howthelightgetsin

WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE

  • Literally anything but she

Tumblr refugee, Jewish, here to post art and also look at art. Header is "Spirit is a Bone II" by Kirra Jamison, 2011.


rykarn
@rykarn
19 hexagons are arranged in a grid.
Each hexagon has a number of curved paths starting at one side and ending at another side,
possibly lining up with a path inside a neighboring hexagon.
The paths come in three different colors.
By clicking on a hexagon, it rotates 60 degrees.
Rotate the tiles so that the following holds:
  1. There exists a single loop of line segments that passes through every tile of the grid.
  2. No other loop exists.
  3. Any set of three consecutive line segments on the loop contain each of the three colors.
  4. The ends of any line segment not on the loop must either line up with a line segment of the same color or line up with the boundary of the grid.

The following is an example of a correct solution:

An example of a solution

Clarifications:

  • A line segment is defined as a line that is fully contained within one hexagon, with its ends on two different sides of the hexagon.
  • Rule #3 can be restated as: If a line segment is on the loop, its neighbors must
    • be of a different color than the color of that line segment, and
    • be of a different color from one another.
    So for instance if a line segment on the loop is yellow, then one of its neighbors must be blue and the other one red.
  • Rule #4 can be elaborated as: An end of a line segment not on the loop must either
    • touch the boundary of the entire grid of hexagons, or
    • line up with a neighboring line segment of the same color.
    An end of a line segment not on the loop may neither
    • line up with a neighboring line segment of a different color, nor
    • line up with an empty side of a neighboring hexagon.
  • The loop may pass through a tile multiple times. It may cross itself doing so.
  • The black dots and dashes are only for visual aid in telling the colors apart.
  • I forgot to include a solution, but this has kindly been provided here! (Spoiler warning)

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in reply to @rykarn's post:

You can also read that rule as "each segment in the loop must touch the other two colors at its ends"

So if you have a Red segment, it must connect with a Blue segment on one end and a Yellow segment on the other. A Yellow segment must touch a Red and a Blue, and so on.

Two segments crossing each other inside a tile don't count for this: it must be at the ends.

nice! i got stuck for a minute and thought i had proven that 'line segment' must mean 'section of the loop of one color' rather than 'section that appears on one tile', but then i realized bullet 4 of the instructions strongly implies that this isn't the case, which forced me to find my mistake and solve it :)

We had a Tantrix set when I was a kid. Looking it up today reveals that there are multiple ways of playing it solo, but I only knew the rule set where you had to build a loop of a single color using every tile. It was way to hard for me at that age, but clearly it left an impression on me!

(Also I love the F-plus, nice seeing you here!)

I'm a bit confused by rule 4:

The ends of any line segment not on the loop must either line up with a line segment of the same color or line up with the boundary of the grid.

Does this mean that any non-loop string of segments can only be a single color? What exactly does "line up" mean in this context?