The Snow Flake Game

When our children were young we liked to get involved with the Parents Association and their Summer Fares and Winter Fares. We would run a puzzle stall. We had puzzles that the children could try and solve within a set amount of time. This is one of them that was used at a lot of winter fares. Its a packing puzzle, the aim is to use the fourteen pieces to completely cover the central area. This puzzle was designed and made by ourselves.

The puzzle is based on circles and the gaps between the circles. If you add the curved triangles to the circles you can get shapes that cover the area. Each circle is surrounded by six triangles. So each circle can have between 0 and 6 triangles. This leads to 14 unique pieces. 12 are symmetrical and 2 asymmetrical that are mirror images. Turning the curved sided triangles into straight sided triangles, the 14 shapes fit together to fully cover the area shown in the puzzle.