I'm kind of obsessed with this old puzzle.
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I'm kind of obsessed with this old puzzle. You need to move the piano to the lower LEFT corner by sliding the pieces.
Curious if anyone has done any math things with such tile puzzles?
It's easy to move it to the lower right, and possible but kind of hard to get it to the left.
I guess what I want to know is "why is it so hard?"
@futurebird I don't do math, but am pretty good with visual problem solving. I've made a replica on paper and am trying it now. Like you, I was able to get it to the lower right corner easily, but am currently stumped. Some instinct tells me that getting the lamp and clock on opposite sides of the field would help, but I don't yet see how to do that (or how exactly it would help).
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I'm kind of obsessed with this old puzzle. You need to move the piano to the lower LEFT corner by sliding the pieces.
Curious if anyone has done any math things with such tile puzzles?
It's easy to move it to the lower right, and possible but kind of hard to get it to the left.
I guess what I want to know is "why is it so hard?"
@futurebird A lot of work has been done on Klotski type games. The reason one possible outcome seems harder than another is because the possible paths in the moves graph to get to that outcome are more hidden with more branch points that foreclose them (like a system of roads that it's easier to get lost on). Here's a neat visualization of how these games work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGLNyHd2w10
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=YGLNyHd2w10 (no google proxy link) -
I'm kind of obsessed with this old puzzle. You need to move the piano to the lower LEFT corner by sliding the pieces.
Curious if anyone has done any math things with such tile puzzles?
It's easy to move it to the lower right, and possible but kind of hard to get it to the left.
I guess what I want to know is "why is it so hard?"
I have an old game I've copied from phone to phone called "Unblock Me" which is basically this.
You get into a groove eventually and it just happens.
The Wikipedia article doesn't really explain how or why. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sliding_puzzle
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@FediThing @futurebird @TerryHancock It's experience. When you work with materials and your hands, you come to understand all kinds of physical properties. Woodworkers understand grain. Spinners understand how different kinds of fibers will split or combine. Repeating again and again with slight variations each time develops instinct. Instinct is highly internalized knowledge that you know with your body and brain together.
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@FediThing @futurebird @TerryHancock It's experience. When you work with materials and your hands, you come to understand all kinds of physical properties. Woodworkers understand grain. Spinners understand how different kinds of fibers will split or combine. Repeating again and again with slight variations each time develops instinct. Instinct is highly internalized knowledge that you know with your body and brain together.
@Bumblefish @FediThing @futurebird @TerryHancock I have nothing to add here, but I love this conversation so much. So many cool things to think about.
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I'm kind of obsessed with this old puzzle. You need to move the piano to the lower LEFT corner by sliding the pieces.
Curious if anyone has done any math things with such tile puzzles?
It's easy to move it to the lower right, and possible but kind of hard to get it to the left.
I guess what I want to know is "why is it so hard?"
@futurebird the various Professor Layton games have this style of puzzle and they're so hard!!
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@futurebird A lot of work has been done on Klotski type games. The reason one possible outcome seems harder than another is because the possible paths in the moves graph to get to that outcome are more hidden with more branch points that foreclose them (like a system of roads that it's easier to get lost on). Here's a neat visualization of how these games work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGLNyHd2w10
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=YGLNyHd2w10 (no google proxy link)That seems way too hairy. It can be seen as just a game tree with a set of possible moves. You cache positions so you can detect loops*, and then you just search the resultant tree.
Folks who wrote chess/othello sorts of games could program this up real quick.
* A move that returns to a prior position forms a loop, and thus can't be making progress towards an end state.
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I'm kind of obsessed with this old puzzle. You need to move the piano to the lower LEFT corner by sliding the pieces.
Curious if anyone has done any math things with such tile puzzles?
It's easy to move it to the lower right, and possible but kind of hard to get it to the left.
I guess what I want to know is "why is it so hard?"
easy solution
as a moving company, what you do is you break the piano by accident
voila, extra room
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@FediThing @futurebird @TerryHancock It's experience. When you work with materials and your hands, you come to understand all kinds of physical properties. Woodworkers understand grain. Spinners understand how different kinds of fibers will split or combine. Repeating again and again with slight variations each time develops instinct. Instinct is highly internalized knowledge that you know with your body and brain together.
@Bumblefish @FediThing @futurebird @TerryHancock not just material! Spotting spambots and sock puppets (or lately, chatbot shite) was never about "rules" or "tells". You can just SEE it and you can't really explain how
And when I worked with complex records, I made such a habit of checking over the whole record (instead of just changing the little part of it some form or other instructed), that after a while I could often tell that something was wrong with it just from a couple of glances, without consciously knowing why
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@Bumblefish @FediThing @futurebird @TerryHancock not just material! Spotting spambots and sock puppets (or lately, chatbot shite) was never about "rules" or "tells". You can just SEE it and you can't really explain how
And when I worked with complex records, I made such a habit of checking over the whole record (instead of just changing the little part of it some form or other instructed), that after a while I could often tell that something was wrong with it just from a couple of glances, without consciously knowing why
@Bumblefish @FediThing @futurebird @TerryHancock probably the part of me that did mental arithmetic to pass the time during ad breaks as a kid (before years of shitty maths teachers ruined it) was lighting up and detecting that something literally didn't add up
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@FediThing @futurebird @TerryHancock It's experience. When you work with materials and your hands, you come to understand all kinds of physical properties. Woodworkers understand grain. Spinners understand how different kinds of fibers will split or combine. Repeating again and again with slight variations each time develops instinct. Instinct is highly internalized knowledge that you know with your body and brain together.
