Pentomiyes - Can you turn this no into a yes?
Channel: OskarPuzzle
Date: 2024-04-06

Print it yourself at https://oskarvandeventer.nl/Print-It-Yourself/. Buy at https://i.materialise.com/en/shop/item/pentominyes or https://www.shapeways.com/product/D67SVQ7BU/pentominyes . Pentomiyes is a pattern puzzle with magnetic marbles and a magnetic board. The object of the puzzle is to place the pentomino pieces such that they spell NO. The second challenge is to make them spell YES. That is, from "pentomino" to "pentomiyes".

A whopping 55 magnets were embedded in the board during 3D-printing, with specific up-down (north-south) orientations. Another 55 magnets were glued into the black-white marbles. These 55 magnetic marbles were glued into 11 white domino pieces. The puzzle was designed by asking Burrtools for two random 5x11 pentomino designs. Next I used Excel to keep administrative track of which square moves where, when going from NO to YES. By rotating and flipping some of the symmetric pieces, I found a consistent magnet placement. Note that the puzzle has a parity challenge. Whenever two balls are swapped, then either both change color, or neither. Therefore, NO is spelled at the front side of the board, and YES at the back side. 

Copyright (c) 2024, M. Oskar van Deventer.

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