This is a beautiful puzzle
which is in fact made by twelve Orion puzzles. The Orion puzzle is based upon a
rhombic dodecahedron and as you can see with the Rhombic
Pyramid, rhombic
dodecahedrons can be piled up just like balls. Betulgeuze is a puzzle of 'piled
up Orion puzzles'. This puzzle consist of 240 pieces. You can make those pieces
out of pine wood with a diameter of 18 mm (a standard diameter of pine wood in
The Netherlands). Every rod will be 10 cm long so at least 24 meter of wood is
needed to make all the pieces. The total diameter of the constructed puzzle is
more than 50 cm.
If you want to make this puzzle you could
better first practice by making a 'simple' Orion puzzle. All possible pieces
which could be used for constructing the Betulgeuze are shown in the diagram
below. The middle most notches of the pieces are all the same. The difference
between the pieces lies in the outer notches. The notches are indicated by a
letter (A or B) or a figure (0-2).
Of course you could figure out which pieces you need to
construct Betulgeuze, but you can use the standard set of pieces according to
the table below:
You must first make 120 crosses for
constructing the puzzle. With twelve 00-11 crosses you construct the 'centre' of the
puzzle. Then you make 24 crosses (eight trio's 10-20, 00-20 and 20-20
crosses) and put those on the corners of this centre. You have to put the crosses on such
a way in the puzzle the 0-part of the piece points to the out side. Twenty-four A1-BB and
twenty-four AA-B2 crosses can be put in the puzzle after that. You finish the constructing with
twelve AA-BB crosses.
Good luck if you are planning to
make and solve this puzzle....
