The last few weeks have been rather poor puzzling weeks for me. The case mix at
work has become rather challenging as I have been presented with quite a lot of
really challenging cases. For 3 weeks in a row, I have been up to my eyeballs in
blood which has a marked tendency to leave you just a little fatigued by the
time you get home. At one point, was also a connection on a pice of equipment
that had not been tightened adequately and when some salvaged blood was
connected, there was a ...erm... leak. I have to tell you that a little blood
goes a long way! Especially when it trickles up your arm inside your clothing!
Aargh!
One puzzle that I have been carrying around with me for a few weeks has been
another packing puzzle from
Frederic Boucher, produced by the amazing
Tye Stahly, is
the
Marble Cake+. It is currently sold out but, again, if enough of you make enquiries, Tye
might be convinced to make it again. In this one, Frederic proves his mastery
of 3D puzzle design - he abandons the usual 2x2x3 container to be packed and
uses a 2x4x4 box which has a giant 2x2 hole in the top (plus a small 1 voxel
hole in the front. No rotations are allowed. So what makes it a challenge? 3
of the pieces have ½ voxel overlaps which effectively means that it is not a
2x4x4 packing puzzle - it is, in reality a 2x8x8 puzzle and my brain doesn't
work well at that scale.
I have spent at least a month searching for a way to assemble the pieces that
fit the space (there were going to be gaps) and I really struggled. Having the
½ voxel pieces messed with my head. In fear that I would need to work my way
through dozens of assemblies to pack, I entered the pieces into Burrtools and,
much to my relief, I saw that there was only one way to assemble the pieces in
the 2x4x4 space. All that I needed to do was find it and then work through 16
possible orientations with the box to find one that worked and finally, work
out the order and move sequence of the pieces. I deliberately did not memorise
the position of all the pieces but had a vague memory of where 3 of them went
with respect to each other. I know it is sort of cheating but I was getting
desperate for some success.
Even knowing the start positions of these pieces did not make it easy. I really
struggled to assemble my shape and after a month, I finally found it. Next,
place it inside the box. Easy peasy? Nope! I always start by trying to see
whether I can remove the pieces from the box rather than put them in. Here this
was made a little easier by the fact that the front wall of the box was
detachable. I don't know whether this was deliberate but it really helped me! I
pulled off the front and stuffed the assembly inside and attempted to take the
pieces out.
Make sure you take your photo of the assembly because you will forget it
almost immediately after you take it apart to place individual pieces in the
box! Quite a few of the orientations of the shape can immediately be discarded
because there is absolutely no way to get even a single piece out.
I spent all morning today with my assembled cuboid and systematically worked
until I found which one was possible and with great relief, just before it was
time to write a blog post I had my solved puzzle. Talk about cutting it to the
wire! It's a brilliant design by the absolute master of packing puzzles. A slight spoiler in the next picture so I have hidden it behind a
button.
Finally after a month!
This is a huge challenge for such a simple idea and with no rotations. The half voxel pieces seemed to confuse me so much. Maybe you will be better at it than me? Ask Tye about making more and hopefully you can try it yourself.
The remainder of the puzzles just released by
Pelikan
If you had not been informed by email from Jakub, then you should know that the
puzzles from the current release are now up for sale in the
Pelikan store.
All except the Minima Magnetik and Rising Peaks - Everest are still available.
If you still want the Minima Magnetik then you badger get the version Tye
Stahly from the NothingYetDesigns store to make another batch of
his version. I don't know whether Pelikan will make any more.
Today's blog is about the remainder of the summer release from Jakub and
Jaroslav. I am sure that I can help you spend some more money!
This is yet another tray packing puzzle from the amazing
Lucie Pauwels. Except it is not “just” another tray puzzle! Lucie seems to have the
unique ability to design these puzzles with something about them that makes
them more than trial and error. Jakub obviously is very good at recognising
the value of these amongst all the designs that he must see. The
Broken Frame and Window
is a brilliant, beautiful and challenging logical design. It consists of a
complex tray made from Maple (137 x 137mm) with a very specifically shaped
gap where the frame should be and then a square hole in the centre (the
window). To be fitted in, there are 14 unique pieces made from a deep
vibrant Purpleheart.
When I first looked at it, I sort of quailed, thinking that this would be
many many hours of trial and error and I have the memory of a demented
goldfish so have a huge problem remembering previous patterns that I had
tried. However, when I set to playing with it, I quickly realised that this
is very much a logic challenge. There are some pieces with very restricted
placement choices and a couple of gaps in the frame that have very limited
options for which of the pieces can go in them. This made the puzzle much
more compelling.
