003: Week 4 Blog Exercise - Visual Thinking Research

Here is my sad attempt at trying to solve the "Name the Month" puzzle from Visual section at puzzles.com. From the brief that stated to "break down this code" and to "decipher what month it could be", I thought the shape and color was forming a familiar symbol that would help me figure out what month it was representing. I attempted a form of pattern completion by adding the rest of the letters that would name a month, such as the blue shape looking like a J, thus adding 'anuary' then the 'O' for 'October' but then got stuck at what looked like a 'C'. On top of that, there was the much more perplexing "o" with arms at the end. I was hoping to seek a pattern within the months 'January' and 'October' and found none.

I then thought then maybe the colors would be some kind of hint and thus, thought the blue indicated winter, the red fall, the green spring, but caught myself in another rut with the orange, which also could've been fall. In retrospect, I'm not sure why summer didn't come to mind.

Finally I tried taking another viewpoint by rotating. As shown, I rotated the image 20 degrees to the right in hopes of finding some form of clue and still remained confused. Thankfully, my friend figured it out first.

This is my friend's successful completion of the 'Name the Month' puzzle. She immediately distinguished a commonality, and with the use of spatial analogy, she deduced that it had to be a four-letter month as there were only four shapes and months were usually abbreviated with three letters. This, in her mind led her to believe it had to be "June" or "July".

She then attempted to take another viewpoint by turning her head left and right. She employed finding by placing her hand around and on the letters to try to make something out of it. Eventually her pointer finger came in between and with the use of orthographic imagination, she discovered it as a mirrored image of 'July'.

Here is my take on "Puzzling Journey 2" from the Pencil 'n' Paper Puzzles section of puzzles.com. The rules state to get through all 64 cells, beginning at the red gate, passing through the green in the center, and leaving through the blue one. You can only visit each cell once and without the use of diagonal lines. Immediately I was reminded of very similar Super Mario Galaxy puzzles that have similar rules (at least, in the sense of being only able to visit on block at a time), so visual memory came into play as I attempted to solve this puzzle. I mentally formed a line to go through this journey and managed to solve it on the first try!

Here is my friend's take on "Puzzling Journey 2". With the rules in mind as well, knowing she couldn't go diagonally, she explained that she simply just went up and down. This way she was mentally forming in a pattern that would able her to fulfill the journey by its rules.