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Upcoming wonders from Jakub, Jaroslav and team
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I teased on my "
new toys" page that I had received a bunch of wonderful new puzzles from the incredible
Pelikan team and that I was working my way through them as fast as my little brain
would cope. This was going to be a fun challenge for me whilst the present wife
(she's doing ok for a first wife) was up in Edinburgh all week visiting the
out-laws. Unfortunately I still had to work but part of it was at a virtual
medical conference for a couple of days which did give me a few breaks to play
in. I did try to play during the talks but I am not a woman and thus, cannot
multitask. Yesterday, I managed to complete the final challenge (with a little
cheating) and am ready to produce my reviews for you.
Ladybug
Ladybug by Pelikan - front and back views. It is adorable!
Pelikan have begun producing their own designs recently and are focussing on
animals/insects. They are all absolutely gorgeous and have a real character to
them. I classify them as "interlocking" puzzles but not burrs - I am not an
expert, but I am sure that they count as
Kumiki (maybe
Frank will correct me if I'm wrong?) The Ladybug is a good bit larger than the
previous releases - it stands out vibrantly in the living room (where my
collection seems to be expanding much to the annoyance of Mrs S). It is
made from Wenge and an incredibly red Padauk and is just plain cute. The
last one,
Snail, was slightly more complex than to dismantle than this one but it is still
fun. To make it more of a challenge, I immediately scrambled the pieces and
made a pile before trying to reassemble. It is still not very difficult but
did take me a few minutes to work out the order and how to interlock them
properly. This is a must have just for its' sheer beauty!
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A pile o' pieces!
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Dino
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Dino by Christoph Lohe -Wenge and Acacia
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Walnut and Wenge
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There will be 2 versions of the Dino puzzle designed by Christoph Lohe.
Chris is one of my favourite puzzle designers - he has a huge knack of
creating puzzles that have a real quirky challenge to them. they are just
the right difficulty level and are genuinely fun. This one is rather
different to his usual - it is a fun cute shape and has less pieces than
many of his other challenges. I think it is adorable.
The aim, obviously is to dismantle it and reassemble and this is definitely
possible without using Burrtools. I had to feed back to Jakub that there was
a rotational shortcut in the design that left the puzzle as a level 5
disassembly (Jakub hopes that you will not mind this). Personally I think it
adds an extra dimension to the puzzle - first solve it with the rotation and
then seek out the purely linear solution. The linear solution has a level
20.7.3.3 and one of the moves took me a very long time to find. Reassembly
is possible without Burrtools and for the truly gifted amongst you then I
suggest that you disassemble with the shortcut and then make the linear
reassembly the true challenge. I think that will keep most of you going for
a while.
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Dino dismembered!
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Shutout
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Shutout by Osanori Yamamoto
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This fabulous puzzle by Osanori Yamamoto has
already been reviewed
by me after I bought it direct from the master himself. In fact
Allard
has just reviewed it as well (summary - he loved it!) This fabulous
challenge won a "Top 10 vote getter" prize in the
2022 IPP Design competition and I am so glad that it is being produced in greater numbers than
Osanori-san can manage - everyone should get a chance to try this puzzle. It
will be available in Wenge and Padauk as well as Wenge and Maple.
The aim is to assemble 6 identical tetrominoes inside the cubic box in such
a way that all the gaps are filled. It has a nice "almost there" solution
but the true solution requires several lovely Aha! moments. It is actually
quite difficult - one of the great puzzlers out there, Naoaki Takashima, had
shown it off as one of his puzzles of 2022 (alongside 3 other very serious
puzzlers). When Naoaki-san had showed it off he had announced that he had
placed a few of the pieces inside and couldn't even work out how he had done
it and couldn't remove them. If a puzzler as good as this struggled then it
has to be a significant challenge. Even having solved the original version,
I struggled to solve it again after a gap of a few months - I remembered the
tricks but still couldn't put all of them together into one solution without
a struggle.
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No! This picture is not helpful!
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It is beautifully made as you would expect from Pelikan and wonderfully
tactile. I have to say that this is one of those "essential purchases" from
this Pelikan release.
