It’s part of an escape game at [noparse]https://www.365escape.com/House-Santa.html[/noparse]. It’s a puzzle box that requires you to be good at piece shuffling- arranging pieces so they’re all in the right order. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be any way to solve the puzzle locally- that is, get most of the pieces in place and then work out an algorithm for transposing the last two or three pieces. It appears to require you to solve the entire puzzle globally- work out multiple moves in advance where everything has to be before any order is evident and then do the final moves that put everything in place. I simply cannot do that; and all of the sites that claim to have the game solution show the player simply hitting the “skip” button at that puzzle- which is NOT available on the game at the site above. No further progress is possible without solving that. Help!
Are you talking about the puzzle with the snowman, presents, bells, and holly? I didn’t have an algorithm–just went left to right, did the snowman, then the present, then the bells, then the holly. Maybe I got lucky, but this is my end state. Is this what we’re talking about? (That said, putting it together like that didn’t trigger any sort of “puzzle solved!” type of screen, so maybe I did something wrong and misunderstood the premise.)
Oh, wait–I think I may have two of those gift pieces transposed. Shit, gonna have to try again and see if that’s it. Hard to tell with that graphic, but that must be it.
OK, that was indeed the issue, so I just went back and redid it from scratch, and got it right this time, and the box opened and I appear to have gotten a book of some sort. If that’s the puzzle, then all I did was complete each one from left to right. There didn’t seem to be any place where it became tricky. But, like I said, maybe I got lucky again.
[Moderating]
Some may say that these games are works of art, but I say they’re, well, games.
Off to the Game Room.
I’m not sure why, but from the time I started the entire site to the time I finished that puzzle was about three minutes. I think I started, more or less randomly, with the bells and piled everything else out of the way. While I was trying to get the next bell piece, I figured out that the present was easy to get started. I finished the bell and started the snowman while I worked on the present; once I finished the snowman, the holly was easy. The puzzle seems pretty forgiving of mucking about.
You know you can stack a whole bunch of pieces in a “garbage stack,” right, just to get them out of the way?
Oh, Christ–if it’s not that one, if it’s the one where you have presents, candy canes, bells, etc. in line–that’s way harder.
OK, that would make a lot more sense. I just found that first puzzle, and it matched the OP, so didn’t bother to see if there was another one. It would help if the OP were a wee bit more descriptive about the puzzle and where to find it.
Sorry about that, I forgot how many damn boxes there are on that level. Yes it’s the one with candy canes, stockings, Santas, bells and presents. It’s a class of particularly pernicious permutation puzzle (pppp) where groups of pieces get rotated together. I really hate those.
OK, so where is this puzzle? I can’t find it.
I think it’s on the bookshelf. I clicked up there somewhere and got a box in my inventory; when I clicked on the box, the puzzle came up.
Holy crap. I found it. I haven’t the foggiest how you’d solve that.
Next to the books on top of the cabinet under the window.
OK, I haven’t got a solution yet but I hit upon a possible way of at least reducing the number of possibilities from some large factorial number to something manageable: (This presumes you’re working from the top down, but equivalent moves can be done for bottom up, left-right, etc.)
Shuffle the top three rows into place one piece at a time. Once you’ve done that, click the fourth row second column and fourth row fourth column to rotate the third row pieces to the far left and right, so you can work in the middle without undoing the third row; when you’re finished rotate the third row pieces back into position.
If I can work out a set of algorithms for transposing pieces in the fourth and fifth rows, I may be able to work an arbitrary arrangement into the solved puzzle. Sort of like a Rubik’s Cube.
The difficulty with that is that, once you have the third row shuffled off to the sides like that, there’s only one square you can rotate around while still preserving what you already have.
What we need (and I think what you’re referring to in your last paragraph) is a way to swap certain pieces while, not necessarily leaving other pieces alone, but putting them back where they came from.
I cannot find the game on that site, but the definitive thing to do with this type of puzzle would be to run it through the computer, just like you can do for Rubik’s Cube. Can someone list the generators [e.g. for the cube you can take ( 1 3 8 6)( 2 5 7 4)( 9 33 25 17)(10 34 26 18)(11 35 27 19) plus 5 others] and the permutation(s) you want to decompose?
Dunno what that all means but here’s a picture. Does that help? Clicking on one of the 9 squares in the center rotates every item around it once space clockwise.
Sure it helps… e.g., if I typed everything in correctly (I haven’t checked), let
a b c
d e f
g h i
represent clicking on the corresponding square in the center (rotating everything around it clockwise), and the same letters capitalized represent rotating anticlockwise (= rotating clockwise 7 times).
Then, e.g., to swap the bottom-left square with the one to its right you can do
BaIAibABaIAibabABAIAiaabaaaBAIaibCAcAABACAcbbADaddEDeaGDghdHG
assuming I made no mistake transcribing that string (and I almost surely did), but the point is that any puzzle like this solvable by a human is trivial for a computer. How do you want the tiles to end up starting from the position in the image?
I think they should all be in rows according to the image on the left side. So all the presents in the top row, then the bells, then the santas, the stockings and the candy canes along the bottom.
never mind, it’s obvious what you’re supposed to do.
Anyway, if someone wants to describe which swaps we want, it’s easy to figure any of them out…
Yes, sorry, it was obvious as soon as I noticed the images on the left. Is it randomised each time?
Anyway, Lumpy’s idea is sound; which moves do you want to try?
E.g., to swap the bottom-center tile with the one above it:
BaIAibbABAIAiaabaaBaIaibAABabaaCAcABdBDbbABACAcbbADaddEDeaGDg
As far as I can tell you can only rotate clockwise.