It's Sublime, Then It's Ridiculous...

And Then Sublime Again!

Minima XIII beat me for soooo long

Last week I wrote in frustration about the final one in the numbered Minima series (number XIII or as Allard would make it - XXXXLIII). I have owned this one (from Frederic himself) for 4 years and a delightful portable plastic version from Tye (if you ask him nicely, he might make some more). I had failed and failed on this and eventually owned up to it as a catharsis on my little corner of t'internet.

Of course, as soon as I confess to the puzzling world about how useless I am at packing puzzles, disentanglement puzzles, boxes etc, I have one of those wonderful Aha! moments. This time was no different. The day after my confession, I was working from home chairing a meeting and then in the afternoon we had our departmental Morbidity and Mortality meeting was held on MS Teams (No I didnt have to confess to any mortality!)  I tuned in from the comfort of my conservatory with a pile o'puzzles next to me. My colleagues are now used to me playing with toys during these meetings and I get quite a few comments from people when I solve a particularly fearsome twisty during the meeting. For some reason, they think I'm some kind of genius and they are unaware of quite how bad my failure rate is. 

The pieces of Minima XXXXXXXXXCIII were in a pile waiting to be put away and I couldn't resist another period of self flagellation and set to work again. This time, after a few minutes of trying the same tricks over and over again, I looked at the slanted cut on the tetromino and wondered to my self:

"Self, what could you do with this odd cut?"

Suddenly a new idea hit my rather like the back of Mrs S' hand and I found a new and interesting possible movement that I hadn't thought to try before. It was too beautiful a move to be anything like chance - it had to be designed in. Suddenly, this made me look at the slanted cuts in the two triominoes, and again I was slapped on the back of the head - these pieces could be positioned in such a way that the fancy first move would slide by. Oh wow! What an incredible idea!

All that was left was to use the more conventional Minima type rotational moves to set everything up. It's a rather gorgeous sequence of moves to end up with all the pieces packed into the box and almost left me gasping with delight. 

Four years of puzzling!

The Minima 13 was the first of the series I received and was, I assume, the last of the series that Frederic designed. To my mind it is the very pinnacle of the Minima puzzle design - if you don't have a copy yet then try and find one to complete your collection (I assume that you have the rest of the set from Pelikan???) In the title of my post this is the "sublime".

The look of exultation on my face when I finally solved it during our departmental meeting did not go unnoticed! I saw a few colleagues grinning and got a couple of messages. It was time to carry on with some more of them.

Minima Nest by Lucie Pauwels

The Minima series from Frederic is really quite extensive now. Not only has Frederic expanded beyond the original 13, others have jumped on the bandwagon and seen the huge possibilities of "simply" packing a 2x2x3 box with smaller pieces that may or may not require rotations. Lucie Pauwels, is a very prolific designer who has appeared on these pages many many times. Lucie decided to try her hand at Minima design and here is one that I have had sitting waiting but not tried due to lack of time. It's the the Minima Nest which I purchased from Tye at the end of last year. It is also currently sold out but again, if you ask nicely, maybe more can be printed. Lucie took the standard 2x2x3 box and stood it on its end and then shifted each of the 3 layers a half voxel sideways. She then took some simple pieces and shifted several of them a half voxel across as well. 

Looking at the pieces, the puzzle doesn't look too awful - after all, 2 of them are simple 1 voxel cubes. The shifted pieces look perfectly designed to fit the staircase shape inside the box and it's easy to create a shape that should fit. Great, you would think, now just stuff them in. Except there's a problem Houston! Once a few pieces are nice and snug in the bottom two rows there are simple gaps to be filled and the only way to get the piece that should fit in is through a ½ voxel hole. That won't work! Try lifting up to make space but that's also not possible due to the overhang from the layer above. Time to think© and the first result of thinking is to place the single cubies into the bottom row and then build up from there. It goes swimmingly until you look at the top layer to be filled and come to the realisation that the staggered pieces can't be placed. Oh, it's delightful! More think©ing required which takes my mind off the meeting for a bit. Suddenly I have my 2nd Aha! moment for the afternoon and I've created a shape that should be removable and therefore it should be insertable. Time to try it - cue a punch in the air during a meeting - the picture does have a small spoiler in it so don't look unless you're certain you don't mind seeing a clue:

Solved it in a single afternoon! Maybe I'm getting better at puzzles?

