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Used to Be World’s Largest JigSaw Puzzle (at the time)

Forget about your typical jigsaw puzzle. With 24000 pieces, this puzzle called “Life, The Greatest 24000 pcs Puzzle” was in the Guinness book for being the largest commercially available puzzle in terms of number of pieces. The official record is “for the most pieces in a commercially available jigsaw puzzle”. We have to qualify that. It was the largest at the time of the record. It has recently been surpassed by another puzzle made in Germany with over 32,000 pieces.[reference]

Yes, the puzzle “Life, The Greatest…” is commercially available. It is not just a museum piece. You can order it from Amazon.com

The box that it comes in weighs 28 pounds.

And the finish puzzle (if you finish it) measures about 14 feet by 5 feet. You need a pretty big table. If you are really planning space for this puzzle, then the exact dimensions that you need to allocate would be 14 feet and 0.5 inch by 5 feet and 1.8 inch. In other words, 428 centimeters by 147 centimeters.

More info at worldslargestpuzzle.com

Date of article: Jan 2011.

Comics about Graduate Students

The comics by Jorge Cham collected in these books are quite funny. It shows the humor of academic life of a graduate student. If you have ever been in grad school, then perhaps can relate to some of the comic strips.



Author Jorge Cham had been a Graduate Student at Stanford University where he later got his PhD in Mechanical Engineering. Now he writes and draws comics about life in academia. You can see his comics on his site at phdcomics.com.

Because of his engineering studies, some of his strips has some “technical humor”. For example, there is a parody of Newton’s first, second, and third laws of motion.

The strip also does parodies of popular U.S. movies and television…

You can get a sense of the humor of the strips by looking his 200 Most Popular Comics.

The comic’s protagonist is a black haired male that wears glasses and is never named strip. So he is often referenced as the “Nameless Hero” in other publications. The other major characters in the strips are Cecilia (an engineering student who admits that she’s a geek), Tajel (a female student in the social sciences), Mike Slackenerny (who is lazy and has been in grad school for a long long time), and faculty adviser Prof Smith.

He had mentioned that the comics are drawn directly into digital form using a graphic pen tablet.

Video On How To Solve KenKen Puzzles

Puzzle-master Will Shortz of NPR radio will introduce us on the rules of KenKen puzzles and how to solve them.

The above video was showing a KenKen that only uses the add operation of the digits. However, general KenKen puzzles have add, minus, multiply, and divisor operators indicated next the results number within their cages. The below video shows how to work out these more difficult forms of the puzzles.

Play KenKen Puzzle Online

Start with an easy KenKen which is a 4×4 grid.

How to Play KenKen

See video that gives you a quick summary of the game and how to play and solve them.

Basically, you have a square grid of cells. You put a digit into each cell. The digits are 1, 2, 3, etc. up to the size of the grid. So for a 4×4 grid above, you can only use the digits 1, 2, 3, and 4. For a 6×6 grid below, you can use the digits from 1 to 6.

You will notices that cells are grouped into “cages” as denoted by their darken outlines. Each cage as a number with a mathematical symbol. The digits that you put in the cells must result in that number if you apply the mathematical operation on the digits. Furthermore, any row or column in the overall grid can not have a repeating digit.

KenKen Strategy

So the strategy is to use the above constraint rules to eliminate which digit can not go into each cell. This game is basically a process of elimination. Start working on the smaller cages first. That way fewer possible digits can go into them. One you have filled in the smaller cages, the digit in there will constraint what digits you can put in the other rows and columns.

More difficult 6×6 KenKen

Once you’ve mastered the strategy of KenKen, try a more difficult 6×6 KenKen grid …

Have fun.

Play Sudoku Online

You can play Sudoku online here (courtesy of sudoweb.com). Fill in the squares of the grid with numbers from 1 to 9. Make sure there are no duplicate numbers in any rows, columns, or any of the nine smaller inner 3×3 grids. You can select the difficulty level.

Educational Wii Games

Some Educational Wii Games that are both fun and educational…

Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree

15 activities to challenge your brain and sees how you measure up in five categories: memory, analysis, number crunching, visual recognition, and quick thinking


Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader

Educational trivia video game based on the popular TV series of the same name.


Smarty Pants: Trivia for Everyone Wii Game

The questions are tailor to the player’s age. That is why everyone can play.



Who Wants to Be a Millionaire

Trivia game with over 3000 questions. Based on the TV show of the same name.

Bubble Sokoban Online Game

Found this Flash puzzle game on Fupa.com.

You move a person around in a grid with obstructions. Your goal is to push the movable block into the highlight squares. Plan your move carefully. Because you might push the blocks into an orientation where you can not solve the puzzle.