HoWeDia Set

A few years ago I had to prepare a couple of puzzles for a public event. This was a workshop that also included children. After doing a few more similar events, it led me to design a new series of puzzles with various goals for several levels of difficulty. To make these puzzles more fun and interesting especially for children, I Included  simpler challenges with fewer pieces and used different kinds of wood and made them also in bigger sizes.

As a starting-point I took some of my older, favourite puzzles: Eight Houses, Three Wedges and DIAGRA. These puzzles have a 2x2x2-cube as a goal, and they have eight different pieces. The three original puzzles have a right-angled triangle as a distinctive, connecting element in them. And pieces are formed by connecting this triangle to the rest of the cube in different orientations.

By substituting the triangular connection by a "pin and hole" connection I created new pieces based on the three mentioned puzzles. My new, or maybe just innovated, puzzles are named: Akaho, Akawe and Akadia. The names refer to the original puzzles. For every puzzle there are multiple goals with different levels of difficulty. You can use 4, 6 or 8 pieces based on the challenge at hand. I think the change from Diagra to Akadia is the most impressive and few people can see the similarity with the original.

Substituting the triangular- by a "pin and hole" connection was the transformation that generated novel designs. So my guess was that substituting the triangular- by a geometry based on blocks (with right angles) should generate new designs as well. This is how Coverho, Coverwe and Coverdia were created. I found Coverho really interesting because contrary to the original pieces from Eight Houses, in the new pieces the geometry obscures the composing subparts.