Disentanglement Binge!

Since I'm away from home this week, I only have a small selection of puzzles to chose from for my reboot post. Aside from the obvious twisty puzzles that tend to accompany me on the train journey down, I've recently been on a bit of a Disentanglement binge (won some from the latest Baxterweb auction and bought some from the mad Dutch bloke at the recent Midlands Puzzle Party)!

The set!

So, the puzzle I grabbed first when I delved into my bag was actually one from a set of two. They came from the Czech Republic and I bought them off Wil Strijbos (the mad Dutch bloke!) at the latest MPP (Midlands Puzzle Party!). I'm not sure how much the set cost, as I confronted Wil with a large handful of disentanglements, to which he stood there for a minute and said "£40?". That of course sounded fine, so I paid the man, only to be given a fiver back later on!!

Both solved! ;)

Anywho, I believe they are called 'Eight', but the little pieces of paper that came with them are written in Czech, so I could be wrong! 

The aim is to disentangle each chain from the figure-eight. The reason they come in as a pair is that they are slightly different from one another, the more eagle-eyed of you might have noticed that! They basically show that a slight modification in a puzzle's structure can alter the entire solve process, or in this case render a puzzle impossible. I know that some 'puzzle muggles' often say puzzles are "impossible" when given a particularly tricky one, but this one has actually been proven to be impossible using science and topology and all that smart-stuff!!

So yeah, one is possible and one isn't. The one that is possible is relatively simple for puzzlers, took me a minute or two, but the real fun lies when you hand them to muggles ..... MWHAHAHA!! You can even give them a choice of which one they want to solve, just forget to mention that one is impossible, HAHA!!

Obviously it is possible to take the chain off the impossible one by unclipping the chain, but that is cheating and is frowned upon!! I only did that for the sake of the picture so as not to give away which of the two is actually possible .... honest!

That's all for now!!!

[NB: So, the 'not rambling' didn't really work, but it's a lot less than there used to be!!]