Review: Flutterby
| Puzzle | Flutterby |
|---|---|
| Artist | Dee Rogers |
| Type | Teaser  |
| Catalog Picture |  |
In reviewing "Pull my Strings", just puzzled courtesy of a puzzle swap, I realized that I've mostly done reviews of the puzzles I've borrowed from others and many of the first 10-15 Stave Puzzles I owned never got a review. So since I was on a Dee Rogers review kick, this 130 piece, repeating image puzzle bears discussion.
Like "Pull my Strings" and "Pheasantly", this puzzle has empty interlocks. It was also my first exposure to repeating image puzzles and I developed my puzzle brigade system (think old-school fire fighter bucket brigade) where you get a bunch of folks sitting around a table and you pass a trial piece around with each person working on one type of piece. For this one of us had say the blue blossoms and another butterflies, etc. and we passed around green leaf pieces.
This approach helped bring the problem to a much more tractable size quickly since instead of 130 pieces, you have 70 chunks of 2, then 35, etc.
Since this was my first repeating image puzzle every it will always have a fond space in my heart. It also nearly "broke me" at first until I figured out the brigade method. Even when my fellow puzzles left at like 11 o'clock at night to get sleep, I had the method down and was able to pull it together quickly.
I've since used the technique on other similar puzzles: Luxembourg Gardens (also Dee, mini-review), Something to Crow About (also Dee; Rev), and Pheasantly Pleasing (also Dee; Rev), and Seaing Stars (Diana Rowell; Rev).
Of this lot of repeating image puzzles, Pheasantly Pleasing was the hardest for me and pissed me off the most since the empty interlock issue was not self evident and massively disrupted the way I was doing my brigade technique. Seaing Stars was hard in a different way but the more limited piece count and lack of empty interlocks made it more manageable.
Of the lot, think Flutterby is probably the best challenge without being insane and I like the mild "cartoon" like quality and playfulness of the bunch. From a straight art approach, I probably like Something to Crow about more, but the challenge is not as hard as most of the others.
On the easier side, Luxembourg Gardens is the most manageable and also features some nice three-dimensionality to it.
Tags: dee, rogers, butterfly, flutterby, image, puzzles, repeating, review
Comment
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Comment by Erik on June 7, 2009 at 2:08pm - No, bucket brigade is only way I can think of.
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Comment by Nate on June 7, 2009 at 1:52pm -
Okay, so after many hours of grueling puzzling, I finally finished Flutterby yesterday (many thanks to Erik for giving me the opportunity to give this one a go!).
Let me first say that it is a beautiful puzzle with a remarkable, harmonious design. That being said, I think only the last half hour or so of puzzling, when everything started to come together, would actually qualify as fun. The many hours of hunting for each individual knob's interlock was grueling, and I couldn't wait to be done with it.
Maybe I missed a more clever way of going about it, but any shortcuts I could have taken were not apparent to me, so I simply used the brute force, banging-my-head-against-the-wall method of assembly. That involved a lot of effort to effect very slow progress.
I think I just need a break from teasers; time for a traditionals kick.
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Comment by Erik on May 18, 2009 at 1:48pm
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1) I knew their were empty interlocks so that made me less sensitive to misses
2) I guessed that there was some symmetry based on 2-ness so I decided to ignore the "seaweed" pieces at first and just found decent fits for big stuff and went from there machining along
3) I've gotten really fast at the repetitive image/testing/brigade stuff, remember I got luxembourg gardens together in about 45 minutes I think.
This is why I'm a bit more stuck on say London Larceny now since WHAT to do is less clearly structured, I am very fast implementer but moving slow so far.
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Comment by Nate on May 18, 2009 at 1:22pm
- Exactly! So how the heck did you finish Strings in 2 hours?!
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Comment by Erik on May 18, 2009 at 1:07pm
- Yep, thus my bucket brigade and why I get particularly frustrated about empty interlocks if I don't know about them because if I brigade a given piece X against all other pieces Y1-->YN and don't seem to find a match if there are empty interlocks I don't know if I missed versus this is an interlock that just won't be filled (esp if I'm trying to fill an "innie" against all of the "outies")
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Comment by Nate on May 18, 2009 at 12:32pm
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Interesting--I did not find the empty interlocks in Pull My Strings evident until I spent an hour searching for interlock mates that did not exist!
Very enlightening to hear about your bucket brigade technique. There does seem to be a point in certain puzzles where elegant solutions are not going to cut it and you just have to sit there and compare a single interlock with every other piece. Argh.
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