Visual Thinking

The first puzzle my game partner and I tried was the “The Lost Star.” In this game we had to find a five-pointed star amongst many varying triangles. 

We both began by trying to find the pattern in much the same way as discussed in example 2.2/finding of the McKim reading. We were seeking a closed pattern in its entirety. We then changed our method and moved on to pattern matching as discussed in example 2.3/matching. We had the complete pattern of a five point star in our mind began sifting through the various triangles trying to find that match. Neither of these methods worked especially well. We then both naturally began rotating the page, to provide varying perspectives.

At this point we diverged in our discovery techniques. My partner began trying to shift her perception by switching between evaluating the lights and the darks treating them as negative space and subject. The final technique, which proved successful for me, but not for my game partner, was where I begin searching for the angle created where the top point and the left point meet. I would say that this was a form of pattern completion as discussed in example 2.5/pattern completion as I was finding the necessary angle and drawing the rest of the star from there in my mind. I felt that if I could find that angle, the rest of the star would follow.

Finally, because of the way in which the triangles were broken into varied shapes and tones, I achieved visual synthesis once the shape was discovered. After which it was no longer possible to not see the star in the jumble, you could see the parts that is was comprised of, but they could never again be truly broken apart.

The second puzzle we tried was called Block Twins. Essentially, there are 12 blocks, creating 6 paired blocks. Each paired group, was rotated in such a way as to obfuscate the pairings. Basically, this puzzle was an exercise in matching, as discussed in example 2.3/matching and of mental rotation, as discussed in example 2.8/rotating dice of the McKim reading. This is because to be successful you had to count the placement of each stack or tower of blocks in relation to the others, hold that image in your mind, and mentally compare them with the other rotated pieces.