That puzzle was ridiculous - so clever but not too hard. 

Finally we return to another sublime one - it's probably a bit ridiculous too!

Minima Twig by Frederic Boucher

Frederic hasn't finished with the Minima designs! This one was released around the time of the last IPP and produced again by Tye of NothingYetDesigns. It's also sold but there's no harm in you all sending him thousands and thousands of emails clamouring for a remake. It has also been sitting in my pile to be solved in the conservatory (yes, Mrs S is not really happy at how many piles I have dotted around the house). I still had another hour of meeting to go and therefore picked up a third challenge of the afternoon. The Minima Twig again consists of the standard 2x2x3 box but in this case there is just a single entry hole in one corner and each of the six faces has either a single drilled hole or a track the diameter of the hole. There are 6 domino pieces to be placed made from a choice of woods (I cannot remember what the one above is) and with a steel pin in the centre of a single voxel on each of the 6 pieces effectively making triominoes. There are 3 L shapes and 3 straight lines. Obviously each of the metal pins is intended to protrude from a hole drilled in the box. Rotations are allowed.

Placing the pieces in the box and posting the pin through the holes can restrict the movement of the pieces and cause blockages. This will require careful planning. I found that the requirement to pierce the holes made it much easier to work out possible assemblies and then in my head working out whether a disassembly would be possible was quite fun. There is a wonderful critical sequence to rotate pieces into the box that is required and within about 45 minutes I had my third puzzle of the afternoon solved. I  personally found that my afternoon Mortality and Morbidity meeting was a very productive time. Maybe I should ask the bosses to allow us to have more frequent meetings to get me out of the operating theatre so I can play with my toys.

Three in one afternoon!

Speaking of operating theatres, I am in one just now doing a trauma list - Trauma doesn't stop and weekends. I have written this in advance and set it to auto publish. Isn't the internet a wonderful thing? I hope that you all have had a wonderful puzzling weekend.

Is There Something About Japan?

Gentle Interlock by Junichi Yananose

Today, I have two puzzles from people heavily influenced by Japan - Junichi Yananose is of Japanese origin and lives in Australia and Frederic Boucher who is American but has lived in Japan for many many years! They both design puzzles that are really special.

It's been quite a while since I bought anything from Juno. He has been a little quiescent this year due to having what sounds like rather extensive renovations done to his house. I guess that during such upheaval, it must be quite difficult to keep working on exciting new toys. When he announced (actually, it's Yukari who does the announcing) the production of a new toy (they also hinted that there might soon be a new sequential discovery puzzle) I couldn't resist. This one is a "simple" six piece burr except Juno never produces simple puzzles - there is always something interesting about them. He announced this one in his usual self-deprecating manner:

"This is a six piece burr puzzle designed by Juno to make use of odd sized stock of American Rock Maple. The first piece can be removed in just six moves from the assembled state, making it relatively easy and suitable even for beginners of burr puzzles. Prioritizing ease of play, the fit between the pieces was intentionally made slightly loose.

Juno also designed puzzles with the same final shape but with level 10 and level 11 solutions. However, after making and testing prototypes, he determined that this puzzle with the fewest number of moves offered the most satisfying play experience, and thus decided to manufacture this version.

The main material used for the puzzle pieces is Fijian Mahogany. This wood varies in color and texture depending on where it was cut, so the pieces were intentionally selected and assembled to create a mix of different colors and textures. As with most of our puzzles, a lacquer spray has been applied, resulting in a smooth finish. Additionally, all edges have been chamfered to ensure that no sharp edges remain."

