(techno music)
- Yo, what's up guys?
And welcome back.
Pretty dope intro, one of my favorites,
let me know if you like it.
Actually, if you did like it, leave a like,
and then I'll know that you liked it,
because you've liked it.
Today we're looking at a Hazmat Cargo puzzle by Carl Hoff.
Here's the e-mail that I received a few months back,
he says, "I'm a puzzle designer in Arizona,
I designed a puzzle named Hazmat Cargo,
and he's entered a version of this puzzle
in the Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition
back in 2017.
So he's 3D printed this new one,
and this is very cool,
because these little individual pieces
have these little hazmat symbols on them,
and they glow in the dark, actually,
which is also sick.
This puzzle is particular.
So it's got this 11 by 11 square,
you have nine pieces,
which have six of these hazmat symbols on them each,
and the goal here is to fit them perfectly in this square.
This guy, Carl Hoff, is no newb,
he's been designing these types of puzzles for a long time,
and trying to make it so that there's only one solution,
which is very difficult to do
when you take into consideration
the modularness of this,
because you can flip them either side, et cetera.
There is one possible solution out of 392,000,
so there is .00003% chance that I will find it today.
I'm not expecting to solve this.
Even getting close, being one square away,
there's 3,700 possibilities to get that close,
which is still only 1% chance.
So, obviously, we're gonna use our logic,
and our reasoning, trying to figure this out.
Probably is the hardest jigsaw puzzle on the planet,
without any further ado, let's just get into it.
Let's go.
(whistles)
I'm just gonna start the timer,
this thing is gonna take forever, I know already.
So like I said, there's 3,700 possible close solutions,
which would be like one away.
I'm not gonna lie, I have been playing with this thing
for about two hours already,
I just had it sitting around the office
for the longest time,
and we've always sort of been playing with it,
and I just decided today,
I'm gonna make a video of me solving it,
which should be fun.
Famous last words.
This puzzle was sent out to me and Mr. Puzzle
in sort of a challenge, who could solve it first,
and I'm betting he's gonna solve it before me,
because this is...okay,
so one that that I've noticed with this is,
so the space, I can't do that.
And the reason for that, he says,
is because the materials are gonna get contaminated, right.
So this is like a barge, on a cargo ship,
and we have to place all the cargo so that they don't touch.
They take up one and a half spaces,
as you can see, like, they take up basically two spaces,
all of these things.
I cannot put something beside here and have it overlap,
it has to be here.
So, the minimum space you can have is this, is one circle.
Throughout this whole puzzle,
there has to be this one circle distance.
If we're gonna come up to a solution,
which is one in 392,000, right.
So we got all nine pieces here.
Here's what the pieces look like, by the way,
I'll let you guys have a quick look at those pieces.
And here.
And since I've been playing with it,
this one here has been really the toughest for me
to try and figure out.
There's gonna be a lot of time lapse moments in this video,
because most of it's just gonna be me
trying to figure things out.
I'm trying to keep this piece for the last,
like to fit in somewhere,
because it's an easy piece.
The difficult pieces is definitely this one.
There are pieces like this,
which have this long three extension,
and there's another one here.
The other ones have two, and two, and two,
and two, and then the staircase one,
and then two again.
This one's original, however,
'cause it's the only one
that is two things wide, all right.
So that's all just some random information
for you to take in while we dive into this.
We want the minimum amount of space, right?
So let's say we start with this one here in the corner.
So far, that would be no good.
That's good, see how there's only one space here, not two?
So that's good.
That is also good, that's a really good start.
As you can see.
Now as we go along, we wanna respect that.
See, now, this causes a problem,
because even if I have a piece here,
there's gonna be these double spaces,
and I know that to be a problem.
We're trying to eliminate that somehow.
Give you guys a little bit of a taste
of what's to be expected.
Again, here, we're gonna be kind of in trouble.
Too much space again.
I'll show you guys what the end result yields here.
So, you're left with this one.
It clearly doesn't fit anywhere.
And as I mentioned,
we've got too many open spaces like this,
so that's no bueno.
(soft music)
There are certain pieces that do seem to fit well together,
like this one, and this one, for instance,
that's a nice little pocket there,
so maybe we wanna start with something like that.
Have that set up in a way,
you see how that's as close as they can be?
You leave them like that.
For this bottom one, we're gonna need like a straight line,
that one won't work because of that.
This one here will actually work,
but it, now, no piece can fit in here.
That's not bad, that's not bad.
We're gonna be screwed here.