Slider 2
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Slider 2 by Osanori Yamamoto
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Osanori-san has a second puzzle in this release and it is a significant
challenge. I had bought and reviewed the Gem from his in April and
absolutely adored the challenge (in fact Osanori and told me that Gem was
one of his favourite puzzles). The Slider 2 is like the Gem but on steroids
- it is a significantly difficult challenge and luckily has been sent out as
a disassembly challenge rather than an assembly one. They share in common
the fact that there are plate burrs which ned to be fitted into a cubic
frame. Made more complex by the fact that the plates are not flat and
protrude out into the z axis. Gem has 3 plates and Slider 2 ups the ante by
having 4 plates. It has been beautifully made with Mahogany and Wenge and
the finish ensures that everything slides smoothly. Some of the moves are
very well hidden. and there are several blind ends and circular routes
possible during the exploration. I got stuck for several days with the
plates extended out of the frame quite a long way but just could not find a
space where it would extend enough to release. After 4 days of trying, I
found my missing move with a great shout and removed the first piece. After
that it is easy to remove the rest. I then suggest that you leave the pieces
for a while before trying to put it back together - it is VERY difficult if
you have mixed the pieces up. I failed and had to create a Burrtools file
which told me that the disassembly level was 21.2.1.2
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A fabulous challenge
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This was a huge challenge for me due to getting stuck so close to the end.
Reassembly required Burrtools but after that it was a fun one to memorise and
assemble from memory.
Nebelung
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Nebelung by Alfons Eyckmans
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I have a bit of a weakness for caged burrs - there is something about how the
addition of a cage around a (usually) 6 piece burr makes it so much more
difficult (I wrote about one just a
few weeks ago). Alfons is a master of puzzle design and he takes an idea and runs with it
until he has created an ultimate version of the genre. I have bought many of
the interlocking cubes from him as well as from Jakub over the years and they
are just amazing. This time Alfons has taken the caged burr and made it more
interesting and more difficult - he has taken a 9 piece burr and placed it in
a rather complex cage and created a level 18.1.1.2.2 puzzle which
requires some proper exploring and clever moves to solve. Pelikan have made it
using a lovely contrasting Wenge and vibrant Padauk (it really is as bright as
the picture shows).
Straight away there are some lovely moves to explore and not too many blind
endings to get lost in. I made some fast progress initially before getting
stuck for a day. The cage here seems to act to hold the pieces in place but
still allows you to see inside and try and plan your moves. It took me some
time to find a rather delicious move that I could not have found by accident -
I needed to look and plan to get my special "squish" move. This then opened up
more pathways and progress seemed to be being made before I was stuck again. I
got stuck here for a few more days and, again, had to look and plan. Suddenly
after another Aha! moment I had opened up a section which allowed pieces to be
removed from the puzzle. It remained remarkably stable until I had removed
almost all 9 burrsticks. I did have to resort to Burrtools for the early part
of the reassembly but once I had the first 4 pieces inside the frame, I was
able to reassemble it from scratch. This was a framed burr made beautifully at
just the right difficulty level.
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Just look at that wonderful craftsmanship!
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Ode to the Bevel aka Fermat for Friends
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Ode to the bevel by Dr Volker Latussek
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Yes, we have another of Dr Latussek's clever packing puzzles! I was contacted
by Volker when he heard that I had received my review copy. I was very
surprised that he was almost apologetic about it! He said:
"I had planned to pack five identical triangles into my usual box. I had
wished that the triangles were beveled, preferably the tips were trimmed.
I made a virtue of this necessity and for the first time designed a puzzle
whose solution is only possible with a bevel. Nevertheless, Pelikan had to
keep the usual small tolerances. Many thanks for that. The puzzle is an
ode to the bevel. I beg the indulgence of the experts among Pelikan's
customers, ODE TO THE BEVEL is, like my CASINO, a puzzle for the coffee
table."
Volker had designed something very clever but thought that the puzzle may not
have the purity and difficulty of his previous puzzles that Jakub and
Jaroslav's customers had come to expect. He wanted it to be a family puzzle
that is suitable to display on a coffee table for all to play with rather than
go in a collection. I have to say that he has NOTHING to apologise for!
Yes, this puzzle is not as pure as some others and indeed, it is not quite as
difficult as as the others but that does not detract from it at all. I think
that this puzzle is FABULOUS! It has been beautifully made from Pink Oak and a
vibrant yellow Garapa.
