Ten Billion Barrel Puzzle
Ten Billion Barrel Puzzle
A simulation of Nintendo's Ten Billion Barrel puzzle. Click on the arrows to rotate the rings of beads left and right, or to shift the columns up and down. You can try to restore the puzzle to its pristine state from a scrambled position, and try to solve (or reproduce) any of the "pretty patterns" provided. When the beads are labeled, all 23!/2 even permutations of the beads can be achieved, and you can show the current permutation of the beads in disjoint cycle form. The first few patterns in the dropdown menu are useful algorithms to learn for solving arbitrary positions of the puzzle—if you can solve those, you can (with patience) solve anything.