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Jesse Louis-Rosenberg @nervousjesse.bsky.social · 7h

If you think this looks fun, please consider buying or sharing it! We'd love to be able to work on it more. We have plans to implement an online version of the game. We also want to try to compute exactly how many possible solutions there are to the puzzle

n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com/shop/product...

Nervous System | Shop | Flummoxagon

n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com

Jesse Louis-Rosenberg @nervousjesse.bsky.social · 7h

Thanks!🙏

Jesse Louis-Rosenberg @nervousjesse.bsky.social · 7h

Here's a tutorial of how you play a simple scenario. The Flummoxagon comes with 13 game boards and we'll be posting more regularly online, so it's endless replayable

n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com/flummoxagon/

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Jesse Louis-Rosenberg @nervousjesse.bsky.social · 7h

It turns from a tiling puzzle to a game like a Sudoku. The Flummoxagon is just a space within which these game boards can be played. You start with a given set of tiles and need to use the constraints of the color and shape find the unique solution. And it's very satisfying once it comes together.

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Jesse Louis-Rosenberg @nervousjesse.bsky.social · 7h

This led us to the idea of a difficulty curve: many solutions is easy, in the middle it gets hard, but more constraints get easy again. If there's only 1 solution, your decisions are more forced. We could choose a subset of the puzzle that had 1 solution. These scenarios turned into the real puzzles

Flummoxagon game boards laid out on a table

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Jesse Louis-Rosenberg @nervousjesse.bsky.social · 7h

When testing, we realized this made the puzzle hard. Like REALLY hard. Like maybe impossible? This was interesting because the original puzzle was kinda easy (20-30 min). The Flummoxagon still has hundreds of thousands of solutions, but the increased constraints make it difficult to find even one

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Jesse Louis-Rosenberg @nervousjesse.bsky.social · 8h

We decided to add colors to try and make it more compelling. It was visually more interested and introduced more ways to put it together that would feel meaningful. Like you could add a map coloring rule where no adjacent tiles have the same color.

The colored Flummoxagon version of the polyhex puzzle

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Jesse Louis-Rosenberg @nervousjesse.bsky.social · 8h

We were originally making a tiling puzzle, similar to Pentaminoes, but with every polyhex from 1 to 5. The problem was

A. This wasn't very original
B. It had limited play value

Even though it has millions of solutions, it's hard to come up with compelling reasons to put it together more than once.

A blank polyhex puzzle in the shape of a hexagon

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Jesse Louis-Rosenberg @nervousjesse.bsky.social · 8h

We have finally released our new puzzle, the Flummoxagon! We've done more tweaking and playtesting on this than any other puzzle, and I think we've managed to make a unique and addictive game. It's turned into something completely different from our original idea

n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com/blog/?p=9827

Meet the Flummoxagon

We’re excited to announce Flummoxagon, a new geometric puzzle game that might just leave you flummoxed. Imagine a mash-up of Pentominoes and Sudoku. Your goal is to fit all the pieces into the hexa…

n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com

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Reposted by Jesse Louis-Rosenberg

Jessica Rosenkrantz @nervousjessica.bsky.social · 1d

Meet the Flummoxagon, a new geometric puzzle game that might just leave you flummoxed. Imagine a mash-up of Pentominoes and Sudoku. Your goal is to fit all the pieces into the hexagon frame but there’s a twist, pieces of the same color can’t touch. n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com/blog/?p=9827

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Reposted by Jesse Louis-Rosenberg

Emma Mitchell @silverpebble2.bsky.social · 4d

Younger daughter & I are sorting our fossil
collection with a late breakfast of ammonite pancakes 🐚🌀

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Reposted by Jesse Louis-Rosenberg

Jesse Louis-Rosenberg @nervousjesse.bsky.social · 6d

Join us tonight for a unique puzzle stream at 8:30 EST where we will be introducing our new puzzle, the Flummoxagon

twitch.tv/nervousPuzzles

A photo of the flummoxagon puzzle. Colorful hexagonal pieces

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Jesse Louis-Rosenberg @nervousjesse.bsky.social · 6d

It’s already available for preorder. We’re just waiting to receive the playing cards from the printer

n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com/shop/product...

