Winner 11

We have received 1056 different solutions to a mamixum bridge span of 136 from Patrick Hamlyn from Australia.

In the picture you can see Patrick surrounded by all his friends who helped him make a rectangle with our zodiac.

The painting was made by Bjorn Dolba, a renowned Australian painter.

Afterwards Patrick managed to come up with a very special unique answer to our 12X5 rectangle problem with our zodiac. However, we failed to understand what is unique about this solution. Do you?

Even with a first tip we still did not understand.

We asked Patrick and he replied:
”Count the 3-way crossroads. Look at the colours of the four squares surrounding the intersection point at each crossroads. How many ways are there to select the colours of these squares?
Try to find another 5x12, or a 6x10 which obeys the rule!
It was Alexandre Owen Muniz idea.

To clarify his explanation we have made the following drawing ourselves:

In our view this is far-fetched but incredibly clever.

Aad van de Wetering from Driebruggen (The Netherlands) promptly went in search of more unique solutions with regard to colours and crosses.

He has sent us the following fun stuff:

Een enige oplossing van 10x6 met evenveel T- als +-kruisingen.

Binnen een rechthoek van 9x8: enige oplossing met regelmatige kleurverdeling van 12 T-kruisingen.

Binnen een rechthoek van 8x8: één met en goeie kleurverdeling.

en twee oplossingen waarbij de kruisingen perfect kloppen maar met de kleurenverdeling 2-3-3-4.