Very Nearly An Idiot!

PIL Box

PIL Box by Richard Williams

I very nearly didn't have anything for you today. I have had a rather busy week and am actually going to be working as this posts. I have furiously been trying to solve something all week and until about 2 hours ago had nothing to write about. I went back to another of the IPP exchange puzzles that I have been trying to work out off and on since I got it in June.

I had been encouraged by the fact that Fraser had assured everyone that even an "idiot can solve it". I suspect he is doing himself a disservice - he seems to be pretty good at solving puzzles - especially compared to me - but then you all know that I am not terribly bright. 

Pack 3 pieces

This creation from Richard Williams was his exchange puzzle at the IPP which he was kind enough to give to me despite me not being an exchanger. It promptly went into the pile to be solved (which is currently GIGANTIC) and due to the easy idea of packing 3 pieces through a limited entry hole into a box kept me coming back. Easy idea maybe but easy to do? Nope! But if the "idiot" can solve it then I didn't want to show myself to be worse than that (moron?)

It's very nice and tactile. The  pieces have to be placed through a hole at one corner that it eccentric and has an odd chamfer to one edge. The I and L shapes are easy to insert but the C shape has to be inserted with a fun rotational move which can only happen in one direction. Working out which order to place them is the start - it turns out that they get blocked up really fast! Other rotational moves once a piece is inside is very limited due to a single blocked voxel inside the box. 

I had been stuck for weeks. I kept going with my Einsteinian approach of trying the same thing and variants of it again and again! As usual this did not have the desired effect and I was forced to think©. Fraser said it was sneaky so I did one of my moves a few more times in the hope that it would be sneaky if I did it again. Nope! Eventually I tried something which shouldn't have worked and it didn't because I did it wrong but then thunk about how else I could do it. Aha! Damn, why didn't I think of that before? I'm not terribly bright. I finally had my pieces packed inside the box and felt very foolish. He's a sneaky bugger that Rich. Very fun puzzle to play with and great to show non-puzzlers. They will be very annoyed at you when you show them the secret. Thanks mate.

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I have to blame Allard for this. I read his review and put myself on the waiting list for a few weeks when it suddenly came up for sale again. It's rather large and Mrs S was most unimpressed at the space it takes up. She was even less impressed at the enormous customs bill I had to pay!

Yes, it is the ECD-trilogy (Entity Containment Device Trilogy) puzzle set from Nothing puzzles in Australia. It is beautifully made, significantly heavy and looks like it might well be another puzzle I cannot solve (based on watching Rich and Dan fail to complete it at MPP). Lot's of fun coming up!