It still was not easy and took me several hours of play before I reached the
point where the frame was filled. Much to my chagrin, I had made one
assumption about one of the gaps in the frame and kept trying the wrong
approach until exasperation made me think a different way. I am sure this
was a deliberate design feature by Lucie meant specifically to trap me! The
central window is just a 5x5 square and should be relatively easy to fill
once you have worked out which pieces are left over from the frame. The only
problem is that there are 5 different ways to fill the frame and only one of
them leaves the correct pieces to fill the window. There is still some trial
and error but it is great fun!
Over the last few years of reviewing the puzzles designed by
Volker Latussek, I think the
Flop series
is my favourite because of the fabulous accessibility and challenge. I had
thought that the series had ended but was very gratified to see the
Coffin-Flop
in the current batch. This one is beautifully made using American Walnut and
American Cherry. It is beautifully chunky and consists of three tetracubes and
three pentacubes. They are to be fitted into a 70mm across box with a 3x3x3
cavity. The pieces consist of a total of 27 voxels which will completely fill
the box with no gaps.
Volker designed this and named it as a tribute to the great Stewart Coffin -
there was even a conversation between the two puzzle powerhouses:
"Dear Mr Coffin, when your HALF HOUR was published as a packer at
Cubicdissection last year, I myself played with your basic idea of
splitting a 3x3x3 into three penta-cubes and three tetra-cubes to add a
cube-shaped box with six pieces to my FLOP SERIES. That doesn't work with
your HALF HOUR, but there is actually a similar set of six pieces that has
nice movements in and out of the box. I wonder if I can call the puzzle
COFFIN-FLOP? Pelikan will publish the puzzle.”
STC: "After all these years, what a surprise. I never was very good with names.
Often that was the hardest part. I have been so busy with other projects
lately that puzzles are now in my past. But they were fun, especially
dissections. No opinion on type of wood. I used whatever was available.
Keep up the good work.
Stewart Coffin (STC), Massachusetts"
You know from the beginning that this is going to be a huge challenge of first
construction of possible cubes and then finding the single way they can be
inserted through the limited opening (less than 2 voxels across). There will
be rotations and there will be swearing! In fact there was swearing right from
the beginning as the special transport placement of the pieces actually proved
a challenge for this puzzler to remove from the box just so that he could get
started.
The solution of course requires rotations and also the ability to control
rotations deep inside the box with no room to insert your fingers - if you can
find a way to control gravity then you will have a significant advantage. If
you are one of us normal humans who cannot change the direction of the
gravitational field as required then some real dexterity is required.
Yessssss!
Taking it apart and returning it to the transport position is another huge
challenge!
I adore these puzzles and was very gratified to solve it after just 2 days of
work! If you have any of the previous Flop series then you should buy this one
- it is brilliant!
Another incredibly challenging packing puzzle -
The Real Euklid
has seven cubic and cuboidal pieces to fit in the 9x9x9 box with the usual
limited entry at the top. It is rather lovely to look at being made from
Mahogany and Wenge - using these woods also gives the puzzle a nice weight.
Yes, Dr Latussek has done it yet again! There is yet another puzzle in his
incredible
Euklid packing series. This one must be really special because Volker named it as “the
REAL Euklid” as if all the previous ones had been fake. Volker
wrote the following about this design"
"Finally, we've arrived! After a few wrong turns and some significant
misjudgments, such as seemingly unique solutions suddenly turning into
double-digit numbers of solutions, I am now proud to present THE REAL
EUKLID. The task I set myself over six years ago should now be complete:
Find a 9x9x9 cubic box with a centred 5×9 opening and seven different
cuboids with an edge length of between 3 and 6 units AND A UNIQUE
SOLUTION!
In fact, I changed my design strategy for THE REAL EUKLID. Until now, I
have always focused on the most beautiful sequence of movements possible
for seven cuboids, but this time I did it the other way around: I let
the possible cuboids sink in and saw which sequence they showed me - I
tried to take on the role of the solver who wants to discover the
designer's idea but initially only sees the pieces. Looking at the
cuboids without any preconceived sequence of moves broadened my
perspective so much that I was able to complete the task. When I saw the
solution for the first time, I couldn't believe that I had achieved my
task. I was very sceptical because of my experience with EUKLID. Maybe I
didn't want to believe it because I secretly hoped that there was no
solution to my task. Overall, I had a great time designing THE REAL
EUKLID.
Now take a look at the seven cuboids and the interplay with the box for
yourself. Then you too can have a great time with THE REAL EUKLID."
