Spotlight on...
The Octo Puzzle
| At first sight, the Octo puzzle (also known as Disco Puzzle) looks like a very colorful bracelet. It consists of eight (differently colored) "barrels" which are connected to each other with some smaller black parts. A closer inspection reveals a few cuts that enable two types of rotational movement. The first type splits the entire circle into two parts, while the second type separately rotates each individual "barrel". A "barrel" is made of four cell parts. |
| Although relatively easy to solve, it has 265,252,859,812,191,058,636,308,480,000,000
different combinations!!! The calculation is done by keeping one cell
element stabilised, and using seven generators of order 4 and one of order
8 (note that this is my personal way for calculating all possible combinations
and may vary a bit from other methods - but not too much).
Despite its attractive appearance and smooth movement, the Octo is
an extremely rare puzzle. It is light weight and pleasant to use, and
it allows the existence of many interesting challenges. The most obvious
challenge is to turn all cells of each "barrel" into the same
color, while keeping the colors into "rainbow order". That
is, the colors should have the following order: |
A correct (solved) and a scrambled configuration are shown below
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Another way to solve it.
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Yet another way to solve it!
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The animation image below demonstrates the two types of movement for the Octo puzzle.
It is surprisingly easy to disassamble the Octo puzzle (but must be careful
and pull the correct spots!).
The pictures below show the (inside and outside) internal structure of this
remarkable puzzle.
Two different packages of Octo. Both puzzles are identical and made in Indonesia.
(the left was released in the UK, while the right in Taiwan).
Finally, I must say, the Octo puzzle is by far the CUTEST puzzle in my collection! :-)
Please let me know of any comments or suggestions. Thanks! :-)