doesn't feel like she actually solved it. She feels like she stumbled across the solution randomly, which is probably 50% true. Even with normal jigsaw puzzles, she uses logic to pick out pieces and then feels a sense of accomplishment when she finishes the puzzle.
I tried it! I did the same thing as you, counted all the types and figured out that clubs had like 3 ins on the edge. I tried a few different combinations of clubs but gave up because it became boring!
Way to luck up on the solution! Nice going, Karen. I love your sense of humor. Keep us, the audience, laughing.
I enjoyed this video about this TOUGH puzzle. Brain teasers give me headaches, so I don't do them. I'm glad you solved it in such a short time. Nice work Karen!
My first thought was to solve this through code as well. It's an example of the "N Queens Problem". There's a good wikipedia article about "8 Queens". Writing code and doing these kinds of puzzles go hand-in-hand. Coding is really just puzzle solving. You know what the solutions should be, so you have to put together the pieces to get there.
Congratulations on solving this TOUGH jigsaw puzzle Karen. I could never do a puzzle like this.
I made my own "puzzle" according to this pattern - instead of shapes I used letters, marked when the shape is in and when out, and numbered each piece (in my case a square). Then I started trying all variants from number 1. I'd probably do it for a few weeks. :-D Finally, I looked at your solution and chose one of your corner pieces. Then I started from it and I had it done in a few minutes. I really enjoyed it, I'll try again. Thanks for the fun. :-)
Very entertaining video Karen! Love that you reiterated that it was a one tough puzzle moments before it all clicked together
I've got a similar "tough" puzzle where it's pictures of railroad locomotives. It's nine pieces, and the pictures overlap the edges where one half of the picture is on one piece and the other half is on the adjoining piece. It's a bit of a challenge to solve it, which I usually do through trial and error.
Speaking of tough puzzles, I finished my Van Gogh puzzle a couple days ago, and I'm going to be recording my own puzzle video later today.
So cute that you gave us the opportunity to do the puzzle with you, love that 💗
Thanks Karen for another great video. This is too tough for me
It was a tough puzzle but I managed to solve it in about 30ish minutes, I didn't use a timer. My strategy involved focusing on the double spade out piece and seeing if it connected to any of the only 3 spade in pieces. Once you figure out it is a corner piece it was a simple solve from there.
Oh my god! I live in New Zealand, and I went on a trip to my boyfriend's home town and on an op shop shopping spree we found this same puzzle! This is amazing! I cant believe we have the same puzzle. Im going to save this video and time myself to compare later
5:07 “not exactly my strong SUIT!” 😜
I solved this last night, took me like an hour and a half but I did use a strategy. First I started assembling the suit that had the smallest number of possibilities and combined that with seeing how easily the pieces would fit together. Once you have two pieces that are right and orthogonally adjacent you just work your way around them and everything will fit together perfectly. Since I did use a strategy I found the solution quite satisfying. You were just lucky and luck doesn't always satisfy the thinky 😉
I love these types of puzzles!
I’ll leave the ‘tough’ puzzles to you. Thank you for sharing.
Oh, really glad you're doing this one! You Tube recently started suggesting your videos and I've watched a bunch of them. It's a puzzle we've got hanging around our house, and I wondered if it's one you'd done.
I literally did it with you!! I needed some help though and peaked once. It’s 3am i love it that i can also do the puzzle
I had a version of this when I was a kid called "Impuzzable". I never managed to complete it because I didn't have the patience for it, so well done :)
Oh wow Karen! I had this EXACT puzzle when I was little in the 1980s!
The puzzle was tough, the solution was unsatisfying, but this video was entertaining!
Great video! I love your channel and it has inspired me to do puzzles!
She inspired me too
I restarted doing puzzles. But I still stick to normal jigsaws.
I love how clueless Karen was at the end! Whaaaat? ahhahaha. Nice contrast to other puzzle videos where she presents stats and all. >D
I paused, printed & cut out the puzzle. I didn’t bother timing myself but played with it for a while. I made the same chart as you though! That was a win. That made me think all the hearts had to be used/on the inside. I wasn’t getting anywhere so I played your video again to get a clue about strategy. But that ended up being a bust! Haha! Too tough for me anyway. Still fun to play along. :)
I solved it by writing down how many outs and ins I have of each form like you. I thought since I have equal parts of hearts I start by connecting the hearts. I though that the pieces with one heart in and one out will be important and in the middle and tried to go around then. And after that step i found the solution in a few minutes.
Printed the pieces out a few week ago, but I did not find the solution, and every know and than I tried again for a few minutes. Twice I started this video and spoil my self but both times you gave a little tip and then I thought I can do that. Haha I think if I calculated the time I needed more than an hour.
Thank you for sharing with us. I had fun and feel great to have to finde the solution to this THOUGH one 😂
Karen! Have you seen the Dr. Livingston's Anatomy Jigsaw Puzzles? They are 7 puzzles that cover the anatomy of different parts of the body (head, chest, legs, etc), they fit together to make a 10 foot long puzzle at about 4,000 pieces (I estimated the numbers). I think you would have fun mixing all the pieces together and make a man (cue Rocky Horror song)!
What is the name and type of camera mount you are using?
Karen, You are so smart!! For me these puzzle would be too tough 🙈
I pause the video to do it! I am not sure about my time, I think about an half hour, maybe a little bit more. My final strategy was to put 4 piece in a square and try all the solution around with the other pieces until I was sure the square was not right. And then trying with an other square. I can say that it works even if it still tough :P
Great strategy!
