My grandparents received one of these as a gift and it has been giving everyone fits ever since. There has to be a linchpin of some sorts - one tile that has to be put in a certain spot that will make the rest of the tiles fit. Can anyone help us out before we use the thing for kindling?
I don’t think there’s really any way to handle it but an exhaustive search. You could narrow it a bit by counting the discrepancies between heads and tails (six blue heads and only three blue tails, e.g.) to see what must be on the edge, but that doesn’t tell you which ones, where on the edge they are, or even the full edge set. Best I can say is to look for the pairs that show up the least and use them as your narrowers.
Are these magnetic tiles? If so, I’ve got a similar one that is composed of triangles. Definitely not as easy as it appears. I started in the middle, and worked outward. Took me the better part of an evening to finish it. Thought I’d be a wiseguy and re-do it after mixing up the tiles. HA! Took me almost as long the second time. Fortunately I don’t have steel walls, so the puzzle didn’t adhere when I threw it against one. Aren’t puzzles fun?
Took me just under four minutes to solve the one in your link.
There were two overriding strategies:
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Take a repeating object (like the red frog) and count how many heads and tails there are (three heads, six tails). This tells me to put red heads facing in and to have three tails on the outer edge.
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Only one piece can be the correct center. So, give each piece a turn in the center and see if it ‘works.’
On the above website, I found that the center tile they gave me wasn’t working. So, I went for the one piece that had both a red head and red tail on it. Turned out that was the right one. So, I was lucky to pick the correct middle tile on the second try.
Peace.