A Fun Week Of Torturing

Ice Cream SandWitch

Having had a bad week last week, I was really motivated to get back into it for this post. I took the three TICs that Allard gave me to work and tortured a couple of lovely girls who surprised me with their tenacity.

Georgia - my ODP

Even the radiographer!

Caduceus pieces

I had worked on Caduceus first after writing my post last week. It looks the easiest of them having only 2 pieces to fit inside. The fun thing about it is that both pieces have circular rods in them which implies that they will both need to undergo rotations to get them placed.

The first thing to do is go through some thinking© to work out which direction each of them need to be placed across the cubic frame. I was gratified to see that both girls who tried this puzzle did exactly the same thing before attempting the insertion. It's nice to see that thought is universal with puzzles. 

Having established the direction of travel we experimented to see how the individual pieces could be moved into place and then see whether the second one could be manipulated around the first. Oh boy! They really get in the way of each other. There are a LOT of moves and they dance around each other a huge amount. There are so many rotational and sliding moves that for me it is impossible to keep track of them. I managed to assemble it last Sunday evening and then couldn't take it apart again for a very long time.

Damn! That was tough

Eventually I separated the pieces and watched in fascination as Georgia and one of the other theatre staff worked on it and was very gratified to see that they had the exact same experience. Both really enjoyed it and were keen to try the others. I love infecting others with the excitement of puzzling! Especially girls - we need more girl puzzlers.

The next 2 of the TICs from Alan Lunsford were Cobra and Hydra:

Cobra has only one rotational piece

Hydra has 2 rotating pieces

Cobra has the advantage that the two frame pieces are just like simple interlocking cube puzzles and relatively easy to work out where they go together but then whilst it is simple to see where the rotating piece has to go, it is actually a huge challenge to insert it into position. With everything you try the piece almost arrives but not quite. Many possible moves leads to the thing falling apart. None of the girls managed to get past this point and it was with some trepidation that I attempted it myself. It is damned tough. There is a very very nice sequence to get the thing assembled. Luckily with this one, once you have done it then the disassembly is not going to be hard to manage. It is really clever and perfect to get someone hooked - the ability to get so close and yet so far away is wonderful for the experienced as well as the newbie puzzler.

Hydra has 2 rotational pieces and it doesn't take long to work out where they have to go. Like the Caduceus, there is a whole lot of dancing with some rather extreme moves before it eventually slides together. Disassembly is also a challenge. It took me a good hour before I could say that I really understood the puzzle. I will be taking it to work to torture people for a few weeks.

Cobra assembled

Hydra assembled

If you have a 3D printer (Sob! Never me!) then I suggest you go to Alan's Printables page and download the files for these and make yourself some TICs - they are simply fabulous!

Next up, I tortured myself with George Bell and Nan Ma's Dodecahedron assembly kit. I spent quite a lot of time in the IPP design competition room in Italy attempting several of the challenges set out with these and completely failed. I came to the conclusion that my hands are too small or the pieces were too perfectly made with not enough gaps to help me. But, I am a sucker for a puzzle kit and the five challenges sung to me. I started with the easiest of them (rated medium) and after nearly an hour yesterday, I finally managed an assembly. Hooray!

Dear Lord! That was tough and it was the easiest!

I spent another couple of hours trying various of the other challenges and got absolutely nowhere apart from to teach the cats some swear words and to piss off Mrs S with all the muttering under my breath. The pieces can be assembled gradually by gently pulling apart and adding extras. This continues until there's no space for any more and then as long as the assembly is correct there's a space for the final piece but no way to insert it. Time to take a few out and place them in a different order. Finally you have to pull it apart to the almost falling to bits position and try and manoeuvre the last piece or pieces and let it collapse together into shape. Unfortunately, I have been completely unable to manage it - I pull it apart to the almost falling to bits and then as I wiggle, it just "falls to bit" - Aargh! I'll keep at it for a while longer but I'm losing hope. I saw a friend at the MPP manage them all but I have no idea how.

Finally I have to show off the Ice Cream SandWitch puzzle which I also solved this week.

Ice Cream SandWitch by Alexander Dangl
I never noticed the mis-spelling until now!

This puzzle was also an entry into the Design competition this year where it won a Jury Honourable Mention Award. I actually didn't play with it myself at the IPP because I had immediately decided that I wanted to buy a copy having seen p[eople enjoying it and with lots of shouts of delight as they solved it. The following day at the main puzzle party, I quickly found it for sale and got hold of a copy. Let me say straight up - it's a lovely thing and great fun to solve with plenty of Aha! moments.

It is available in 3 ice cream flavours (pistachio, vanilla and the strawberry that I have). The aim is to work your way through finding and using tools to get yourself the coin to allow you to buy more ice cream. At the moment it is available from PuzzleMaster and sold out at Tye and Amanda's Nothing Yet Designs (they may well get more n stock in time).

Initially, the only obvious tool is a bolt that slides part way out when you tilt the puzzle downwards. The first thing to do is work out how to release the bolt and then see where it can be used to make other things happen. The first couple of moves are quite easy to find and will lull you into a false sense of security. I managed those first couple of steps very fast and then got stuck for a while. I had a bolt, a magnet and that was it. There are lots of magnetic areas inside the puzzle but I was unable to manipulate them. I had to put it down for a while due to demands by the present wife that I do some stuff for her. Later on, I returned to the puzzle and noticed something really quite subtle. Aha! I now had...another magnet and nothing to do with it.

I'll not tell you what I did next as I don't want to spoil it for any of you but I have to say that you need to use physics to solve this one and after another few moves you have your coin to allow the purchase of more ice cream. It's wonderful and certainly a candidate for my top ten(ish) of 2026. I will be bringing this to work to torture people as well. My work bag is always shoulder bruisingly heavy because I bring so many great puzzles with me. Torturing people is fun!