That seemed like a tough one but as always, you’ve managed to solve it. Good for you!!!
I guess the best strategy for one of these (atleast with only 9 pieces) is pick one as the middle piece try get everything to fit around it and if you really cant find a way to get them all in mark that one as not the center one and move onto another to try as the center one
I am too tired (read: lazy) to bother printing it but I enjoyed watching the video!! Very tough 😉
I loved the visuals of "the final piece" and the swipe over the completed puzzle to find missing pieces or holes. Haha. :)
There are (at least) two solutions! I get this out every Christmas season.
My strategy was starting to check each piece if it could be the center piece. I took every possible arrangements into consideration, and eventually got into contradictions, and so I could surely tell that certain pieces couldn't be in the center. While I was checking the 7th piece, I finally didn't get into contradiction, and finished the puzzle once I checked if there are 6 ins and 6 outs indeed.
My first puzzle had those difficult shapes. 💕It was fun but took a long time. I think there was a shape I called sawtooth that was very perplexing. I think a gradient “holographic” puzzle would be fun.
The toughest puzzle ive done is a beekmon boys puzzle someone gave me. Its double sided but I was trying to do the top side of it. Its not easy since its darks and whites solid colors. So it gave me more of a head aiche and never finished it. I did a diff puzzle lol also pieces didnt interlock good. Very cheap.
Nope, definitely didn’t try this tough puzzle but I had fun cheering you on along the way!
That looked very unsatisfying as a puzzle, brainteaser or not, anyway, have a great week, and happy puzzling! "tough"
I have done a couple “tough” brain teasers with matching images. So 💕fun but crazy too. One was a little airplane puzzle given out from an airline.
A tough puzzle but not a tough video, very enjoyable watch😊
You say it was tough, but you made it look easy!
Ooh, I did it in 22 minutes and 36 seconds! It took a lot of careful elimination.
Tough and I love your videos they are very entertaining to watch!!
It wasn't Taugh even you forgot to sort the pieces! You are a true puzzle killer ;)
I loved this video. I want a tough puzzle like this.
Good job with a tough puzzle. I'm not fond of brain teaser puzzles either. I only have one and haven't done it yet (I haven't tried it much either).
I was expecting the "Trick" to be slotting two "hole" edge pieces against each other. So yeah had the same reaction as you when you found out that it was just moving pieces around to solve it.
I'm impressed that you solved that Tough puzzle so quickly! Do you think you will do the Ravensburger makeup puzzle on video some time? I'm always eyeing it on your shelf and would love to see you do it!
I've done this one before. It is tough - lots of guesswork!
MAN I remember doing this puzzle and being so disappointed, it makes me feel better to know you were disappointed too! It ends up just being a brute force puzzle... Just trying combinations until it works...
I love these types of puzzles! (Tough)
I paused and did the puzzle. It took me about the same time as you (~20min). It actually took me longer to prepare the puzzle a little bit for printing in Illustrator and then cutting it 😂👀
I always like to watch you do these brainteasers, although I wouldn't do them myself.
Confirmation that solid red puzzle Karen is sometimes the best Karen.
I'm finishing up some crochet whilst watching, so I didn't try the puzzle - and I'm really glad I didn't! How is it possible for it to be so frustrating and so unsatisfying?! Not sure if this actually counts as a tough puzzle or whether you just need patience/stubbornness/luck!!!!!
This is a good puzzle to use some graph theory. Sadly my mathematic education is kind of limited and not suited to finish it completely. But the idea is that you start with the 4 invariants. Something you also did but can formalize: if you call the "in" negative and the "out" positive, you can give a number to the pool of cards: "in spades - out spades = -3-spades". This invariant will always stay true: as even if you put two pieces down that use spades they will remove one "in" and one "out".
Similarly for hearts (= 0-hearts) and others.
Another invariant you can notice is that for the whole puzzle there are always 6 "ins" and 6 "outs".
So also the total sum of "hearts+spades+diamonds+clubs" = 0.
Finaly per piece the sum of edges = 0 .
Now the next step would be to label each piece, and make a graph of what piece can possibly be connected to what other piece. Once you constructed this graph (network), you need to use above invariants as well as the fact that one piece has 4 neighbours, 4 have 3 and 4 have 2..
I"m however truly under the level of mathematics to do these things. You need solid understanding of graph theory to do this, which I don't have, only being shown it a few times through numberphile and standupmaths; but I have a strong feeling that this approach should work towards a unique solution. Would be fun to see if one of the math channels here would gloss over it.
I love it when you do interesting brain teasers like this one :D Especially when they're *tough* :D
I had a similar one in school as a kid. Instead of ins and outs it was animal drawings you had to complete and some didn’t fit so they were on the outside but the inside ones all had to match. I’m not sure if it had only one Solution or multiple but it was fun.
Anyway great video and great solution for such a though puzzle 😊
Well i did not make my own puzzle but i did count the ins and outs like you did.
Seeing that I assumed that one of the pieces with the 2 hearts would be in the middle because were the only one were the ins and outs matching. My gut said me that the one with hearts opposite of each other would probably be the center.
Wiuld have trued to figure out the rest with trial and error. But well at leased there was some kind of strategy at the beginning. ^^
These remind me of those nice piece puzzles I used to do as a kid where each edge of each piece had either the front or back half of an animal and you had to find a way to put them together so it all matched. Those didnt have a requirement for how many backs or fronts you needed for the edges though.