Making your Dash Count

Sorting Pieces December 31, 2012

Once separated from the pack, the edge pieces were not hard to assemble.  I enjoyed the color, patterns and of course the cats!

But I conceptually struggled with the inside pieces.  Faces? Colors? Number of eyes? Hats? Glasses?  I started with the eyes..  one vs two eyes. But what of color, what about glasses? Add to that mix a real life cat who is naturally drawn to sitting on puzzles, it was a mess in the making.  I first sorted by the number of eyes.  Two eyes on a piece to the left.. one eye on the right.  No eyes back to the box.

800 or so eyes stared at me from the table.  Some facing right some left.  Some with glasses.  Do I sort these out again? Running out of room and patience with the real cat who claimed the puzzle table and pieces, as her own, I realized that there had to be a better way.

Then I remembered Microsoft Access.  I am sure that the developers were inspired by the same issue: Sorting Ridiculous Puzzles.