The Fractal Jigsaw Puzzle can be made with a Laser Cutter and is based on an idea by Oscar van Deventer, which he shows in this video. The puzzle can be ordered from Laser Exact.

This page describes software to produce your own Fractal Jigsaw puzzles, possibly resulting in a better design than the one used by Van Deventer.

Original design

It seems that the design from Van Deventer is taken from Bridged Polyamonds. On this mathpuzzle page there is a link to the design of the puzzle with a matching colouring of the pieces. One could try to import this image in Inkscape and try to vectorize the image, but it doubtfull whether it will lead to a good result

Program

The program (written in C++) combines seven different functions that can be used to generate designs, to filter interesting designs, to visualize the designs, and to produce Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) files that be imported into Inkscape.

To find designs the program makes use of an Exact Cover solver. The first two functions of the program can be used to generate an input file for the solver. The output from the Exact Cover solver can be processed with the third function.

Generating input for Exact Cover solver

Coming soon

Normalizing results from Exact Cover solver

Coming soon

Select on used pieces

Coming soon

Filter solutions

Coming soon

Print solution

Coming soon

Generate SVG

Coming soon

Result

For those people who are too lazy to download the program, compile it, and experiment it (with lots of trial and error) we give a ready design consisting of nine pieces pieces.

External Links

The original blog entries on which this page is based

• Introduction
• SVG experiment
• Combined program