It's a parity issue. For an unsolvable configuration, one should be able to solve it up to the point where exactly two tiles need to be swapped. At that point, you know that it is unsolvable, and need not try any further.

Gotcha, true. With that said, though, I could not progress even this far in difficulty in Unequal without guessing...

He did label the difficulty as "unreasonable". In my mind, it's not meant to be truly fair, just solvable.

I feel like being able to solve with no guessing is proof of a well-designed generator.

Some of it is going to be guessing at this stage. There are a lot of numbers missing, so you won't know until you take a guess and start filling things out.

Is the "no guessing" thing just a limit you placed on yourself?

Just did some quick math It takes 4 294 967 295 moves to solve And with 1 move a second, it would taker over 136 years to complete

Edit: I'm ofc talking about the tower in the image which have 32 disks

D, it's the only one where the orange ball is in the right spot

Ah, I get what you mean now. Yeah those are frustrating because they've essentially created a "can you read the 'puzzle'-maker's mind" test instead of a valuable challenge

that's not what I meant.

i mean some of those puzzles have arbitrary solutions, like when you get the solution explained, it just some random rule that makes no sense and other options are as justifiable.

"so esoteric it's useless" tends to be said about a lot of mathematics that ends up being foundational for new tech advancements though :] never underestimate a "useless" puzzle!

I felt so validated because I've definitely received dollar store ones as party favors and been unable to solve them and it's entirely possible they were assembled incorrectly into an impossible config!!

really depends on which problems you face.

I'm most cases, being able to solve those problems is a useless skill

hate them as a way to quantify someone's value.

but as a little game they are fun. however, some are so esoteric that are useless.

lucky you

D is the logical guess, but I don't understand how it could be E, as that'd be 2 moves of the orange circle and 1 "backward" move of the blue square
...
Ah, it's "the same" as D, but turned 90º to the right

I love how the first thing listed is a freaking slide puzzle. I knew those things were shit!

15 Slides - Slide fifteen numbered tiles into numerical order. It is impossible to solve in half of the starting positions.

it can be hard if you have a brain phenotype that isn't optimized for spatial reasoning (which ofc doesn't mean you're not good at other stuff)

depends on the problem

CAD or engineering? maybe not (but also maybe. depends on the person)

design or marketing? sure why not. just cuz they can't do flippy shape puzzles doesn't mean they don't have other strengths

for the record I'm above average at the flippy shape puzzles but absolutely shit at being a functioning human being. if you chose me for your problem solving group based on my shape flipping score alone, you'd be sorely disappointed lol

Would you want to be on a problem solving team with someone who couldn't solve this?

Yeah you tell 'em!

not hard and just an example of the latest astrologybullshit for assesing employee profitability

Agreed. This is something you can definitely get better at with practice. But that won't make you more intelligent.

I got the D.

I fuckin hate these types of spatial puzzles because the garbage that passes for IQ tests are very heavy on them and they are such a dogshit way of assessing intelligence

It'd be like if healthcare professionals used something called "HQ" that was only based on your height:weight ratio as some kind of general health measure.

hey wait a minute–

[edit: ah shit sorry for getting so angry at just a puzzle on a puzzle comm. i should probably bring this up with my therapist]