The Santa Fean magazine said that that group painting by Mateo Romero, Marla Allison and Ryan Singer can be shown in 32,000 different ways. I spoke with math whiz clan Cohens who easily corrected us that there are billions of ways to show the puzzle-shaped piece of art, not thousands. (Charles said the answer is more like “two to the thirty-second times two to the 31st”).
I rang Mateo on this topic — he is a Dartmouth grad you know, and they made even art majors take intro Math courses, which means calculus, years ago — and he feigned interest. More interestingly, he added detail that Pat Pruitt the jewelry artist and spouse of Marla Allison cut the elaborate interlocking “canvas.”.
This self-portrait obscures the riddle even more but that is Mateo’s work (and MA and RS) in the background, at the Terrace Room, of the La Fonda, in Santa Fe.
Mark Weiss in front of Romero et al at La Fonda Santa Fe
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 
The weird pixelate effect is perhaps appropriate here.
He said it is “3^32” and “their answer is totally wrong.” His Dad was famous problem-solving Stanford professor Paul J. Cohen. For a minute there I was wondering how to build a website version of the painting that would actually scroll through all the billions of versions. Also, by the math lesson that Steve and Eric gave me here it turns out that Marla Allison does some simpler children’s puzzle paintings and even those, which have four or five moving pieces, have more than 32,000 permutations. The one at La Fonda has 32 different registrations times 3 versions, hence the 3 to the 32 times 2 to the 32, or something.