Mrs S Meets Frau L.

Upcoming puzzles from Pelikan

Last week I reviewed the "easier" of the puzzles from the upcoming release from Jakub and Jaroslav's Pelikan puzzles. That was despite one of Lucie's puzzles being anything but easy! Today I focus on a week of fiddling with the results of Dr Volker Latussek's warped mind. These are really not easy!

Frau L.

Frau L. arrives with all but one piece in the hinged box

This incredible puzzle is yet another follow up to Hajime Katsumoto's Penta in a box. In the summer Volker continued Hajime-san's amazing thoughts about packing pieces into a hinged box by making the pieces 3D and a subset of the Fatomino group with his very fun puzzle that he named Fatomino. It was a hugely fun puzzle and really makes you think about what adding a rotational entry into a 3x3x3 box does. I loved it!

5 rather large pieces to be placed

Of course, Volker cannot leave a good thought alone and always explores any of his ideas until he reaches a limit of puzzling possibility. This time he decided that ALL of the pieces need to be 3D and none of them planar. This particular puzzle is absolutely gorgeous with a Mahogany box and each of the pieces made from multiple different wood cubes (Acacia, Garapa, Maple, Padauk and Purpleheart). It must have been a real pain for the Pelikan team to manufacture these but the end result is very worthwhile. Volker said this about the design process:

When I first tried to fit five FATS into a box with a hinged lid and briefly thought, ‘That’s impossible’, only to then use FATOMINO to demonstrate the wonderful properties the FATS display when combined with the hinged-lid box, I had discovered something astonishing for myself, without being able to put it to use for FATOMINO.

So I had to say goodbye to the FATS and instead fill the 3x3x3 box with any polycubes. I hadn't imagined quite how much of the familiar would remain in the end. For me, it was an exciting journey through the world of polycubes, only to end up packing five pieces back into the box, with a unique solution and a surprisingly low fill rate of less than ninety per cent.

Mrs L. often watched me as I moved the little blocks back and forth on the screen, and on more than one occasion, years later, she opened the corresponding parcel from Pelikan and saw the results. She always shares my delight when something intangible turns into something tangible.

With FATOMINO, it was the box with the hinged lid that she kept opening and closing. Perhaps it was the memory of her childhood jewellery box that made her so happy. It certainly wasn’t the FATS. For FRAU L., I’d only asked her briefly what sort of wood a jewellery box ought to be made of. Mahogany, obviously. With the polycubes for FRAU L., Pelikan had enquired whether the individual voxels really did need to be made from different types of wood. Yes, absolutely. Perhaps the colourful pieces in FRAU L. will help her get over the fact that, apart from LE COLLIER DE TANTE LIESEL and her wedding ring, no jewellery could have filled a jewellery box.

I dedicate FRAU L. to my wife Magdalene, whom I have called Mrs Latussek for almost four decades now, because she finds the name so ugly. It’s lovely that she has stayed with me all the same, and I so very much hope that the name Latussek sounds at least a little pleasant in the world of puzzles.

With FRAU L., I wish all members of the puzzle community a supportive companion for their passion. In particular, from Mrs S..

When I mentioned to Mrs S that this puzzle had been named after Mrs (Frau) L, she thoroughly approved and was amazed that anyone from the community would know enough about her to mention her. Needless to say, Mrs S never ever reads my blog and has absolutely no idea how much she appears in it (if she did there  would be a lot more than a Whack! Ouch!) Mrs S does admire the beauty of the wooden ones but has never had any urge to play with them which is a shame.

The Frau L. puzzle has 24 voxels to fit inside a 27 voxel cube. I initially thought that this might make the puzzle easier with having extra space but in reality this is not the case. The absence of a planar piece really adds to the complexity. I tried creating cubes and then looking at how to recreate the hinge movement that is so delightful with the Fatomino puzzle. There is a requirement to partially fill the main body of the box and leave enough space in the middle layer to allow the top parts to rotate down. The 3Dness of all the pieces caused me a lot of difficulty. I found a couple of nice cube assemblies and looked at all the possible orientations of them to see how they could be dissected into a top and bottom half. Every single one of them either had spaces that were blocked by cubies in front or the front lip of the box. In desperation, I went to Burrtools and realised that this was going to be much more difficult than I thought - there are 26 possible cubic assemblies! OMG!

I spent a whole week exploring them systematically and was getting nowhere at all. In the end I found myself sliding back and forth on the screen amongst the 26 solutions when I noticed a gap adjacent to a piece that I had not been really concentrating on. It was a gap in a very peculiar direction and in retrospect I should have realised that this would be something that Volker's warped mind would seize upon. I duly assembled the cube out of the pieces and explored what movements the special gap might allow - the Aha! moment was amazing! This assembly is similar to the assembly in the Fatomino puzzle but MUCH more! When you see it, you will know what I mean.