It is a nice 9 x 9 x 9cm in size making for a lovely tactile experience. The method used to make this more interesting is to make the stick lengths 8 voxels rather than the usual 6 which allowed him to design a rather unusual set of moves. There are no blind ends and the sequence is gun to explore. Holding the puzzle in a certain orientation which does feel the most natural way to hold it led me to reach 5 moves and then a large chunk of the puzzle dropped out into my lap which nearly gave me a heart attack. I looked down at what I was holding to see a 2x2 voxel hole in it which had allowed a pair of pieces to just drop out. I stopped at that point and spent a few minutes working out how those two pieces could go back inside and closed it up. Phew! I didn't have a 1 way experience at this point.

Once I had my palpitations under control, I did it again and then deliberately took it apart and had my 6 rather unusually shaped pieces. I did put it back together straight away from memory which was reassuring and then moved to the kitchen to dismantle it again and arrange the pieces for a nice photo:

Odd looking pieces
Juno's branded hanko visible

At this point, I thought I might manage the reassembly but, no, Whilst the sequence is in my head, the pieces all look rather similar but are subtly different with notches in either the front, left or right sides. Slightly disappointed, I resorted to Burrtools which is still fun but reminded me that Juno is very VERY 

Minima XIII by Frederic Boucher
This version produced by Tye Stahly

A very long time ago, I received a very precious gift from Frederic - he sent me a copy of the Minima XIII puzzle which he had produced himself. It was a rather special copy (one of just 12) and I more or less immediately went to work on it. 

It is the usual 2x2x3 voxel box with cutout holes and, in this case, 4 pieces to fit inside in such a way that the holes in the box are all covered by a piece. The pieces were very unusual in that there had been some slanted cuts in the sides of them (presumably to aid with the required rotations. Interestingly, I solved this one quite quickly - probably inside a single day. Now many of you would think that I should be quite good at them by now and that is not unreasonable. BUT this puzzle was the first minima I had received ever (October 2021) and I really had no skills with this sort of challenge.

Solved in less than a day!

When I fed this back to Frederic, he realised that I had found an alternative and MUCH simpler solution. He went back to the drawing board and altered one of the pieces to be dark and have the requirement that this single dark piece not be visible from outside. He sent me a new instruction card along with the replacement piece:

Notice the slanted cuts

New instructions

I set to work on this version straight away (still 2021) and to my eternal shame, I never managed to solve it. Subsequently, I obtained a whole lot more Minima puzzles. Initially from Tye Stahly's Nothing yet designs store (many are still available) and then of course from Pelikan puzzles (they also have the sets of 1 to 12 still available and are an essential addition to your collection)

When Tye made number 13 available, I couldn't resist having a more portable version that I could take to work. I have have been trying again for about 5 more months and again, have completely failed. I think I know where the pieces are supposed to end up - to be honest, there are not many options to try which will have that dark piece (or the dotted piece on the plastic version) covered up. For the life of me I cannot get the triominoes into the correct position after the dark piece is placed or to allow it to be placed. So far it has been 4 years working on this thing - I hope not too many more.

Thank you to Juno, Frederic, Tye and Japan for making me look stupid yet again!

Is There No End To His Talents?

Dovetail Bar by Richard Williams

The various members of the MPP brigade seem to have a variety of skillz which we have revealed to the puzzling world either deliberately or inadvertently over the last 14 odd years - at the last MPP Ali was reminiscing about how long ago the whole thing was started and who was there. I think I joined at MPP 4 or 5.

I, of course, have revealed to the world that I like to write drivel and unfortunately have also shown the world that I am rubbish at puzzles in the process of writing said drivel. Louis has shown us all that he is a puzzle solving machine and that there seems to be nothing that he cannot figure out (although I've never seen him do a twisty). Allard has revealed that he has impeccable taste in puzzles but needs the assistance of Louis to actually solve the bloody things. Big Steve brings chaos and destruction wherever he goes and usually leaves a trail of puzzles in pieces or incorrectly assembled with other pieces hidden inside (I'm never bringing my happiness cubes anywhere near him ever again!) and his partner in crime/puzzles, Ali seems to be able to solve pretty much anything put in front of him. There puzzle design creativity has a whole store now and has received me of a decent amount of cash. Of course, we cannot forget Shane as you can hear him several miles before you can see him - his skill with locks is amazing! 