This cross piece is really the tough one.
It's one of those pieces that's just unforgiving.
It doesn't fit anywhere.
Maybe have that one in there?
The cross seems to be the outlier here.
I'm gonna start with that.
The guy who made this, obviously,
this is what really gets me
is that a computer program probably came up with this,
and he ran it through the computer program,
and found there's only one solution,
but like, anyone to randomly
fall upon the solution here, is,
might as well buy a lottery ticket.
If I win this today, I will buy a lottery ticket,
I don't even believe in playing the lottery,
but I will happily buy a lottery ticket.
I feel like if we can get close,
down to, there's like one circle away,
maybe we can maneuver the pieces around
and find the solution.
It doesn't help that I know
that there's 293,000 solutions,
I think that's what's really demoralizing
in this whole process.
I feel like if no one would have told me that,
I would have had a funner time.
Just that, I feel like, 'cause there's four holes here,
I feel like that's too much.
It's gotta be that, all right.
So far, this looks okay.
Look how close that is.
We're like literally, like, what are we,
one square off?
Two, maybe two, aw, two squares off.
But I mean, you get the idea here.
I just wanna make sure you guys that idea
of like this one whole system.
Like here, there's two, everywhere else there's one.
Mint.
But that two is killing us, we're losing space,
and we need every possible ounce of space we can get.
And if I put that there, then we're kind of screwed up here.
And so this has to stay there.
The cross, maybe, again, could be replaced,
but if, you know what I mean?
You know the term, even a blind squirrel finds a nut?
Can we just be that blind squirrel today?
There's too many spaces everywhere.
Covers the most corners?
Probably this one.
What's heartbreaking is that I might be close to a solution,
and then I don't know it, because it's so random,
and I start over, and, yeah.
Also, I might be doing the same solution twice,
for all I know.
That's another thing that breaks my heart.
If this was the last piece to fit,
I feel like it would be easier.
It feels like such an easy piece to make fit somewhere.
Three piece, here, that's good.
This is good, this is really good.
Boom.
I like this a lot, I'm gonna remember this setup,
because right now, we have a minimal setup
with absolutely no two gaps
except for maybe here.
So close, but yet so very, very far.
There's just three pieces.
I do like the way this looks, though,
even if this isn't the right solution,
this is partially correct, for now.
If one can be partially correct, this is it.
This shape here is very important.
Very important.
That's nice.
But that's empty.
(exhales)
Let's just leave that overlapped
to see if that would be a close solution.
Even if that were to fit in there,
we'd still be, uh.
We're overlapping on two little pieces here.
I mean, we're pretty close,
except, like, throughout this whole thing,
this can't fit anywhere.
There'd have to be a hole for it to fit through.
Kinda like that, right?
But even then, not enough space.
(exhales)
All right, I've been on this for a total of about,
I would say, give or take three or four hours total,
an hour on camera here, it's getting kinda late,
I gotta go eat supper, so, this'll be a first.
I'm gonna go home, I'm gonna take a camera home,
I'll chill out on the couch, try and solve this,
and hopefully capture that on camera.
We're just gonna keep going.
This is my home.
I usually don't do this, this is weird for me.
I usually don't stop filming
until I solve the puzzle,
and I usually don't bring my work home with me,
which is why I like get my work done,
but when it comes to my home,
I gotta put work aside.
But tonight, this is bugging me.
I am gonna work on it, I brought my tripod setup here too.
I got my tripod, puzzle.
I even brought a little light with me
in case it gets dark out here.
I do this sometimes with puzzles,
I'll grab them and I'll take them home,
and a lot of times, like there are, probably,
I would say half a dozen puzzles that I haven't solved,
that I tried to solve, that I even started recording,
and I just got so discouraged,
I just like, scrapped the footage, let's move on.
And those puzzles I usually keep at home,
and I jam around on them every now and then
to see if I can figure them out.
Back to the puzzle solve.
Worth noting, as well,
worth nothing as well, after about three hours
of total solve time with this thing,
I did e-mail the creator of the puzzle
and asked him for a hint,
because this is an exceptionally hard puzzle,
so I did want some little direction, some little guidance,
and I'm waiting for his e-mail.
And while we wait, let's just, let's get to it.
Listen, I know this is different.
The audio's gonna be different,
the video's gonna be different,
but I think this is a cool part of the solving process
that you guys should see.
So let's just own up and have at it.
So here's where I'm at, the cross piece again.
The cross piece is always the piece
that it's really hard to end up fitting anywhere,
I can't make it fit.
