Convergent Evolution D'Artagnan

CONVERGENT EVOLUTION: D’ARTAGNAN

At last year’s IPP (2013) a mechanical puzzle with a strange name entered the competition. It was named CONVERGENT EVOLUTION: D’ARTAGNAN. This was a co-production of Bram Cohen and Wei-Hwa Huang. Since I could not find it anywhere and the design is not that difficult the decision matured to build one just for this blog. My copy is out of Mahagony whilst the original is made out of Wenge.

Actually the puzzle looks very simple. You have three identical pieces and the fourth is different. Your goal is to assemble two identical shapes with 2 pieces each. Sounds easy? Well, it was not. I spent a good hour with those pieces and doubted in between if it was built the correct way (I did check the IPP photo just to realize everything is fine with the pieces). As said I got it done finally and it felt like a real achievement although the final shape is nothing extraordinary. I believe my brain played tricks on me most of the time. From a difficulty point of view I rate it a fair 6 out of 10 and am sure that others will not take that long to solve it.

Again we are talking about a puzzle that is not that hard to rebuild as a personal copy, however, may be Bram and Wei-Hwa will find a company which pick that idea up and commercially sell it. It will certainly be a good companion for parties to keep people occupied whilst serious puzzlers will most probably spend their money elsewhere.