This is a glorious puzzle and a very fine extension to the Penta in a box line. Being named after Frau L herself is very fitting - she should be very proud.

Albert

Albert arrives with one piece outside the box

I vividly remember the incredible challenge that was Petit Albert from this time last year! I received a fair bit of correspondence about it. It was an amazing challenge to fit. That puzzle had an L shaped hole in the side of a 3x3x2 box and a bunch of Tetrominos to fit inside. The catch was that rotations were going to be required and the only way to facilitate them was to have curved edges along one side on each of them. Just like the Penta in a box, Volker is unable to let something go - he always explores the very limits of what is possible with any idea that he has - he always wants to make it better or more difficult. He did it this time by increasing the size of the box to a 4x4x2 cavity but having the same L shaped hole on one edge and lengthened most of the tetrominos into pentominos whilst continuing to have the single very tactile curve along the edges. My initial response was horror - I remembered just how tough the precedent puzzle had been and was frightened that this might prove impossible.

Just like the Petit Albert, this puzzle is beautifully made from Oak and Wenge. They will look great on display together. As with most of Volker's creations there is a very particular transport assembly which leaves one piece outside the box. I actually struggled to get the pieces out of the box as they started to rotate and slide about. On top of that there is very little room to get your finger in to direct them. I eventually had the pieces ready for the obligatory photo: 

A triomino, tetromino, 4 pentominos and a hexomino

Looking at the pieces, there appears to be 3 identical shapes and 4 others. The design philosophy behind it was described by Volker:

Some time ago, a sculpture by the Spanish artist Carlos Albert reminded me of a distorted Tetracube. Perhaps that’s not so surprising, considering that Carlos Albert forges his sculptures from solid square steel. I had set myself the task for PETIT ALBERT of integrating as many rotations as possible into a 3x3x2 box - when playing with the distorted Tetracubes, it quickly becomes clear that the absence of some edges enables new rotations - the challenge with ALBERT was to combine the opening of PETIT ALBERT with the 4x4x2 box from my TWISTED-TETRA. I’m always delighted when something new emerges from the interplay of the familiar and new observations, but I’m especially happy when you, like me, discover and enjoy the sometimes-wondrous properties of the pieces as you play with ALBERT - perhaps PETIT ALBERT’s big brother. Of course, using some of my new favourite Pentacubes: The Fats.

As always, the trick is to assemble the packing shape outside the box and see how easy it is to remove the pieces through the required hole. I quickly found a couple of assemblies - the cavity is 32 voxels in volume and there are 32 voxels in the pieces. This is very important as it means that the first pieces to be removed will need to be direct with no rotations. My first shape had no way to remove any pieces at all direct and I quickly moved onto searching for another. It didn't take long - the pieces are all a really nice size and are lovely to play with on a table. I was very encouraged to see that my second shape had the ability to slide 2 pieces straight out through the hole:

Two pieces will come out but so near and yet so far!

Having done this, I looked for the next moves and found that nothing was possible. It was stuck! I was slightly concerned that if there was going to be a huge number of possible assemblies, I might struggle to remember what I had tried. A third assembly allowed the removal of another piece after the first 2 but again I got stuck. I went back to Burrtools to check on how many possible assemblies there might be and was very reassured to see only 7. Time to be systematic...

I quickly found an assembly that would allow me to easily remove 4 pieces and then a fifth with some relatively simple rotations. After that, there were only 2 pieces left to play with - this MUST be the correct assembly so it was time to try it in the box. Oh boy! Working out how to rotate these first 2 pieces into position was a massive challenge. One piece in particular was a huge problem - controlling the movements was very difficult but eventually I managed it with a rather clever and unexpected rotational move. I have never seen a move quite like that one in one of these packing puzzles - very very clever. I finally had my pieces inside and a feeling of huge achievement.

How does this compare with its' little brother? Interestingly, with this one having larger pieces and a larger cavity, the puzzle is more constrained which actually makes it easier to solve but also a LOT more interesting and fun. It is very clever and more accessible than Petit Albert which was extremely tough. If you have the original then you must get this. If you want to try a rotational packing puzzle then this is one of the best of them. Absolutely superb.

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Safe 2 coming soon

I mentioned last week that Safe 2 was going to be released soon - it is a sequential discovery puzzle which should interest many of you. The original Safe 1 is still available from Pelikan here and my review is here. You can pre-order the Safe 2 by contacting Jakub by email at info@pelikanpuzzles.eu or using the Contact page on their site