I like this piece, I think this piece is exceptional,
and easy to place, and I'm gonna try to keep it for last.
Let's get this big cross puzzle out of the way first.
Did you guys hear that?
That's a really mad squirrel.
Move to the countryside, they say.
It's quiet, they say.
I know there to be only one solution to this puzzle,
so therefore, let's say I just place these pieces
any which way, and I'm looking
for a solution here, let's say.
The fact that these two pieces can literally be swapped
and nothing changes,
tells me that that is incorrect,
that this placement is incorrect,
because otherwise that would mean
there are two solutions, and there's only one solution.
Do you understand what I'm saying?
So, that gives me a clue, as in,
this is not the right way to go,
every piece should be unique in their placement,
and should not be replaceable with another piece.
Just got some exciting news,
we've got an e-mail back from Carl Hoff,
the designer of this puzzle.
So let's go and read it.
This is a really bad setup,
my camera looks like it's about to fall in the pool.
But this is a pretty big e-mail here, that he wrote me.
I wrote to him, and I said,
"Hey Carl, I got a banger intro for this video,
"but zero luck with the solve,
"so hard, is there a hint you could send over,
"I'll mention the hint in the video of course,"
is what I wrote him.
And he writes back, "Happy to help, I have a friend
"that has managed to solve the puzzle,
"he required two hints."
Okay, so I don't feel so bad
for asking for a hint after all.
"I'll start off with the first hint I gave him.
"The second hint I gave him
"was the placement of one of the pieces,
"which I'll send on as well if needed.
"My answer to him was,
"the board is made of 11, 11 square grid,
"you can also think of it as a 12 by 12 grid of vertices."
Okay, so the lines in between.
"For the purpose of your question,
"let's just look at the interior vertices.
"Your question asks, is every one of these interior vertices
"touched by one of the nine pieces?
"That is the only way the path
"can be exactly one square wide everywhere.
"And the answer to that question is no."
So that's really important.
So what he's saying here is that there is,
I like how this camera is now my light,
he says...this is so weird.
He's asking if they all have to be one space apart,
which is something that I've asked myself too,
and apparently, the answer is no.
"There are three interior vertices that are not touched
"by any of the pieces.
"Think of these as places where the path opens up
"to three separate two by two rooms."
Separate two by two rooms.
Okay, so it's a maze, but it opens up
to three two by two rooms.
"None of these three interior vertices
"are adjacent in the solution,
"so there are no two by three or larger rooms.
Okay, that makes sense.
This diagram here.
There are no, they're not connected,
so there's no two by three rooms.
So they're all single lines
except for three two by two squares.
"There are three clusters, and only three.
"As I said, my friend needed another hint after this one,
"so if you don't think that this will help, let me know,
"and I can simply give you the location
"of one of the pieces.
"Thanks, Carl."
All right, Carl, I think that that's enough hints for now.
I guess let's tackle the problem with that in mind,
and we'll see what happens.
All right, gang.
Honestly, been at this total for about four,
maybe five hours.
It feels like a week.
I think letting me know that this was a 20...
I can't even speak right now.
I think letting me know that this only had one solution
kind of demoralized me
in terms of this being such a daunting task
that I feel defeated going into it,
like it's just kinda soul-sucking at this point.
Maybe just 'cause it's late, and I've been at it all day.
So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna write Carl an e-mail,
I'm gonna request that we get just one piece.
If we get one piece, then just maybe we can solve it,
and then I won't touch this till the morning,
maybe I'll fiddle around with it, actually,
on the couch or something, I don't know.
But I'll wait for his e-mail,
and then we'll head back to the office
in the morning with that e-mail,
and hopefully get this thing done.
See you in the morning.
Good morning, how's it going?
We got an e-mail.
This is from Carl Hoff.
That is the placement of one of the pieces.
I'm gonna go and tackle this again,
but I also need to edit this video
that you're watching right now.
I don't have any further time on today's video to solve it.
I will be solving it, on camera,
however, this video is gonna end here,
because I won't have time to upload it.
I even asked you guys on Instagram
if you guys minded if I posted a video without the solve,
the majority of you said yes, so here it is.
And normally, I would wait for it to solve,
but today is Wednesday,
and I promised you a puzzle video on Wednesday.
So, wish me luck, I'm back to the drawing board.
Stay tuned for part two,
we'll see you on the next video.
Peace.
Here's a bit of a sneak peek
on what to expect in the next video.
It starts with a little something like this.
♪ Enchante ♪