Tromholt’s Matchstick Puzzles Published by Posterior Book Authors
摘要
This chapter considers critically formulations and solutions of some Tromholt’s matchstick puzzles that were later published by two or more authors. It is an attempt to discover and describe what might be an important feature of “collective culture” of matchstick puzzle posing and solving. Special attention is given to two different approaches posterior book authors had to Tromhol’s solutions. In the first case, some posterior book authors published the solutions that were visually different from Tromholt’s solutions. In the second, more important case, for matchstick puzzles with multiple, fundamentally different solutions, almost all posterior authors just repeated Tromholt’s solutions. In the worst case, posterior authors published a puzzle with erroneous solution that Tromholt himself has excluded in later editions. Additionally, the absence of these numerous additional, fundamentally different solutions is an initial evidence that posterior book authors on matchstick puzzles didn’t have enough creativity inclination that is necessary to find all possible solutions of the puzzles they deal with. Omitting those solutions, they don’t give book readers deserved opportunities to practice and improve their creativity and visual intelligence.