{"product_id":"extreme-torture","title":"Extreme Torture | 70-Move Board Burr","description":"\u003cp\u003eTo be frank, I highly doubt anyone will ever solve our version of this puzzle without outside help.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat is not a sales line. The version most people have met came assembled in a box with a solution booklet. Ours arrives as six loose boards and nothing else.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eExtreme Torture - Quick Summary\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eExtreme Torture is a six-piece separated board burr designed by Frans de Vreugd in 2002. It takes 70 moves to take apart - burr level 28-22-9-8-3 - the hardest form found in de Vreugd's research. Expert difficulty, 4+ hour solve time. Ships disassembled.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBest for:\u003c\/strong\u003e solvers who have finished the hard puzzles in their collection and want something that will genuinely beat them for a while, and collectors who measure a puzzle by how long it held out.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e70 Moves\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDe Vreugd did not design this by hand. He fed separated board burrs into \u003cstrong\u003eBurrgrower\u003c\/strong\u003e, a program written to raise the level of a puzzle - first drafted by Dic Sonneveld and rewritten in C++ by \u003ca href=\"\/he\/collections\/goh-pit-khiam\"\u003eGoh Pit-Khiam\u003c\/a\u003e, whose own packing puzzles we carry. Extreme Torture is what came back.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe level notation reads 28-22-9-8-3: twenty-eight moves just to free the first board, then twenty-two more for the second, then nine, then eight, then three.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNothing about it yields early. You can make twenty correct moves and have nothing visible to show for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch2\u003eThe Scale of the Search\u003c\/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eDe Vreugd published the numbers himself. He narrowed the design space to \u003cstrong\u003eeleven\u003c\/strong\u003e usable board shapes, which give \u003cstrong\u003e8,008\u003c\/strong\u003e possible six-piece sets. Those sets can be fitted together in \u003cstrong\u003e1,364,932\u003c\/strong\u003e ways.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOnly \u003cstrong\u003e2,394\u003c\/strong\u003e of those can be taken apart again - \u003cstrong\u003e0.18%\u003c\/strong\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThat is the context this puzzle sits in. Almost everything that looks like a solved board burr is a dead end, and Extreme Torture is the hardest thing that survived the search.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eWhere the Design Came From\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt started with a suggestion. Jim Gooch told de Vreugd that you could take a standard six board burr and pull the two boards in each pair one unit apart. De Vreugd wrote a search to find piece sets that would still assemble. \u003ca href=\"\/he\/products\/zigzag\"\u003eZigZag\u003c\/a\u003e came out first, then \u003ca href=\"\/he\/products\/torture\"\u003eTorture\u003c\/a\u003e at level 17.4, and then he made one last push with the software. Extreme Torture is the end of that road.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eSold for Years as Gordian's Knot\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis design went into commercial production in 2002 under the name Gordian's Knot, made by ThinkFun, now part of Ravensburger. That is where most people ran into it, on a toy shop shelf rather than in a puzzle collection. It has since been discontinued.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGreg Puzzles is not affiliated with ThinkFun or Ravensburger. We list the design under the name Frans de Vreugd gave it, and ours comes out of the box in pieces.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eIt Arrives in Pieces\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis puzzle ships disassembled, and that is deliberate. Assembly is the challenge, and handing it to you already solved would remove the entire point. It also means you are working those 70 moves in reverse, with no solved reference state to copy and no photograph to work backwards from. You get six boards and the knowledge that they fit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eExpect to put it down and come back to it. Most people do.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you would rather work up to this one, all three are sold together as the \u003ca href=\"\/he\/products\/separated-board-burr-set\"\u003eSeparated Board Burr Set\u003c\/a\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eFrequently Asked Questions\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eHow many moves does Extreme Torture take?\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e70 moves to disassemble. The burr level is 28-22-9-8-3 - the first board alone takes 28 moves to free.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eDoes Extreme Torture arrive assembled?\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNo. It ships disassembled, as six separate boards. Assembling it is the puzzle - a solved puzzle in the box would be no puzzle at all.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eHow hard is Extreme Torture?\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eExpert, and at the top of that band. Plan on four hours or more spread across more than one sitting, and do not treat it as a reasonable first attempt at interlocking designs. It is the hardest form found in de Vreugd's research.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eIs Extreme Torture the same as Gordian's Knot?\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt is the same design. Frans de Vreugd named it Extreme Torture in 2002, and it went into commercial production that year as Gordian's Knot, which has since been discontinued. We use the designer's original name.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eWho designed Extreme Torture?\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFrans de Vreugd, a Dutch puzzle designer, in 2002, working from Jim Gooch's separated board burr idea and using Burrgrower, the level-raising software written by Dic Sonneveld and \u003ca href=\"\/he\/collections\/goh-pit-khiam\"\u003eGoh Pit-Khiam\u003c\/a\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Greg Puzzles","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51347709919399,"sku":"GP-EXTRTORT","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0668\/2827\/1783\/files\/extreme_torture_marble.png?v=1790218328","url":"https:\/\/gregpuzzles.com\/he\/products\/extreme-torture","provider":"Greg Puzzles","version":"1.0","type":"link"}