Solved!!!

Wooohoooo!!! I have finally put together the evil, horrible, outrageously difficult puzzle that my mom found for me last Christmas!! The picture on the left is of the pyramid, finally solved. I've been struggling with this thing for a long time. When my mom gave it to me, she said it was a very difficult puzzle. She and Jenn had already taken it apart, and it did not have the solution. I played with it for a couple of weeks, and to Jenn's infinite delight, I was not able to solve it. Usually when I get a puzzle, I have it solved in a matter of minutes. This one truly humbled me. My friend Jason is also very good at puzzles. When he stopped by, I let him take a crack at it. It stumped his as well. Double-joy for Jenn! I was so frustrated with this puzzle. Not only was the answer not forthcoming, but just getting partial solutions to hold together was difficult. The pieces are made out of some type of plastic or acrylic. They slide very easily. If the structure is not sound, the whole pyramid comes crashing down, mid-construction. This can be very frustrating when you have been concentrating on a particular formation for a couple of hours. Below is a picture of the puzzle with all of the pieces laid out.


Midway through this year I decided to give up and just search for the web for the solution. The web has everything right? wrong. After endless googling, all I could find was that the puzzle was made by Kadon, and sold through their website GamePuzzles Worse yet, they no longer sell this puzzle. The best I could find were a couple of old images which had not been removed from the site yet. They still sell the pyramid puzzle with four length side, but not the five length side like mine.

I was starting to make headway on a solution though. I had come up with a couple of simple rules that I knew I had to follow when forming a solution. The 'L' shaped pieces were the key. Due to the 90 degree angle on the piece, they could only fit into the puzzle in a particular way. If you were looking down on the puzzle, and you placed one of these pieces in, the section that sticks up must fall away from the point of the triangle. That probably doesn't make any sense unless you are looking at the puzzle. Also, some pieces have a nice fit. For instance, the piece shaped like a 'C' fits very nicely with the 'L' shaped piece, when placed in a particular way. I took this as a sign. After trying what seemed like countless combinations with the 'L' pieces, I finally found the one that works. Yeah me!

After some further research on the web, the best I could find were two math wizards that also own this puzzle. They each documented their solution, but I don't know if I understand how to read their solution! In any case, I'm releived to have this challenge behind me. Now I get to be the one to enjoy as other people struggle with this puzzle.