World's Most Difficult Jigsaw Puzzles

Would you be brave enough to attempt any of these?

A few days ago, I saw this puzzle on G+; It's called Alexander's Star.

See it in action here :D

It somehow reminded me of the awesome Doctor Who puzzle I'm interested in buying. It's the famous exploding T.A.R.D.I.S. picture by van Gogh. (according to the series)

Not really important, I just felt like sharing. It does seem like the yellow could become a bit of a challenge, but it shouldn't be too difficult. The "worst" puzzle I've ever tried to build was this one:

"Nah, it shouldn't be too impossible. I can read music, so I should be able to do this with ease."

Turns out I was wrong. After completing the border and the line down the middle, I ended up having to test and try every piece in every possible place. I started arranging the pieces according to shape, in an attempt to find the necessary pieces easier.

I gave up eventually. :/

Google results led me to this puzzle: A 13,200 piece puzzle of about 1.3m x 2.9m. I guess it's meant for those HD junkies. Upon further inspection I found this 32k piece puzzle!

Not the most interesting design, but at that size I don't think you're buying it for the its aesthetic value.

Now this following puzzle, The Krypt Jigsaw Puzzle, is one for the completely dedicated / bored people.

"The Krypt features no discernible image. The entire 27" x 20" puzzle is a single hue of silver. There is absolutely zero variation in color between pieces."

I don't even want to begin imagining how long that would take!

Last, but not least, there's this "beauty":

A while back (and by "a while" I mean "a few years"), there was some hype about the World's Most Impossible Puzzle (or something like that). The creators offered money to those who could solve it first. All the pieces were square-shaped, with different colours / shapes on each side. You only had to match all the sides, and use all the pieces to solve the puzzle. Of course this means that there's a near infinite amount of possible combinations to try, but (possibly) only one way to solve it. It also had no border. The only way to solve it would be trial, error, and luck, or the Brute-force search. The latter could be done manually (poor soul), or by a computer. I'm not sure, however, if using software would be considered cheating. Meh. Who cares.

Sadly, I was unable to find this puzzle, as I couldn't remember exactly what it was called. It puzzled me for a while, but then I surrendered. I wouldn't try to attempt any of these puzzles anyway (except for the Doctor Who one).

Would you?

World's Youngest Mothers

I was busy Googling for "world's tallest buildings", when it suggested "world's youngest mother / father". Being curious, I decided to explore these searches as well.

It was upsetting to find out that the youngest mother was only five years old when she gave birth in 1939.

Lina Medina at the age of five years, seven months and seventeen days old

Wikipedia, however reliable, has a long list of "record holders". Most of them were rape incidents, with the occasional consensual act. A quick glance at the list of 10-year old mothers revealed that most of the reported cases took place in USA... although I suppose there are many more unreported occurrences.

The youngest reported father, Sean Stewart, was only twelve years old when the baby was born.

Sean Stewart and his 16-year old girlfriend

On a slightly related note, the longest recorded labour lasted 75 days.

Joanna Krzysztonek was expecting triplets when one of the babies was born prematurely, 5 months into the pregnancy. In order to save the other two, doctors advised she stay feet up on her bed for the rest of the pregnancy.

The second longest was experienced by Amy Buck, who had contractions for three weeks before her son was born.

Lying upside down for that long could not be comfortable at all. I'm not sure what to say about the young mothers, however. There is something seriously wrong with a girl having to trade in a doll for the real thing.