Candle Swap

Description

Candle Swap was inspired by a classic candle design. When seeing the candle with friends, it has to be turned into a puzzle. The idea was obvious: add gears and swap the candles to get them into a particular order. The puzzle plays like a twisty puzzle. Each turn swaps two or three pairs of candles. The object is to scramble the puzzle, and then sort the candles in order. One order is low to high. Another order is sorted by color, with the highest in the middle. A conjecture is that any order of candles is possible to achieve. Why is that?

Eitan Cher provided the following additional information: "Menorah" technically refers to a candelabrum with 7 candles. That's what was in the temple that the Greeks destroyed. The candelabrum used on Hanukkah is called a Hanukkiah, and it has 9 candles: 8 of them represent the miraculous 8 days that the small amount of oil lasted, and the 9th is the one used to light the rest. That one is called the "shamash" and it is always supposed to be situated higher than the other 8.

Jaap Scherphuis provided a full analysis of the puzzle. The puzzle has 362880 (9 factorial) states. Any state can be reached from any other state in 23 moves. From any state, there are 46 "antipode" states that are 23 moves anway.

Watch the YouTube video.

Read at the iMaterialise Forum.

Read more at the Non-Twisty Puzzles Forum.

Please order a 3D-printed do-it-yourself puzzle kit from iMaterialise at this page (check with Oskar about screws and stickers), or contact Oskar https://oskarvandeventer.nl/index_contact.php?subject=Magic%20Gears%20Grid directly if you are interested in obtaining a fully colored, stickered and assembled sample of this puzzle.