42

A straightforward puzzle for the patient. There are no tricks or decryptions needed. The task is 'simple' albeit potentially challenging (and maybe time-consuming).

The goal

Dissect the Africa-grid below into 54 pieces of different shape and size.
- Each piece consists of fully connected squares, i.e. is a polyomino.
- The letters on each piece are anagrams.
- All anagrams belong to the same group of words, defining the dissection property.
- The anagrams may contain one or more 'white spaces'.
- The English language is used.

If you dissect it correctly, you may be able to spot a rather well-known word in an African native language. (Googling the word gives 125,000,000+ results)

DissectThisInto54Pieces

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  • Did you make this? – kaine Mar 09 '15 at 21:53
  • @kaine Sure, why? (If you find a mistake or have ideas for improvement, let me know.) – BmyGuest Mar 09 '15 at 22:27
  • Only because if it works and you did im impressed – kaine Mar 09 '15 at 22:49
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    @kaine BmyGuest's puzzles always seem to be really impressive. – Rand al'Thor Mar 10 '15 at 00:34
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    I guess it would be poor taste to make an educated guess at the "final" word without finding any polyominos. It does show "About 125,000,000 results" when I Google it, though ;) – Set Big O Mar 10 '15 at 01:14
  • yeah... the final word hint gave it away for me. it's super easy to guess the answer with 0 work – Mircea Mar 10 '15 at 04:39
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    @Geobits: that (easy to guess) word is not the solution, but the verification anchor to help limit the parameter space and put back some faith into your solution. You still have to find it though. The dissection is the solution. – BmyGuest Mar 10 '15 at 06:28
  • @BmyGuest Oh I know. I wasn't sure if you wanted it blurted out in the comments or not. If I thought it was the answer I'd have answered with it (and been downvoted I'm sure). – Set Big O Mar 10 '15 at 12:45
  • This was fun to do! – Golden Dragon Mar 10 '15 at 20:09
  • @GoldenDragon Thanks! Solved in less than 24hrs. I have to make things trickier ;c) – BmyGuest Mar 10 '15 at 20:20
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    Where is Madagascar? – Victor Stafusa - BozoNaCadeia Mar 11 '15 at 05:51
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    @VictorStafusa Too small (too few squares) to put it appropriately on the map, so I restricted to mainland (continental) mass only. Basically I took an Africa map image and scaled it down to get to ~pixels I needed (=letters) and then edited to get the best representation. Madagascar didn't look good at all. – BmyGuest Mar 11 '15 at 13:04
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    It kinda infuriates me (not at you, just in general) that the countries aren't in their respective locations on the actual map of Africa. I was like, "why is Zimbabwe all the way to the west side?" –  Mar 13 '15 at 06:37
  • @JoeZ. ;c) I was actually thinking of producing something more "correct" first, but soon thought of it as being too easy (to solve) and to tricky (to built). Plus: the smallest places have the largest names... – BmyGuest Mar 13 '15 at 07:07
  • Small country, big ego, I guess. –  Mar 13 '15 at 07:09

2 Answers2

15

Got the dissection part done. No idea about the native African word, though.

The 54 pieces are the various nations of Africa
Africa

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8

Golden Dragon has solved it, but for the record, this is as intended:

Solution

UBUNTU

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