Over the last few years, Richard Williams has joined the group and we all seem to know him as an incredible burr talent. He seems to be able to do the impossible by assembling burrs from just a pile of pieces (only the late and dearly missed Laurie had anywhere near that talent). Since his purchase of a 3D printer he has begun to design puzzles at an alarming rate. Today I am going to focus on 3 that I obtained at the last MPP (number LCIIIIX - looking that Roman numeral up in Google reveals it to be a nonsense number so I must have imagined the gathering.

The Dovetail Bar was one that I purchased knowing almost nothing about it apart from the fact that Ali was sitting next to me with a few pieces of it in his hands and marvelling at the mechanism. If Ali is enthusiastic then that's enough for me! A few of the UK's finest plastic banknotes were exchanged and I received the Dovetail Bar as well as the Basket burr (see later in the post).

I didn't attempt the puzzle until a day or so after I got back from the party. I had to hide most of my acquisitions from the present Mrs S for fear of reprisals (Whack! Ouch! sorry dear). 

This delightful challenge consists of a small red plastic rectangle 60 x 40 x 15mm in size which is split into a top ¼ and a bottom ¾ held together by a dovetail joint and with a black bolt screwed into the larger part. It rattles enticingly and the top part wiggles a couple of mm each way but no further - this is the case no matter which way the puzzle is held. After trying this there is not much else to do other than unscrew the bolts. As each one is unscrewed there is a little catching of something inside but nothing new is possible and once that catch is overcome, there is a little noise as something moves. Removing first one bolt doesn't let the dovetail slide and then unscrewing the other one similarly makes noises but doesn't help with movement either. At this point, with not many options, the bolts go back in and are made to achieve something inside. This was not entirely unexpected as I had already begun to create an internal image of what was in there. Once a couple of internal interactions had been achieved, the dovetail was able to slide partially open and revealed what I had been expecting inside.

A small Aha! but not going any further than that

Having made the puzzle slide this far open, I had a few ideas as to what might be needed next. Now I am sure that almost all of you are screaming at me through your screens that I needed to spin it to align the interior pins properly. That approach has been tried before by very famous puzzle designers but remember the instructions above

"No tapping, no banging, no spinning"

My ideas, at this point,  ran out! I removed the bolts and another tool that I had and slid it back together but at no point would the doevetail ever slide any further than that. depending on the orientation it would move either a few mm or about 15mm (but only inn one direction). Time for a little think©ing. Oddly, the two bolts are slightly different lengths and maybe that is important?

Ali had really been enthusiastic about the mechanism so there must be something quite special inside. I put it back together and left it for the evening and came back to it the following evening after a day's work and thinking. There seemed to be nothing for it other than do do something dangerous and hope it didn't backfire on me. I tried that and that didn't help  but there were other alternatives which needed a little more thought to make possible. After another few minutes of fiddling I separated the two pieces and could see the locking mechanism.

Solved! No spoilers here.

What I couldn't tell was how the damned thing worked! I had a few pieces now and the reason why it would wiggle a bit and then move 15mm only was obvious and ingenious but it was not clear what I had done to actually make it slide apart this time. With the innards visible, it was possible to play with the various pieces to see what was going on inside and the mechanism is really quite clever. I don't think I've seen it done before.

Resetting it takes a bit more thought and it is still a bit of a challenge to open again. We all think of Rich as a "burr meister" but here he has revealed that he is that and a whole lot more! If you get a chance to buy a copy or even just play with it for half an hour then you should definitely go for it. It's not too difficult but the Aha! moment is wonderful - I now understand Ali's delight.

The Tetrahedral burr

This made an appearance at the previous MPP and I had a little fiddle then but did not dismantle it. The copy above is the original which Rich gave to me because he had made another copy with some improvements that were able to get rid of the slight gaps visible above. It looks like an assembly puzzle with shapes that need to be stacked onto each other to make a multi-coloured tetrahedron. It certainly could be an assembly puzzle but its classification is actually different. It is, in reality, a "standard" 6-piece burr!

