About

The Circle Puzzle is a simple puzzle consisting of four overlapping circular disks in a square arrangement. Each disk overlaps with the two adjacent disks but not with its diagonally opposite disk. Where two disks overlap they form a lozenge shaped piece, and each disk has four such pieces around its rim. All together there are 12 moving pieces. Each disk can be rotated. A rotation should be a multiple of 90 degrees since only then can the other disks move again. The puzzle has a simple colour scheme where each disk has a single colour - yellow, red, blue, and green. The four shared pieces also have one colour each, so that when solved each circle has three pieces matching its centre colour and one shared piece matching the adjacent disk. The puzzle has two solved positions which differ by the colours of the shared pieces. The puzzle is related to Turnstile, Rashkey, and also to Gripple, but is much simpler than any of those. The second puzzle pictured above is the Whirligig. It is a 3 by 3 version of the Circle Puzzle, with a 6 colours and four pieces of each colour. The circle centres are not coloured. Solving it is just as easy, but there are more nice patterns possible. If your browser supports JavaScript, then you can play the Circle Puzzle by clicking the link below: