Dad's Puzzler And Solution

Day 185. Nowadays, you can find the solution to this simple puzzle in many places on line if you know where to look. "Simple," did I say? It is not as simple as it appears to be, not by a long shot! In fact, when "Dad's Puzzler" came into my hands, my mother had already spent many hours of her life attempting to solve it to no avail, as did I once I had it in my possession.

The puzzle belonged to my grandfather in his youth, and whether or not the packaging originally contained a solution is anyone's guess. After many frustrating attempts over a long period of years, I began searching libraries for a means to solve it, but could only find simpler versions with more moving parts. I'd work on it for a week or two, only to wind up stuffing it back in the drawer unsolved.

Then one fortuitous day, a copy of Scientific American arrived in my mailbox and I turned to Martin Gardner's wonderful "Mathematical Games" section first thing. There, to my surprise, was "Dad's Puzzler" and its solution. So elated was I that I recreated the magazine page with an Apple ][e, printed it out on a 9-pin dot-matrix printer and stashed it away in the box with the puzzle for safekeeping.

Should any of my readers feel inspired to construct one of these old-fashioned frivolities, I hope they will attempt to solve it unaided before turning to the printout. Believe me, it's cheaper than a movie and will keep you busy for much, much longer.