Puzzle Description Suppressed:Click below to view spoilers

#1: Merili (merilinnuke) on May 8, 2008

Beautiful work!!!

I really struggled with this one. Especially when it came down to her right eye and mouth. I left it in frustration many times, to return in a few days to try a new approach. It felt wonderful to finally solve it! What a gorgeous design -- the artist really captured her in this medium.

Thank you for the compliment..& I'm sorry it was frustrating you..I am trying to improve on my puzzles

This puzzle is one of the ones that I used as a sample puzzle in my Survey of Paint-by-Number Puzzle Solvers as an example of a larger, more difficult puzzle that still has a unique solution. This is actually one of the toughest puzzles in the sample set. My solver can do it in 5 seconds, but most solvers take at least 5 minutes and many can't solve it at all.

I wonder if Nancy would be willing to give permission to allow this puzzle to be freely redistributed as part of a standard test set for developers of new solving programs.

The attribution and copyright would be retained.

5 minutes, really? It took me about 5 hours. Very beautiful puzzle. I think this is my favorite Marilyn.

I'm not sure whether to call it moderate or deep lookahead in some places, but it definitely wasn't guessing. What I am sure of is that the outcome is absolutely stunning! Nancy was last on the site less than a year ago, so maybe she'll be back to see that her puzzle is still giving pleasure 17 years after she created it and 12 years after its last comment by Barry, who is also still here to know that I couldn't agree more.

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