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There are many different ways of dissecting the various stellations of the rhombic dodecahedron into six identical interlocking pieces, and no purpose would be served by listing them all. Just one more example will be mentioned in this chapter - a simple dissection of the third stellation that lends itself beautifully to a multicolor puzzle.
The construction of each puzzle piece from a six-sided center block and four triangular stick segments is illustrated in Fig. 107a. When assembled, the puzzle has the appearance of twelve triangular sticks, even though each stick is broken in two, with the two halves belonging to two different puzzle pieces. The pieces are colored as shown. The problem is to assemble the puzzle such that each apparent group of three parallel sticks is one color as shown in Fig. 107b. There are four solutions.
Fig. 107a
Fig. 107b
These are but a few of the many interesting multicolor problems that are possible with puzzles of this sort. For example, the three described above all use four colors. Other possibilities exist using 2, 3, 6, 8, or 12 colors. The woods can be stained or painted different colors, but some of the most beautiful effects are obtained by using brightly-colored exotic woods in their natural state. More multicolor puzzles will be described in later chapters.
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