baguenaudier
thumbnail|A baguenaudier thumbnail|right|Diagrammatic representation of a four-ring baguenaudier thumbnail|right|A metal version of the puzzle Baguenaudier (; French for "time-waster"), also known as the Chinese rings, '''Cardan's suspension, Cardano's rings, Devil's needle or five pillars''' puzzle, is a disentanglement puzzle featuring a loop which must be disentangled from a sequence of rings on interlinked pillars. The loop can be either string or a rigid structure.
Article
3 sectionsContents
- Mathematical solution
- See also
- References
thumbnail|A baguenaudier thumbnail|right|Diagrammatic representation of a four-ring baguenaudier thumbnail|right|A metal version of the puzzle Baguenaudier (; French for "time-waster"), also known as the Chinese rings, '''Cardan's suspension, Cardano's rings, Devil's needle or five pillars''' puzzle, is a disentanglement puzzle featuring a loop which must be disentangled from a sequence of rings on interlinked pillars. The loop can be either string or a rigid structure.
The origins are obscure, and it is unknown whether the puzzle originated in East Asia or the West. The American ethnographer Stewart Culin related a tradition attributing the puzzle's invention to the 2nd/3rd century Chinese general Zhuge Liang but Culin was relying on an unknown informant; the earliest definitive East Asian reference is an early 16th century mention of a "nine linked rings" toy by Yang Shen in his Sheng an ji. Luca Pacioli's De Viribus Quantitatis of 1509 mentions the puzzle and may predate Yang Shen by a few years, but both authors treat the puzzle as something already well known.