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!