Martin's Menace by Stewart Coffin

[balsam2]

Just picked this up at a museum and worked on it yesterday and today. Like some other packing puzzles it looks pretty simple and only after trying it for 5-10 minutes do you realize that it's more challenging than you might have thought.

After about 1.5 hours of playing around with it, I happened upon the solution and while it's a clever one, I think I found it mostly by accident and I don't see a straight forward method that one would apply to solve this puzzle.

I'm wondering if part of what makes a good puzzle is one where the player discovers things along the way that helps him/her logically proceed. Although I had fun playing with this, I didn't feel like it was that satisfying.

What do you all think?

If anyone has done this puzzle, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it and In particular how you approached it.

Thanks,
Ben

[doc81]

This packing puzzle is very similar to Katamino in that they both use the same shape pieces to fit in a rectangular area. However in Katamino's solutions the pieces always form a rectangle where some of these other puzzles end up being oddly shaped and angled solutions to fit in the area.

While both are challenging (in Katamino you need to use ~8 or more of the pieces to start being challenging), I agree that there is no build up to the the solution or sense of progression until it's solved. These also feel like trial and error to me with more luck involved than I care for and strategy can actually work against you. As you said...you stumbled upon the solution which is not going to feel as rewarding. I agree that logical discovery in stages through a puzzle provide the most satisfying journey. The better packing puzzles (like Yuu Asakas) incorporate this and is why they stand out imo.