Nervous System | Shop | Flummoxagon

n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com

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Jesse Louis-Rosenberg @nervousjesse.bsky.social · 6d

Join us tonight for a unique puzzle stream at 8:30 EST where we will be introducing our new puzzle, the Flummoxagon

twitch.tv/nervousPuzzles

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Reposted by Jesse Louis-Rosenberg

Jessica Rosenkrantz @nervousjessica.bsky.social · 6d

We just added a puzzle frame option to our website for folks who want to preserve and showcase their puzzles n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com/shop/product...

the back of the puzzle where you can see its maze cut pieces

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Reposted by Jesse Louis-Rosenberg

Recurse Center @recursecenter.bsky.social · Aug 22

🦠Watch Peter Whidden's first public talk on Mote: an interactive ecosystem simulation!

Mote uses a custom GPU-based physics engine to model hundreds of thousands of organisms, leading to fascinating emergent phenomena: a sandbox that is part game, part research.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hju0...

Localhost: Peter Whidden's Mote: An Interactive Ecosystem Simulation

YouTube video by Recurse Center

www.youtube.com

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Reposted by Jesse Louis-Rosenberg

Jessica Rosenkrantz @nervousjessica.bsky.social · 6d

Tonight starting around 8:30pm EST we'll be streaming our new Flummoxagon puzzle! join us on Twitch as explore strategies for solving these puzzles www.twitch.tv/nervouspuzzles

flummoxagon puzzle on a wood table including the gameboards, box, wood frame and hexagonal pieces in 4 colors (pink, orange, green and blue)

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Jesse Louis-Rosenberg @nervousjesse.bsky.social · 7d

I don't see why they need an update. I haven't aged one bit, and my hairline is in the exact same location. You do have new glasses though

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Reposted by Jesse Louis-Rosenberg

Jessica Rosenkrantz @nervousjessica.bsky.social · 7d

I realized we hadn't updated our headshots in over a decade. It felt fitting to take new photos inside our own work (also featuring @nervousjesse.bsky.social @nervo.us)

Nervous_Jessica featured inside of Corollaria monolith an aluminum sculpture she created that undulates with morphing hexagonal patterns

Nervous_Jesse featured inside of Corollaria monolith an aluminum sculpture she created that undulates with morphing hexagonal patterns

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Jesse Louis-Rosenberg @nervousjesse.bsky.social · 9d

We had a wonderful workshop building gyroids with students at Auburn University. It turns out the desire to wear a gyroid is universal

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Jesse Louis-Rosenberg @nervousjesse.bsky.social · 9d

This is a section of a gyroid

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Reposted by Jesse Louis-Rosenberg

Em4democracy @emmy4democracy.bsky.social · 10d

Reminds me of the murmuration of starlings.

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Jesse Louis-Rosenberg @nervousjesse.bsky.social · 10d

Always gratifying to see my art at the airport. Off to speak at Auburn University for the Day of Design

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Jesse Louis-Rosenberg @nervousjesse.bsky.social · 22d

I have been play testing our new puzzle which is _NOT_ a jigsaw puzzle. It’s been super fun. How long do you think should an easy puzzle take? What should each one of these sets of tiles be called? Internally we’ve been calling them scenarios but also considered “board” or just “puzzle”

A set of geometric tiling puzzles with times hand written on them

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Reposted by Jesse Louis-Rosenberg

Jessica Rosenkrantz @nervousjessica.bsky.social · Sep 3

Word of the day: boletinoid
Mushrooms having a structure intermediate between gills and pores. As seen in this ash-tree bolete. (I love these) #fungifriends

The boletinoid surface on the bottom of an ash-tree bolete mushroom close us

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