Nary a Problem – RecTangle - A Ternary Teaser

Nary an indecision, Nary a misstep, Nary a Problem.  The way is clear, the light is good, I have no fear, nor no one should.  

RecTangle - A Ternary Teaser was designed by Koh Pit Khiam and used by Lee Yee Dian as an exchange puzzle for the 41st International Puzzle Party (IPP).  It is a 2D sliding puzzle made from laser-cut acrylic in USA IPP appropriate colors: red, white, and blue.  The frame consists of 2 layers of white acrylic and the sliding pieces are made from blue and red acrylic.  There is also a clear acrylic panel that sits on top to hold the pieces in the frame when it is in its wrapper.  Of course, since it’s a sliding puzzle, it slides into the packaging.  

The objective is to move all 4 of the red pieces vertically from the bottom of their columns to the top.  The left three columns of the puzzle are ternary (i.e., the red piece can be in one of 3 positions), and the rightmost column is binary (2 areas for the red piece).  Advancing the red pieces vertically requires moving the blue pieces horizontally back and forth.  The 12 blue pieces could have been made using only 6 pieces but my guess is that it is more efficient to cut rectangular pieces in lieu of oddly shaped pieces and it obviously fits the theme better.

When I took the puzzle out, there appeared to be a few pieces that can be moved but the first move is obvious if you are even only a little familiar with these types of puzzles.  However, when I went to make that move, it failed to work.  Turns out that the puzzle comes with a clear acrylic spacer to keep the rightmost red piece from moving in the package.  Once it was removed, I was on my way.  With N-ary puzzles, it’s OK to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result.  And repeat I did.  And repeat I did.  Thankfully, RecTangle only has 4 columns to demonstrate the concept without becoming tedious.

This is not a difficult puzzle and only takes a couple of minutes to solve, but it is an excellent introduction to how a ternary puzzle works.  The pieces move easily within the frame and there isn’t much danger of losing track of which direction you are moving.  In fact, there is only one path and you are either moving toward or away from the solved state.  And the best part is that you can perform the reset by simply picking up the red pieces and putting them back at the starting point – or any other point that you desire.