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Flexagon Puzzles

In this article, Dr. Yossi Elran discusses flexagon puzzles
Woman looking puzzled
© Davidson Institute of Science Education, Weizmann Institute of Science

We’ve already seen a few fun things you can do with flexagons. You can use Scott Sherman’s flexagonator or Les Pook’s fundamental nets or just experiment like Ann Schwartz to design your own flexagons! You can also use the methods in the previous step to artistically destroy puzzles. Flexagons also make great puzzles.

Scott Sherman has a great collection of puzzles here including solving mazes on flexagons and finding cyclic paths on flexagons. Origamist and paper designer David Mitchell has some great, original flexagon puzzles on his website.

One of the puzzles I particularly like is to give someone a flexagon and try to find the shortest path to another face. For example, give someone a purple faced hexa-hexa-flexagon and ask people to flex it in the shortest possible way to a flexagon with a face that has two leaves yellow and four leaves red.

Discussion

Share with us your own puzzle creations. Post them on social media or on a webpage and link them in your comments. Don’t forget to hashtag #FLflexagonsgalore!

© Davidson Institute of Science Education, Weizmann Institute of Science
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Flexagons Galore: Advanced Flexagon Fun

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