@Bumblefish @FediThing @futurebird @TerryHancock And also: there are physical things we know how to do, without knowing how we know. For example, if you practise singing in tune, you learn to tense precisely the right muscles in precisely the right way to get the right pitch, probably without even having any idea which muscles they are. Your brain just knows "to make this sound, I send out these signals via those nerves", and you couldn't work out logically how much muscle tension to use.
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@Bumblefish @FediThing @futurebird @TerryHancock And also: there are physical things we know how to do, without knowing how we know. For example, if you practise singing in tune, you learn to tense precisely the right muscles in precisely the right way to get the right pitch, probably without even having any idea which muscles they are. Your brain just knows "to make this sound, I send out these signals via those nerves", and you couldn't work out logically how much muscle tension to use.
@Bumblefish @FediThing @futurebird @TerryHancock Similarly with playing in tune on a violin: your fingers have to be a the right distance apart, which feels a certain way, and by practice you sort of calibrate the feeling. But once you've got it, trying to analyse instead of trusting the feeling will probably make you play the note out of tune.
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@Bumblefish @FediThing @futurebird @TerryHancock And also: there are physical things we know how to do, without knowing how we know. For example, if you practise singing in tune, you learn to tense precisely the right muscles in precisely the right way to get the right pitch, probably without even having any idea which muscles they are. Your brain just knows "to make this sound, I send out these signals via those nerves", and you couldn't work out logically how much muscle tension to use.
@timtfj @Bumblefish @FediThing @futurebird @TerryHancock
And the amount of that detail that's outside of awareness is—!
ISTR that researchers struggled for years to develop an automated welding machine & just couldn't get there. Until some bright soul figured out that a main cue that human welders use to track their work quality is the •sound• of the bead they're welding.
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I'm kind of obsessed with this old puzzle. You need to move the piano to the lower LEFT corner by sliding the pieces.
Curious if anyone has done any math things with such tile puzzles?
It's easy to move it to the lower right, and possible but kind of hard to get it to the left.
I guess what I want to know is "why is it so hard?"
@futurebird I don’t know how to solve it, but I do wonder immediately if we’re sure all the pieces are correctly oriented. Is there an initial layout diagram to confirm?
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I'm kind of obsessed with this old puzzle. You need to move the piano to the lower LEFT corner by sliding the pieces.
Curious if anyone has done any math things with such tile puzzles?
It's easy to move it to the lower right, and possible but kind of hard to get it to the left.
I guess what I want to know is "why is it so hard?"
@futurebird
I love it. I solved it after the BOSS of my BOSS, in an engeneering company said it was imposible, a long tiene algo.
I know it as the prisioner puzzle
Your photo is not the starting position -
I'm kind of obsessed with this old puzzle. You need to move the piano to the lower LEFT corner by sliding the pieces.
Curious if anyone has done any math things with such tile puzzles?
It's easy to move it to the lower right, and possible but kind of hard to get it to the left.
I guess what I want to know is "why is it so hard?"
@futurebird Perhaps similar to the Tower of Hanoi puzzle, in which the solution entails moves away from the desired endstate?
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easy solution
as a moving company, what you do is you break the piano by accident
voila, extra room
@benroyce @futurebird I was thinking that all you really needed to do was break the lamp and the clock. Moving companies do this all the time.
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I'm kind of obsessed with this old puzzle. You need to move the piano to the lower LEFT corner by sliding the pieces.
Curious if anyone has done any math things with such tile puzzles?
It's easy to move it to the lower right, and possible but kind of hard to get it to the left.
I guess what I want to know is "why is it so hard?"
@futurebird This is Klotski. This specific arrangement is the "Pennant Puzzle". 2swap's video Adventures in State Space is pretty good, but I don't remember if it answers this question.
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One of the simple Windows games I used to play a lot, "Klotski", was basically this.
Pretty sure I can solve it, but I'm getting lost trying to do it in my head.

This one's a version of the Pennant Puzzle, which was copyrighted in 1909. Probably made by the same company.
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I'm kind of obsessed with this old puzzle. You need to move the piano to the lower LEFT corner by sliding the pieces.
Curious if anyone has done any math things with such tile puzzles?
It's easy to move it to the lower right, and possible but kind of hard to get it to the left.
I guess what I want to know is "why is it so hard?"
@futurebird @ChrisInToots I mean, clearly the fastest way to solve it is to *ask a professional mover*, right?

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