final idea

My puzzle for Perec;
I originally wanted to create some sort of puzzle for other people to work out or put together but it seems this particular puzzle was aimed at me, the creator! Something I’ve always noticed is that some of the time, it’s equally hard to create a puzzle, as it is to solving it.
I have made a folding wooden toy, which is covered, with my own writing. Because all the sides eventually have their time to fold out and show their sides, in different combinations, I had to think carefully about what words to use. All of the sides that meet each other and are read in the same direction match up with each other. Of course there are some sentences that are better than others and on some occasions, artistic license had to be used but more or less, all of the sentences match up and make sense. As like many other people (from specific forums that talk about subjects like this) that have tried other word games such as lipographs and anagrams, it’s strangely refreshing to actually think about that language and words you choose to use in such detail.
I chose to do this because I thought it was an interesting way of generating material. I am by no means a poet but working to a set of rules (as does Perec in, for example, A Void, where he writes the entire novel without using the letter ‘e’.) actually made it easier to generate words! Perec called these devices “story making machines”. I think Georges Perec would have liked my wooden word cube thing.
The OuLiPo group developed the theory that writing under constraints and rules was a way to achieve true originality. Perec believed that the more you limit yourself, the freer you have to become. I wouldn’t have come up with some of the sentences I ended up writing. The subject nearly always ends up self-referencing; the cubes are talking about themselves quite a lot.
Below, I have laid out all of the possible combinations of the cube. Instead of them being in cube form though, I have written them out properly; these are the produce of the “”story making machine”. I hope you can see these alright.