depending on how much want to do, I have seen kits for ~$30. Pretty sure I’ve seen some small kits taken for camping, so they can’t be too pricy. And if you can’t afford it, just start bringing it up around town! Maybe somebody will get excited and do it for you.

Fortunately containers can get bigger =)

While we aren’t all the same, there’s a difference between things that require holding 8 complicated things in mind at once, and things that require a little language learning and the intelligence to solve a crossword. This is closer to the latter - like doing a crossword in Spanish. You need to know a bunch of little things, but learning them is basically all tedium and not brilliant insights. (Taking these puzzles, creating a dozen new variants, and solving all of those probably does require managing a lot of complexity. But to understand the work of others, is not so bad)

If it’s any consolation, you are almost certainly within ~3 years of understanding the solution and a dozen variants. It’s not a super deep area. Probably doesn’t really require calculus (you need continuous as in ‘the lion doesn’t teleport; that’s cheating’, but I think not much more).

I’m a little sad nobody with the relevant mathematics background has jumped in. These puzzles are considered; a simple version is the lion-hunting-man where both have the same speed and infinite turning speed (eg, this paper, where the arena they play in varies).

Favorite so far was probably Talos Principle 2. It was excellent, best movie of the year. And the puzzles were fun too.

Somebody dropped a fair bit of cash and got Balders Gate 3 running for everyone. It’s been big enough to fill a lot of time, but probably wont solve the problem when we’re not all on vacation.

Factorio is a dangerous, but very fun, suggestion =)

Didn’t realize it could do more than 2! That’s wonderful!

As is the open variant: Minetest (Mineclone mod if you want vanilla)!

I didn’t realize Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime did more than 2! That’s great!

Both actually! Two different groups of 3. Offline bunch has ended up doing baba is you for the last year or so (not coop, but puzzles are pretty easy to backseat game).