Its "just" a Ghost 4x4
A standard cube made much more confusing

Yes, Rich has taken a standard burr (I don't actually know whether it is one of the well known ones) and used the 3D printing software to add extensions to the burr sticks so that they form a different end shape. The process has been made even more challenging by reading the extensions in such a way that the orientation of the interior burr is now off centre. This process is well known in the twisty puzzle world as "ghosting" - it takes a standard shape, rotates layers and then adds pieces to make the rotated puzzle back into the cube shape.

So we have a shape with odd pieces that do move linearly but not along any of the axes of the tetrahedron and they interact with each other just as many burr puzzles do but in a much more confusing manner! Because it's a 6-piece burr, there aren't actually many false passages but I found it very hard to keep track of what was moving where and did very much need to rely on my back and forth approach. At some point it splits apart and I decided that I would make a video for myself and a sequence of still photos to ensure that I didn't get stuck with a pile of pieces. Having done that, I carried on and disassembled the 2 halves and took my photo:

OMG it looks so innocuous 
You can see the burr shape inside

I scrambled the pieces and left them for a while. I don't think that this can be modelled in Burrtools as a tetrahedron - of course, the internal burr can but that won't help me solve the puzzle. The reassembly took me over an hour! Had I not known the rough arrangements of the two halves, there would be no way that I could solve it but with the little knowledge I had and a very slight recollection of the moves needed, I could reassemble. The process is huge fun! Another one for all of you to try - even those of you who aren't in to burrs will find this one different enough to interest you.

Basket burr

Another of Rich's designs which was shown off at two successive MPPs. The basket burr is reminiscent of the Akaki's Basket packing puzzles (I only have the wooden ones from Cubic Dissection but wish I had the whole set). This is another "standard" 6-piece burr in a frame which forms the bottom part of a basket. I have adored, framed or caged burrs for many years and have so many that I can't even estimate how many. Some of the 12 piece caged burrs are incredibly difficult and §i haven't solved them all but the 6 piece ones are fascinating and usually more achievable. To my shame, I have never managed to disassemble the Congestion burr. 

Rich's Basket burr is very achievable as a disassembly puzzle being level 21 (12.1.1.1.4.2) and the assembly would be impossible for me without having some idea of the process of disassembly first. Of course, Burrtools is a help and an essential part of any burr for me and I was very surprised to find that there were 64 different solutions but the colour scheme chosen by Rich ensures that the most difficult one is the one to aim for. I now need to work on finding some other assemblies - this could take me quite some time!

Very clever discovery by Rich

There seems to be absolutely no end to his talents! I cannot wait to see what he comes up with next. Thanks mate, for a really fun week of puzzling!

I Need To Learn To Count!

Also I Properly Prove Primacy!

Freeze 14 from Yuu Asaka

At the end of last week's blog post the intrepid puzzler had tracked through a puzzle lock and opened it and closed it. He then boasted about it and posted photos of said lock on his website and some social media. Needless to say he felt very smug! That is until the creator of the challenge pointed out that he had not seen a picture of the ant that had to be hunted. Ah! Maybe the puzzler is less bright than he thought he was? He should have realised he wasn't very bright - if he had read his own website, it would have told him in no uncertain terms how dense he really is. Doh! 

I actually thought that one of the tiny metal pieces that had been retrieved during the solution was the ant. I showed Boaz the photo of all the pieces and what I thought was the ant and was disabused of the idea very quickly! Time to go back to the drawing board and solve it again and search for the ant. Oddly doing it this time showed me that I hadn't fully understood the opening mechanism because despite having opened it 5 or 6 times before writing about it, I couldn't repeat it. after another 3 or 4 hours, I opened it and noticed something new and realised I had manipulated it entirely by accident the first time and then not reset it properly. This meant that my subsequent solves were accidental. I went on my extended ant hunt and found the sneaky creature that Boaz had left for me to find. Phew! Finally completed.

Next I had to work out exactly how to fully reset the puzzle every time. I had managed it once by accident and also failed several times. This time I had it properly done. OMG! There is a lot more to this puzzle than I had initially thought - go and buy it - you won't regret it:

PuzzleMaster Link or PuzzLocks direct link.