There are a few interesting possibilities when assembling shapes outside the
box. The pieces seem to fit into the box quite easily up to getting the fourth
one in and then it gets pretty blocked up and even with my small fingers, I
struggled to move them around inside as they blocked each other. This puzzle
requires a bit of thought about how the shapes can interact with the box and a
bit of planning before you get a lovely Aha! moment and suddenly the final
piece sits inside. I won't show the solved puzzle here. As with all of
Volker's puzzles, he has a very specific transport assembly which in itself is
a bit fiddly to get done - I don't envy the Pelikan team putting them all
together!
Tetra Flop
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Tetra Flop by Dr Latussek
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8 Tetrominoes to fit
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Another masterpiece by Volker! This packing puzzle is gorgeous and chunky. The
substantial box is Elm and the vibrant pieces are Bubinga. It consists of all
eight possible Tetrominoes which need to be formed into a 4x4x2 cuboid but done
through a 1½x4 voxel hole in the top. There is a small hole in the bottom which
is not quite big enough to let you put fingers through to move the pieces around
inside. It quickly becomes apparent that the size and position of this hole is
perfect to allow rotations of the pieces in certain directions inside the box.
This is obviously going to be a challenging puzzle.
Having removed the pieces for my photo, I wanted to put them back in the same
way so that I could carry it in my work bag for a few days. Sigh! I couldn't
even find the way to replace them in the transport position which had the
4x1x1 stick just lying on top. This might just prove impossible for me. Volker
had also commented on this to me:
"sparked by a call from Oskar van Deventer to suggest new cages for the
SOMA CUBE. Although I'd already worked on a similar idea a while ago, I
gave it another go, and in fact this time turned out to be more
productive than back then and I had a lot of fun playing with the new
ideas and especially working with Oskar. (Thanks Oskar!)...
While I can't definitively say that there isn't one, I have only
managed to find one dirty design with an extra opening on the back,
which might be a clue to the (unique) solution. For me, the solution
contains such wonderful rotations that I decided I had to publish TETRA
FLOP despite my reservations."
Yet again he seems to be apologising for a "less than pure" puzzle! The fact
that the box needed a hole to facilitate some of the rotations to his mind
makes the puzzle less worthy and again, I have to disagree. The purity of the
puzzle does not in any way detract from the wonderful sequences of moves that
are required to solve it! Again, this puzzle is a masterpiece and I just do
not understand how his mind works to find these designs. I initially tried
making the required shapes outside the box and then looking to see whether I
could do so through the limited opening. Each shape I found has to be looked
at in 8 different orientations. I am not very good at Soma type assemblies and
having found 4 cuboids and 32 different failed attempts at inserting them into
the box, I went to Burrtools to see how many possible assemblies there might
be and was horrified to see that there are 695! Aargh!
At this point I had asked Jakub for some help and the solution file was sent
to me. I was very careful to glance through squinted eyes and only saw the
positions of 3 of the pieces and used this as my starting point. Another 3
days and I had found a few assemblies that might be promising but just could
not get them in the box. Back to Burrtools - I constrained the solver to have
those 3 pieces in the positions that I had seen and now I had only 60
possibilities and also did not need to bother with rotation of the assembled cuboid. The fourth of
the assemblies that Burrtools had found did look promising and I set to. Oh
boy! There are a LOT of rotations in this and they must be done in the right
order and right position. Volker is absolutely right, this has some wonderful
rotations in it which are a joy to explore.
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This will not help you in any way!
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This is a seriously difficult puzzle! It is not for the faint hearted and only
the very best (or luckiest) of you will manage to solve this without help. If I
had not been shown the position of 3 pieces then I think I would still be at it
for weeks if not years. This is perfect for the puzzle geniuses or the suckers
for punishment! Thank you Volker!
What do I advise you to definitely buy? Shutout is an essential for puzzlers -
it won a prize for a very good reason. Ode to the Bevel is yet another
fabulous Latussek puzzle - being slightly easier than its' predecessors does
not detract from the joy I got in its' solution. Ladybug is gorgeous, fun and
will look lovely on display. After that, it depends on whether burrs are your
thing or incredibly difficult packing puzzles. Personally, I think you should
buy them all!
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