Mrs S has been away for over a week visiting the Outlaws. She returned home
yesterday whilst I was at work and this meant a flurry of cleaning up my
mess (with dozens of puzzles lying all over the house) and then making the place
look vaguely presentable and doing a bit of my assigned DIY over the last few
days. This has left me knackered but at least I have managed to solve a few
puzzles to blog about. Today I have a lovely puzzle that was great fun and is
absolutely perfect to take to work for "normal people" to play with. It's a
little bit of a shock to have to finally admit after all these years that I am
"not normal"! 😱😱
Recently, I had a little chat with
Tom Lensch
via email when I was seeking a copy of his award winning
4 Pac puzzle designed by Hajime Katsumoto. This had been very highly rated
by
Allard as well as appearing a few times in the EPP book. Of course, Tom
always has a bunch of creations on the go at any one time and sometimes has
a few toys lying around from previous batches. He talked me into purchasing
a new version of the Melting Block puzzle (it has a bunch of gloriously
coloured woods which I couldn't resist) as well as the Number blocks by
Goh Pit Khiam.
New Melting Block
4 Pac
I immediately fiddled with the 4 Pac and realised that this was going to
take some serious working out time which I didn't have straight away and
suspected that the New Melting Block might be totally beyond me, so I
started on the Number blocks.
This gorgeous puzzle was created and entered into the
IPP design competition
way back in 2015 where it won a Jury honourable mention award. It has been
reviewed by
Jerry Loo who really enjoyed the solving. I am not entirely certain how I
missed out on this one (I suspect that I ran out of budgeted funds or had
been treated with terrible bodily harm by "she who frightens the bejeezus
out of me"). I already have the
Arrow blocks and the
Road blocks already and very much enjoyed them.
The aim of the puzzle is to convert one to orientation to another:
The challenge is not terribly difficult - I think it must have taken me about
two hours over a couple of sittings. The lovely thing about this puzzle is
that there are 2 very distinct Aha! moments before you can solve it. The first
of them I came to quite quickly because whilst I'm not terribly bright, I am
not entirely stupid! The second Aha! moment took much longer. I seemed to get
fixated on trying one particular thing which was not going to work but I tried
anyway...multiple times. Doh! Eventually I had my breakthrough and could count
to 4:
I can finally reach 4!
I then brought this wonderful challenge to work where I tortured a few
ODPs, nurses and medical students who needed a break from my barrage of
information. It was really quite fun to watch them all go through the same
process as me. The got fixated on the same problems and eventually had the same
Aha! moments (occasionally with a little nudging) and were all delighted with
the challenge.
This fabulous puzzle is well worth obtaining and sharing with friends if you
can find a copy.
Dale Shows Passion Before Wedding Vows are Allowed
I have enjoyed Dale's company at many MPPs over the years. He sits quietly
solving stuff with ease and enjoys showing off new finds and new
creations. He has a particular penchant for disentanglement puzzles which
is a delight for me because so few puzzlers seem to really love them. I had purchased a few little toys from him at the last MPP and promptly hidden them when I got home so that Mrs S did not see me moving a bunch of extra toys into the house after a day away. With so much work on my plate, I promptly forgot them and only found them again whilst "she who makes murder hornets fly away in fear" was away.
The Passion puzzle may look very familiar - it looks rather like the classic Wedding Vows puzzle which I reviewed in 2015. The aim is to move 1 bead across to the other side alongside its' lover. Of course, the bead will not fit through any of the holes in the puzzle. There are a number of similar looking puzzles that I have reviewed in the past but they have had very different solution paths. It is definitely not a hugely tough puzzle compared to the monstrosities that I have acquired from Aaron Wang or some of the worst of the sadly missed Livewire company puzzles. But the challenge is really quite fun and, dare I say it, probably suitable for beginners or non puzzlers.
The fun thing for me is the realisation that this lovely challenge is one step before the Wedding vows. You definitely need to go through the Passion puzzle stage before reaching the Wedding vows:
Very clever.
I still have a couple of others to play with from Dale that will keep me jingling and annoying "she who can freeze a lake with just a look". Whack! Ouch!
I sort of knew that this puzzle creation was being developed but had no idea
when it would be released. Andrew doesn't seem to
market his toys very much
and I heard nothing about it. I guess it will have been mentioned on the Discord
but I just don't have time to visit it any more than once in a blue moon which
probably means that I miss out on a lot of stuff. Luckily for me, at Peter
Hajek's End of Year Puzzle Party, the TIC Vault was mentioned in the list of
people's favourite puzzles of 2022 six times and was the favourite for
Goetz, who has
absolutely impeccable taste that very much overlaps with mine. I contacted him
and was told that some were being made and would be available soon and to keep
an eye out for when they go on sale. I was very lucky to get one and took
delivery at the end of January.
This puzzle is a triumph of 3D printing - it is stunning! The Vault itself is
a deep Navy blue and has the characteristic 3D printing layers on it with a
black central area circumscribed by a red circle inlay. The sides have very
smooth inlaid patterned inserts which break up the layering. It really is
pretty attractive and surprisingly heavy - I suspected there might be quite a
few magnets embedded in it (one can be seen on the picture above). It is
5x5x2.88 inches in size which upset Mrs S as it will take up even more space
that I don't have!
It arrived with another of Andrew's colourful cards describing the
challenge:
1. Unlock the vault 2. Find Your Unique ID Number
Rules: No external tools, excessive force, shaking or spinning is
necessary.
Fab, I Thunk! Reach in to the handy gripping sections for the nice quartz
finish TIC in the middle. Grab and pull and nope...that ain't coming out
of there that easy. Maybe the centre rotates and releases it? Nope! Maybe
holding it in different angles or upside down will release it? You guessed
it...Nope! My next attempt would involve spinning but that's not
allowed/needed. I'm not sure that I want to waste a whole bottle of gin
submerging the puzzle and really doubt that Andrew would be that devious.
I am obviously missing something. But what?
And here I got stuck all of my first day of playing with it. I tried the
same things over and over and over again of course but the answer was
still Nope!
Maybe it would work another day? So I left it until the next day and again
tried all the same tricks. Still nope!
I tried something else and got my wonderful Aha! moment and visibility of
a clever mechanism that had been used to lock it inside. I now had yet
another tool. Now what could I do with that? Removing it had revealed some
interesting stuff inside but nothing reachable with the tools I had. I
know it's hard to believe but I got stuck again! Yes, being not terribly
bright is not very helpful when solving complex puzzles.
After another day or so I noticed something slightly odd and tried to use
it in various ways with no luck. But then the earlier clicks suddenly made
sense. I had another tool/piece and then finally the cube pieces were all
removable. Now I obviously had a TIC - lots of pieces. Lots and lots of
pieces which had a very odd feature. Counting the voxels and the fancy
features, I realised that something was missing - it was still in the
vault and required a simple move to remove it. I had this:
Lots of pieces, lots of magnets and some odd slots
It was immediately clear that the TIC pieces needed assembly first. There
were 3 pieces with slots in them and magnets at the end plus 3 pieces that
would obviously engage into those slots and lock at the ends. BUT (a very
big BUT) which went where? I am absolutely terrible at assembly
puzzles and this challenge stumped me for quite a long time. Yes,
embarrassingly it took me a week to work it out and get my TIC pieces
assembled and then the TIC rearranged into another cube. My excuse for the
long challenge is that whilst all the pieces are quite simple, it is quite
tough to arrange them into a cube without interlocking them first and I
struggled to visualise the shape they would make. Don't look if you don't
want to see the assembled cube.
I had a cube and there really are a LOT of magnets!
After that it was clear that the cube would interact with the vault (Nothing
else was possible with the empty vault and moving the cube around the outside
of it or underneath did nothing. I returned the cube to the vault and apart
from a huge number of clicking noises, it did not do anything. I was obviously
going to have to try other orientations. Was I going to have to try each face
down and in 4 different directions? After another little think I had another a
realisation that probably attempting 24 different ways to reinsert the cube
was not what was intended. I thought, I saw, I conquered and another Aha!
moment happened. This was really really clever. I had a coin telling me the
puzzle was a TIC Vault but did not have my unique ID. Looking at what I had, a
"what if I?" question occurred to me. There was a particular feature of the
vault that did not seem to be necessary unless I used it in a certain way.
Aha!
Now that is absolutely wonderful! I had my unique ID and could see how the
puzzle worked. It is a masterpiece and I have a candidate for puzzle of the
year already! It's looking like 2023 might be a really good year!
All solved - I left my coins outside so will have to solve it again
to return them
The reassembly is much easier to complete but still fun. This is an absolutely wonderful puzzle and I will challenge some people at work to play with it if we have any downtime - will go on display with the rest of my ARCPuzzles and be a centrepiece. Thank you Andrew for a wonderful odyssey that took me nearly 2 weeks to complete. Wonderful!
Today will be a really really quick post - I spent 8 hours yesterday sitting at
my computer doing the worst puzzle ever and I am fed up with sitting down and
fed up with typing. Yes, it was that time again - time to write our consultant
anaesthetist on-call rotas and it was a nightmare. This one covered Easter and
various school holidays including 5 public holidays in the 2 month period. The
numbers of colleagues are rather depleted and there were a LOT of requests. At
the end of that I wanted to run away!
Today I will write about my first ever
Osanori Yamamoto
puzzle. No, not the first of his puzzles I have ever solved - this is the
first puzzle that has been actually made by the master himself. I had seen
that Osanori-san's Shutout design had won a "Top 10 vote getter" prize in the
2022 IPP Design competition and I had been intrigued. I have solved quite a
lot of his designs over the years and only a few had either been entered into
the competition and fewer still had won a prize. I sort of forgot about it
until the end of last year when at Peter Hajek's end of year puzzle party the
Shutout was shown off by Naoaki Takashima as one of his puzzles of 2022
and looking through the EPP book there were 3 other very serious puzzlers who
had announced this as one of their best (they were Boaz Feldman, Theo Geerinck
and Guy Loel). When Naoaki-san had showed it off he had announced that he had
placed a few of the pieces inside and couldn't even work out how he had done
it and couldn't remove them. How could I possibly resist? I contacted Osanori
and asked if he would make some more and send one to me. Like a true gentleman
he just asked for a bit of time and would let me know when. The postage from
Japan was quite ferocious!
Delivery arrangement
It is very nicely made with an MDF box and a lovely grained set of wooden
pieces. When it arrived I was slightly surprised to see that it had been sent
out in the solved position and went back to the Design competition page to read
the aim:
"Build an apparent 3x3x3 block inside the box. (The opening of the box
is completely filled and any empty space is hidden within the box.)"
Ah, there is the difference. The arrival position had an obvious gap
visible and the aim was to take them out and return them with no holes
visible. With 6 tetrominoes there would be 3 gaps in the cube and they all
needed to be under the sides of the box or in the centre.
Initially I struggled to actually take the pieces out of the delivery
packing which did not bode well for the main challenge. OK - start outside
the box. There are a good few ways to arrange the pieces in a 3x3x3 cube
and obviously each one can be oriented in lots of directions inside. First
find an organisation that would leave the gaps covered - I found 2 and
started to work out how to get them inside. Of course I started on the
wrong one because I'm an eeejit and it only took me about an hour to
realise that my proposed solution was obviously impossible. Doh! By this
time I had forgotten my other arrangement and I had to find it again. I
was certainly getting my money's worth.
I eventually found my arrangement and worked on assembling it inside. OMG!
This was quite tough - I had failed to notice one of the cardinal features
of the box which is immediately obvious from my photos - Doh again! and
spent quite of time attempting the impossible. I finally realised what I
was doing and tried again only be stumped for a couple of hours. There are
sliding moves but also TIC moves inside the box. Solving this puzzle took
me a whole afternoon of fun and frustration. I am sure that most of you
brilliant puzzlers out there would manage it in about 30 minutes but
little me...about 4 hours! This puzzle was at least as good as, if not better than most of the other Yamamoto puzzles that I have in my collection made by various other craftsmen.
No spoilers here!
Having taken my photos, I dismantled it and tried to put it back in the
travel assembly. Embarrassingly, this took me a little while. It had been
quite a while since I had taken it apart and it does require a bit of
thought just for that part. This makes this puzzle doubly worthwhile. I have
solved it a few times now and it has required me to work it out each time
and whilst it no longer takes me 4 hours, it still takes an embarrassingly
long time. I think I might just take this to work to torture some
colleagues.
If you can get hold of a copy then this would be well worth your while - great for a collection and a really fun challenge.
OMG! Sooo beautiful - Plus one more that I couldn't easily arrange as I
am in mid solve
I have been lucky enough yet again to get advance access to the latest creations
from Jakub and Jaroslav's amazing
Pelikan factory. This time we have 8 incredibly beautiful challenges varying from the simple
and quirky to the unbelievably difficult. There is something for everyone
here.
Luckily for me they arrived in 2 batches. The first 6 arrived 2 weeks ago with
a warning not to write anything yet due to delays of the whole release caused
by sickness. This certainly made it a little less fraught for me and I have
solved those first ones in a leisurely fashion over that 2 weeks. Then
unexpectedly another 3 arrived with a request that Jakub would like the
solutions as soon as possible. I have been feverishly trying to solve 3 of the
hardest ones in the week. There is something for everyone here - if you like
burrs then there is something from easy to challenging but fun right up to the
OMG difficult. Packing puzzles as well with something that I managed fairly
easily to another that is fabulous but really tough.
On we go:
Imogen's Cube
Imogen's Cube by
Alfons Eyckmans Incredible design and
incredible manufacture
Imogen's cube is one of Alfons Eyckmans amazing interlocking cubic designs which
he names after significant people - this one was designed and named for the
daughter of a puzzling friend. I had already bought this one from Alfons several
years ago and have so far failed to dismantle it. I was astounded when I took
this out of the box! It is stunningly beautiful made from multiple hardwoods.
There is a frame and several interlocking sticks crossing each axis of the
puzzle with 4 crossing one direction, 3 in another and 2 the final one. There is
a lot of movement in this right from the very beginning and I have managed to
get myself lost several times during my to and fro approach to solving these. On
several occasions I have found myself with a stick a long way out and nowhere to
go but then unable to work out how to get it back in again. The solution level
is not astoundingly high but the sheer amount of movement and blind ends seems
to have made this really tough for me. In fact I have yet to solve it. For those
of you who are really keen on burrs/interlocking solids or those of you who want
something truly gorgeous for the display then this will be a must have.
Another incredible design showing the skills of Alfons. This seems to be
something new from him. I have seen him design a number of interlocking cubes
and various burrs over the years but I have not really seen him spend much time
on a rather special and enjoyable type of 6 piece burr. These have the sticks
based on a 3x3x8 voxel grid which allows the construction of the obstructing
marts to be much more intricate and more like a maze to navigate. The first one
like this was the
Dracula
from the
last release (which is still in stock). This has been beautifully crafted from Acacia
with a lovely grain. The exploration is fun and with a level 10.3.2 the
disassembly is fun without being too difficult. For those of you with some real
burr skill, I definitely recommend scrambling the pieces and after a break
attempting a reassembly. It is tough but even I managed it with only a medium
struggle.
This delightful little packing puzzle by the amazing Lucie Pauwels really packs
quite a punch. It is surprisingly heavy for its' size (85x36x46mm) which I
presume is due to the density of the Jatoba box. The pieces are made from Wenge
and there is a beautifully made pin made withMaple and Bubinga. The pieces are a
small subset of the Soma pieces with 4 of them having a hole drilled through.
The aim is to assemble the pieces inside the box leaving space for the pin to be
poked though the hole into the piece which lines up with it. There are obvious 4
different solutions depending on which piece you wish to pierce. I found this a
delightful little challenge to try in the evenings and finding the final one
took me a surprising amount of time (but then I am usually terrible at packing
puzzles). This is a lovely puzzle for beginners and experienced puzzlers alike.
Just one solution
Lucie has contacted me free I posted this to correct me and tell me the true aim:
"The goal of the Pin-Up Box is to pack everything inside and fix with the pin, in a way that nothing drops out when you hold the box upside down. Four pieces with a pin-hole, each giving a solution."
Time to try again!
Turtles
Turtles designed by our very own Jakub
This one is very cute. Jakub decided that he wanted to turn his hand to puzzle
design himself and created something delightful. Turtles reminds me of the
Bison puzzle from Xmas 2021 - it is a sequentially interlocking puzzle created from
Wenge and Acacia. The secret is to find the way to remove the first piece and
then it will serially disassemble. In the end you are left with a bunch of
rather interesting pieces and a genuine laugh out loud moment when you
suddenly realise what the guys have done. When I showed Mrs S, even she was
delighted with the end result. It is not a difficult puzzle but it is
genuinely delightful.
There seems to be no end to the design skills shown by Christoph Lohe. His
interlocking/burr puzzles are always relatively simple in basic outline shape
but the design of the solution is always a wonderful and very fun challenge.
Over the years he has produced a bunch of burrs with frames and they have all
been brilliant. I think that the Timburr (beautifully recreated here by Jakub
from Purpleheart, Padauk, Wenge and Ash) is one of his very best designs. The
solution level is a very high 31.3.1.3.3.3 which is astonishing for just
a 6 piece burr. Despite the high level and a fair number of dead ends at
first, finding the pathway is a pleasant exploration and has 2 or 3 lovely
Aha! moments in the process. It took me a couple of evenings to dismantle it.
It looks so simple!
Unfortunately for me, having balanced the pieces on my cat as I sequentially
removed them, he rolled over and they all slid off into a pile. Despite this, I
was actually able to reassemble the puzzle from scratch with only a couple of
days attempting to place the pieces the wrong way around. I found the reassembly
challenge even more fun than the initial disassembly (although I very much doubt
I could have managed it without having done that first). This puzzle is simply
fabulous - one of my favourites in this batch.
Cerberus
Cerberus by Girish Sharma
Girish is a relatively new name to me. I noticed that he suddenly appeared in
the
IPP design competition winners list
this year with what looks like either a TIC or sequentially interlocking cube
puzzle. Here we have another interlocking cube puzzle made from Wenge, Padauk,
Acacia and Maple. I have always adored these puzzles ever since I got hooked
by Richard Gain's
microcubology puzzles way back at the beginning of my puzzling career. Initially, I could
only disassemble them and over the years got better and better and even enjoy
them as assembly puzzles. One of my all time favourite interlocking puzzles is
one of Juha Levonen's designs - the Juha's 12. This puzzle has a special piece
which marches up and down through the other pieces during the solve process
and is absolutely wonderful to play with. The Cerberus by Girish left me with
a similar feeling. The pieces move all over the place and one piece in
particular marches through. Once it has been removed (after 25 moves) it takes
another 5 to remove the second and then 4 to finally separate the last 2
pieces:
Absolutely stunning design and beautifully made
This puzzle was probably my absolute favourite from this release. I am really
looking forward to any new creations from Girish in the future.
On Facebook,
Tamás has
been designing and producing some
absolutely incredible challenges
and has worked with Pelikan over the last year to bring them to reality for us
all to enjoy, however, I have not seen him design a packing puzzle before. I was
surprised and delighted to see the Umbrella amongst the latest arrivals. This
packing puzzle has something special which is just what I would expect from
Tamás - all the pieces have a unique box like design which allows them to be
changed into 2 different shapes. The workmanship required to create this puzzle
is astounding - the American Walnut L shaped pieces have a stem and a box round
that stem which slides freely into each of the two positions. All the pieces
need to be placed into the Ash box. There are quite a lot of solutions and it is
a rather delightful soothing process to try and find them. There is always a
single voxel gap inside and I have attempted to find solutions which have that
gap in various different positions. This is a lovely idea and fun for all
experience levels.
The name of this was at the suggestion of Allard who I assume must have helped
with some prototyping. This name is much better than the original and whilst
the pieces are not hollow, it is a good description of what needs to be done.
Dr Latussek was heavily influenced by the now classic puzzle by Vesa Timonen,
Lox in Box which has cylindrical wooden pieces to be packed into a tray. Volker
with his amazing 3D design skills really wanted to turn this into a more
difficult packing puzzle more than just fitting pieces into a tray. When he
knew that I was going to receive a copy he contacted me with his origin story:
“Place the eight logs into the box.” This is the simple goal of the
wonderful packing puzzle LOX IN BOX by Vesa Timonen. These round rods,
beveled on one side, are just crying out to be twisted out of the plane.
I wanted to find eight round rods that would fit into an open
cube-shaped box. And to do it in a unique arrangement. For this job, I
needed to understand the shape of these round rods. At times I was
convinced a nice mix of eight round rods would fit into the cube in a
particularly clever way, only to learn that by tilting, rotating and
swapping, other fillings could be obtained. Those round beveled rods can
hurt. In the end, a mix of round rods with only two different lengths
won out. Unfortunately, after that, I wondered why I wasn't using my
typical box. A new problem was formulated and an intensive collaboration
with Pelikan ensued.
The result is TUBE IN CUBE. For this, one round rod had to be
shortened. This is not pretty, but in return the round rods unfold their
full beauty in the restricted box, at least the part I was allowed to
discover. If you want to experience the beauty of the round beveled
rods, I highly recommend practising with two rods first and only then
successively increasing the number...and so my story ends as it began:
“Place the eight logs into the box.”
An amazing design and wonderfully brought to life
Volker was not wrong! This puzzle is a fabulous creation and is tremendously
difficult without being impossible. The shapes scream out for experimentation
in pairs and different combinations but assembly outside the box is impossible
because everything is very unstable and rolls all over the place. However,
despite this, you get enough ideas to then start assembling in the box. It is
also a dexterity puzzle - the pieces just do not want to stay in place (in
fact I have really struggled just to get the thing back to the travel
position). As you play, it becomes obvious how the short pieces can interact
and then it is a matter of working out how to get them inside. Lots of
different ideas spring to mind as you play but always the last piece cannot be
inserted - not just because the lid gets in the way, but because there is
simply no room inside for that piece. Eventually there is an incredible Aha!
moment and with a lot of fiddling about the final piece can go inside. The
precision is amazing and they only just fit inside the box. This is also my
pick from the bunch.
Yes, I am sure that this is one of the puzzles that you would expect from the
amazing design brain of Tamás Vanyó! This is the third of his castle
collaborations with Pelikan. I have to admit that I have not had much time to
try this one yet. It consists of 9 pieces to fit on a frame. Each piece has
the same basic structure with a waist that is 2x2 voxels in size which will
fit into the frame and then on either side of that waist are the wonderful
characteristic castle shapes based on a 3x3 grid. This puzzle is not quite as
straightforward as that because they have added an extra twist. There are 8
ways to place the pieces on the frame but the extra challenge is to organise
them in such a way that can walk through the entire castle from START to STOP
(i.e. create one continuous path using both sides of pieces). There is a start
mark on the frame and a small arrow which serves as a sort of "checkpoint"
telling you to flip over as it's on the opposite corner of the start and
end.
So far I have managed to assemble all the pieces on the frame which alone was
a nice fun challenge but I have certainly not gotten anywhere near creating a
path all the way around the puzzle from beginning to end. I think this might
well take me several weeks to complete. The assembled puzzle on the frame
looks like one of
MC Escher's impossible 3D
creations and even unsolved looks beautiful on display.
There are some absolutely amazing puzzles here and all have been created with the precision we have come to expect of Jakub, Jaroslav and their team. You will not be disappointed! My favourites from this batch are:
Cerberus - just for the wonderful progressive movement and because I am addicted to interlocking cubes.
Tube in Cube - Volker does it again and uses a new shape to make something incredibly clever.