Having finally completed that puzzle, I needed another quick success because I knew that I had a busy week coming up and the MPP (yesterday). So what did I do? I went back yet again to another masterpiece from the great Yuu Asaka. I had bought the Freeze 14 from Mine along with a bunch of his own creations back in January (most of which I have failed to solve) but it is available from many other stores (PuzzleMaster has them here, Brits can get them here or here, Europeans from here or here and from Yuu-san himself here.

Freeze 14 by Yuu Asaka

There are 3  each of a small square piece and a circle as well as 8 wedges that have cutouts for the squares and circles (one of which is oddly combined as well as 2 semicircles o=attached to the wedges. All of these pieces need to be packed inside of the octagonal shaped tray. Should be simple? Yeah! Right! It might be simple for you lot but for me I have spent 5 months proving that either it's not simple or I'm thick! Mrs S frequently tells me one of those and she tends towards the "thick" decision!

I have spent quite a long time trying to put the wedges together approximating the two halves of the cutout holes to make space for the 6 shapes to be inserted. With the positions of the cutouts, there really aren't very many options for positioning the wedges. I confidently placed them and also ensured that the semicircles were also contained in a hole only to find that there was alsways one (or more pieces that I was unable to place).

Close? Definitely not close enough!

I tried multiple variants of this over the months. I did it in the evenings, I did it at work and always failed much to the amusement of my colleagues. They used to think I was a genius but I have definitely proved to them that "thick" is a better word to describe me. 😱

At one point (or even several points, to my shame) I even attempted a higgledy piggledy assembly of the wedges in the hope that alternating the orientation of them might make more spaces to place the small pieces. It didn't take me long to give up on that idea - I am think but not that thick! I put it away for a while.

A couple of weeks ago, I was watching a surgeon close a wound and listening to the scrub nurse count the needles, blades and instruments and checking against the list from the start. This made me think©... maybe I needed to count as well? Not because I might have lost anything, but because it suddenly occurred to me that I didn't have enough holes for the number of pieces and semicircles I had.

This momentary lapse into genius proved a turning point to me. I counted the halves, I counted the holes (or wholes) and counted the pieces and semicircles and got hopelessly lost making it to 6 or 7. Scrub nurses only count to 5 and occasionally 10 (rarely they go higher if they take their shoes and socks off) but it's almost always a nice round number. Counting in halves to 7 is very confusing but no matter how many times I tried, the number wasn't right. Aargh! Time to think© - yet again! After a little think©ing got me nowhere, I slept on it and had an epiphany. I need to make more holes. But how? This time I had something to try and went for it.

I will not be showing you the solution but that Yuu-san is a very very devious man! I really should have seen the answer much earlier - in fact the box states that the puzzle should take just 40 minutes and has a difficulty level of 3½ out of 5 (PuzzleMaster make it a Level 8 on their 5-10 scale). It certainly took me a LOT longer than that but Mrs S has stated the truth - I am thick - so 40 minutes for a normal puzzler equals 4 months for me! OMG Blush! Such shame!

At the MPP yesterday I received/purchaased a few new toys and expect that they will take me several years.

I didn't recall what this STC puzzle is called but I don't have enough hands to assemble it:

I don't remember what it is

This won't go in without coordinate motion

Mrs S has made several useful suggestions but not actually offered any hands in assistance!

Can You Prove That You Are A Primate?

Ant Hunt by Boaz Feldman comes with a "primat"ive narrative

Having bought and even solved a whole bunch of the Feldman family creations over the years, starting with the incredible DanLock from Dan Feldman way back in 2011 (currently only available from PuzzleMaster) and moving through a whole bunch of increasingly amazing creations from Boaz, I couldn't resist the latest one, Ant Hunt (which is on sale just now direct from Boaz or available from PuzzleMaster here).

It arrived at PuzzleMad HQ back at the beginning of November last year and I was pleased to see that the instructions were simple:

"Open the lock and find the ant!"

As usual there is the admonishment not to use excessive force or use and external tools. Oddly, the back of the instruction card mentioned using tools to go bug hunting and how chimps did it. This had to be a big clue and I had to prove that I was at least as good as a chimp! Having said that, if I was a chimp relying on my abilities here to feed myself, I would have starved to death a long time ago!

Beautifully presented!

All of these locks are beautifully presented in a bag with the card. I dutifully now check the bag very carefully for hidden tools having been caught out for a long time with a previous puzzle. This puzzle accompanied me to work for several months with me getting absolutely nowhere before I transferred it to my pile of puzzles to solve at home. Oddly, the velour bag kept turning itself inside out every time I went to pick it up. I would return it to the correct orientation each time only to find it inside out again within a few days. This was very confusing to the male primate of the house (I actually began to question my sanity yet again) until one day I caught the female chimp in the HQ turning the bag inside out. I found out that Mrs S couldn't stand the fact that the bag picks up fluff and stour from my work bag which offends her deeply! Once I had taken a lint cleaner to it, she allowed it to stay the correct way around! Phew! I'm not bonkers!

I have sort of been on a lock roll recently - I managed to solve the Who Dares Wins and the MWPuzzles Keyring within a week or so and thinking this might bode well for other similar types of puzzles, I went back to Ant Hunt again and tried to utilise a little Think©ing. That will be an Ouch! without the Whack!

The keyring comes apart in the usual fashion and the key goes in the keyway in the usual way. It even turns 90º giving a very false hope. The key turns and the lock fails to open! Yes, what did any of you expect? Time for a closer look...there is hole in the front of the lock which you can see right through  and also a hole in each side which don't seem to show anything significant. if you feel the urge to emulate the picture at the top of the blog post you can poke your undone keyring into any of those holes and achieve pretty much nothing:

Look at me! I'm a chimp!
If you do this on the front it will go right through

None of this poking is terribly helpful and so it's time to look elsewhere. Interestingly, the shackle of the lock has quite a lot of play in it with movement of about 6-8mm. Except sometimes there is minimal movement possible (only a couple of mm) and oddly this minimal movement can occur at an extended position or a retracted position. It doesn't take long to work out what is going on to be able to make the shackle abilities change to whichever state you want it to be in - apart from open! This was where I was stuck for several months.

I played with this state of affairs for a while before I discovered something else that I should have found a long time before - Boaz had used a fairly standard trick but because I had been kept occupied by holes and a moving shackle, I had not looked further. Having made this important discovery, I now had more "primat"ive things to try and a new ability was found. Even with this nice new ability, I was unable to go any further until I thought© to combine one or two abilities into a chain (this really marks me as one of the higher primates or maybe a crow) and suddenly I had found the resident ant in the puzzle. Incredibly well hidden and not going to be found by accident without doing the right sequence of moves. After that, opening the lock was a lovely next step and the reason it all worked was revealed with a gasp of delight:

Incredible puzzle manufacturing skills

Resetting the lock is a relatively easy sequence as long as you know what you had done to get it open and doing it again is a pleasant bit of fun. I will be showing this off to my long-suffering anaesthesia assistants to show the engineering possibilities of a lock.

This is an amazing feat of puzzle engineering using a standard Nabob padlock. Yet again, I'm blown away by what is possible. Basically, I will have to buy everything that Boaz makes - I am not very good at lock puzzles (or any puzzles for that matter!) and they do keep me occupied for a very long time which proves very good value and ends with a phenomenal (slightly desperate) Aha! moment. You should get one whilst you can (either from Boaz direct or from PuzzleMaster) - you won't be disappointed.

Great Puzzling Comes in Twelves!

Time For More From Pelikan

Minima puzzles no 5 to 12

Number 1 to 4

It was only a month ago that I wrote about the last release from Jakub, Jaroslav and team's Pelikan puzzles. At that time they had beautifully reproduced the first 4 in the Minima series designed by the incredible Frederic Boucher. This time the next 8 are here in yet another gorgeous selection of woods and you really need to add them to your collection. The four from the last release that I have written about are still available as individual puzzles or a set of four. There is a Minima 13 but only so far only released by Frederic himself and Tye Stahly) it is possible that will also become available in the future as well.

