my god this one was difficult, I spent like 4 hours on it the other day. but then I solved it just now in like 8 (!) minutes (based on discord timestamps of me saying "omg this board is so hard" and then posting a solution).
this isn't the first board I solved in my webapp but it's one I posted before (same puzzle, different solution). Even though the webapp UX is very basic I'm enjoying it a lot!
Okay here's a side-to-side that's the same as my last one, but it goes across the other set of sides.
I cannot tell you how much time I have wasted on corner-to-corner. I really do think it's impossible, although if you allow a connection to be like at a corner instead of at an edge it's probably possible.
TBH most solves don't have any path of 4 tiles from corner-to-corner. So requiring it be of one color seems...challenging.
I might try again with another colorway but, recently I've been doing jigsaw puzzles instead. This past week I spent 26 hours to do a 210-piece transparent, double-sided, solid-color puzzle. What fun!
Here we have yesterday's board but with the dark purple line actually formed. I went ahead and reversed both the TV symmetry and the FX symmetry, so you can see how different the solve looks, even though it's inherently the same board! I think it's a very cool attribute of these colored tiles.
I'm trying to figure out a mathematical definitions for symmetries...something like moving a rigid subset such that this subset itself follows the rules that govern the rules of a pentomino makes the solve the same as the first up to rigid-subset transformation.
This is my first "solid color across" solve...but it doesn't actually work! This is just how I solved it originally.
This solution has 2 places with symmetry. First, in the upper-left corner, is VT. Second, in the middle, is FX.
Tomorrow, I'll repost it with TV swapped and you can see the line completed.
After that, we'll do some more lines across for other colors.
I've been trying to do pink from one corner to the diagonally-opposite corner, but I'm not sure if it's possible. I spent about 3 hours on it yesterday and got kind of close to solves several times, but the leftover piece was never correct. Variously, I needed 2 Ns, Ps, Us, or Is. I think maybe I had one that would've needed two Ws too. But I never got an actual solve.
Hooray, here is the solution with N that I solved last night/this morning before going to sleep and which took me all of about 3 minutes lol.
Part of the reason this was so easy is that Z fits right there, and Z is often one of the hardest places to find a place for (usually it pairs with V in these solves if you haven't noticed, but often there's not space for that). And that perfectly makes space for UX, which are also difficult to place. Then I was like uh hey, WTV just, fit here. (I'd already put I against the wall). So the only pieces i really needed to solve were LFYP and....that took most of the time. But still not that hard.
This was a bit of luck, sometimes you get to a couple last pieces like this and they don't permute into place no matter what, but the goal is to keep your solve as square as possible, with having a couple not-straight edges, and I was working to do that as much as possible, so it's a "you make your own luck" kind of situation.
On the left-hand side is Z above W, and in the middle is N at the top, above T above F. Really hard to read. I think this one accomplishes a single color across the sides, but tbh I can't quite tell, haha, but I'm pretty sure the "burnt orange" color is going from left to right with NTX (and then F below it).
(Note: I can't stand this colorway, but it's the one this board came with. All 3 colors look basically the same, and the pink is indistinguishable from itself when it's adjacent to itself.
In the bottom right, it's P over Z in case you can't read it. I think everything else at least you can tell the pieces apart.)
Anyway. This one's kinda neat cos even though it's pretty easy to solve, it presents a natural challenge: Solve it with each possible piece in the lower-left corner! There are exactly 5 pieces you can place there:
I (this solve)
Y (I did it)
L (I did it)
V (to do)
N (to do)
Of the ones I did so far, both I and Y were ridiculously easy, but L WAY more than made up for it. Goddamn L was hard. But I think V and N will both be a lot easier, simply because I'll have L available to use in the rest of my solve, lol.
This is the only solve of this particular board that I've done so far. Not much to say about it, but this colorway is a bit hard to see. The top of the dark blue is L on top, then W and F from left to right.
This solve has the very, very standard arrangement of U "hugging" X, but in these 8x8-4 solves, it's been happening a lot less, simply because there's not much space for a 4x3 section anywhere! But this board is quite open, so you can easily get away with it.
Here's another solve of the same one I posted yesterday, this time it's pink across the solve. I noticed a fun symmetry today, if you rearrange the bottom 4 tiles, you can make space for Y instead of N - originally I was left over with space for an N and I was like "fuck this" and then I took out P, V, and Z and turned V and Z into the bottom corner instead of where the N is now, and I was like woah, that's exactly space for N! Idk that this exact scenario will present again in the future, but it's certainly possible.
Symmetries here are that XF can be flipped (this is a really standard symmetry) and I think that's it. The yellow tiles are kinda elegantly arranged though.
I started out this solve trying to find a solve with W inside the center squares, but I'm really doubting that it's possible, there's just not enough space that's 3x3 if you do that.
Tetris, but with five
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