Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Rupee Puzzle, rev. 1

India recently adopted a currency symbol for their rupee, which elegantly combines elements of the Devanagari letter र with a Latin letter R.  I dissected the shape into a puzzle with carefully-disguised cuts like other, traditional letter-dissection puzzles.  My effort was concentrated on the complex shapes in the upper part of the Rupee symbol, but the lower part was somewhat hastily finished.





I built my first test model in one piece, but with built-in dividing lines.

After confirming that the overall shape was recognizable I snapped the pieces apart along the pre-cut dividing lines.

It might be very difficult to assemble such a complex shape, so I also built and tested a plastic frame that might be used as a template to help someone assemble the shape.  It's a successful proof-of-concept but I'm dissatisfied with the overall shape because it lacks angled serifs on the two bars and the lower leg ought to be connected differently.

In the future I will try to develop a better Rupee dissection that incorporates the aforementioned stylistic features.  In the meantime I decided to practice by re-creating traditional dissection puzzle of the letter T.  This basic puzzle has been around for a century or more, but it continues to stump people despite its apparent simplicity.  Since it's an old design I shared the STL files for the T puzzle as "public domain" at Thingiverse.

Rob's Puzzle Page has some interesting pictures of other dissected-letter puzzles here.

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