From Nothingyetdesigns

Original from Frederic XIII

If they are going to be released like the last set then they should be in sets of four as well as single puzzles. The wood choices are perfect:

Minima 5 - Limba and Bubinga

Minima 6 - Ash and Ovangkol

Minima 7 - Wenge and Maple

Minima 8 - Ovangkol and Zebrano

Minima 9 - Acacia, Padauk and Wenge

Minima 10 - Zebrano, Purpleheart and Maple

Minima 11 - Merbau and Padauk

Minima 12 - Bubinga and Acacia

Obviously, like the rest of the Minima puzzles, the aim is to pack the pieces into the box and leave it so that no gaps are visible through either the large holes, small finger holes or slots that facilitate rotational moves (if the number of voxels is less than the 12 that would completely fill the box). Continuing with the pathway that the first four took, these get progressively more difficult but are always very fun to solve. The rotations are beautifully facilitated by the various holes and slots cut into the box and no force is needed. Some of the rotations are really quite tricky to work out and in several puzzles there are multiple rotations for one piece. As before, the wooden box makes the challenge much more difficult as you cannot see what is happening inside once a piece or two have been placed. I had not managed to solve Minima 8 in the acrylic box version despite months of trying after receiving them in September last year. Minima 8 doesn't look like too much of a challenge with 3 simple L-shaped tri-ominos and a single 3 voxel straight stick but there I had huge problems with it and was gratified when a couple of correspondents agreed that it was a really difficult puzzle.

Minima 9 and 10 are slightly different having pieces of 2 colours and whilst packing is the aim, the difference is that with Minima 9 the puzzler has to place them so that only one of the colours is visible through the holes in the box (for that one there are 2 solutions - one for each colour). Interestingly, I found one colour quite a bit harder than the other. Minima 10 has only one solution and needs to have only the vibrant Purpleheart visible from outside of the box. Minima 11 and 12 are very deceptive having relatively simple pieces and quite a lot of large holes in the box but they are also a huge challenge - almost as difficult as number 8. They both took me 2 or 3 days to solve but at least not the several months of the former. 

These puzzles are so much fun and this explains why I have a HUGE collection of these Minima puzzles of varying types and from various designers. Basically I will purchase any of them when released to add to my collection. I would say that these are ESSENTIAL purchases for anyone seriously into packing puzzles - they are stunningly beautiful and a fabulous challenge and the Pelikan team have made them so well!

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Empire

Empire by Jorgos Anastasou

Bottom view

The other puzzle being released by Pelikan alongside the 8 Minimas is the Empire burr by Jorgos Anastasou. This beautiful and complex 11 piece burr is presented as a rather dense block structure with a sort of dome on the top as would be seen on an emperor's palace. It has been made with a lovely set of woods (Padauk, Wenge, Acacia, Purpleheart and Maple for the vertical sticks forming the dome and a very warm Cherry for the walls). The first move is very well hidden partly because the pieces are quite snug and it required a good bit of pushing, prodding and pulling to find what could move. Once you have found the first move then it is quite quick to remove the first piece (there are just 5 moves required to separate it from the puzzle) but removing the next piece will prove a considerable challenge. It is only another 7 moves but finding the correct ones was very difficult for me. I went round and around in circles for a long time failing to find a critical move until I found it quite by accident. Unfortunately I did not notice what I had done until I realised that new positions were available to me and I was completely unable to backtrack! After a good half-hour of trying to return to the start, I gave up and continued with the disassembly which was great fun as it remains pretty stable right to the end. The final disassembly level is 5.7.1.2.3.2.2.2.1.2 which doesn't look terribly challenging but for me it is just right!

Reassembly required me to have a lot of fun with Burrtools but I think that those of you who remembered your pathway might manage without it and the genii amongst you might just manage to put it together from scratch. 

Jorgos is really designing some fantastic puzzles and I am so pleased that Jakub is agreeing to make them available to us in such fancy woods. This one will look stunning on display in your collection.