There are at least two in this series that I have still not solved despite
going back to them on and off for years now. I would not be surprised if
this one joined that group. I have only really had an hour or so to play
with this one so far and have not got a clue as yet. These puzzles are not
for the faint hearted. All the shapes to be fitted inside have a side length
as a multiple of 7mm (21, 28, 35 or 42mm) and the interior is 63mm in all
directions - there is a sort of beauty to that and I am sure that knowing it
will be a help to some of you but to me - I haven’t got a clue. Good luck to
all who buy - it will be a great challenge.
You know you need this one for your collections - it is lovely, it’s a huge
challenge and the continuation of the series. No puzzler can truly resist a
puzzle series - especially if they are this good.
I am sure that there are some puzzles for you here! There is so much to
choose from with puzzles from 3 of the best designers in the world. Get them
whilst they are still available.
Yes, if you have been watching my
new stuff page
or my
FB page then
you will have seen that quite a few new toys have arrived at PuzzleMad HQ over
the last month or so and Mrs S has become increasingly irritated with me. The
camel's back very nearly snapped at the end of last week when I had to admit to
her that there might be another delivery from Jakub, Jaroslav and team whilst I
was at work last week. My incipient murder was delayed by a plane malfunction in
Germany and the promised big box didn't arrive on time. The end result was that
it was delayed until last Monday and I was working from home - no there were no
knee replacements on the kitchen table! I was doing committee work on the
dreaded MS Teams - 😱. The arrival of the box was beautifully timed between
meetings and I managed to intercept it and secrete it away before there was an
explosion! Phew.
The downside of the delayed flight was that I had much less time to play. I
have only managed to solve 4 of the 8 arrivals so far. Hopefully the rest will
be ready for next Sunday.
This gorgeous cube is another of a long line of amazing interlocking puzzles
from the Master, Alfons Eyckmans. I have quite a few of these now, both
direct from him, as well as versions from
Pelikan
and they are always great fun to play with as well as looking fabulous on
display. This one is very attractive made from Wenge, Maple and Purpleheart.
It is a simpler design than many of the others but this makes for a rather
nice exploration and solve.
My first time dismantling it I found a rather nice rotational shortcut but
quickly put the piece that is removed back in the puzzle as I know that Alfons
tends not to like rotational solutions. The first piece comes out nice and
logically and opens up quite a lot of movement but for a while I was missing
the key move that would allow me to progress. It was a nice surprise when I
found it and even then the next part was not obvious. The puzzle does reveal
the inner locking mechanism and that helps you plan the next few moves.
It's going to be fun putting this back together
Having disassembled it, then is definitely a fun challenge to scramble the
pieces and then reassemble after the memory of the disassembly has faded.
Great fun! If you love cuboid interlocking puzzles and Alfons' work interests
you then this is a brilliant one for your collection.
This is another of Girish Sharma's amazing interlocking cube creations.
Judging from the name Rising Peaks hyphenated with a mountain name, I
suspect this is the first in a whole series of these puzzles - I certainly
hope so! Beautifully made using Padauk, Wenge, Acacia and Maple, the initial
challenge is to separate the pieces from their travel assembly. Maybe I'm
not very good at puzzles (it does say that all over my website) but I
actually took a good 5 minutes taking it apart. Then obviously you have to
assemble them into a 4x4x4 cube using linear moves only. Many puzzlers have
moved away from solely linear interlocking puzzles but I still love the
standard interlocking puzzles that I first learned about so many years ago
from
Richard Gain. They provide a wonderful challenge and can be quite tough. This one is
absolutely superb.
From the beginning it is very easy to establish the positions of the 4
pieces but actually assembling them is a tremendous fun challenge. Working
out which pieces to use first and which subsequently get inserted is part of
the difficulty. There is no obvious order when looking at the shapes and in
fact the required order was a bit of a surprise to me. At first it's
possible to place any 3 pieces in a promising arrangement but the final one
ain't going nowhere! I spent a good 45 minutes trying various arrangements
of the first 2/3 pieces before I found a sequence that looked promising -
something worthy of Girish' design skills. Once I'd found this start, I
thought I was making progress until miraculously a piece fell out
unexpectedly - I sort of lost track of what I was doing and ended up back at
the beginning. Start again...
Continuing in my search I noticed a possible move that I had missed the
first time and that opened up a whole set of dance moves of the pieces in an
out around each other. The Pelikan team have made this beautifully tight so
the pieces don't flop about and each move has to be made deliberately with
the occasional "thwack" as they settle in to place. I had my cube assembled
in about an hour.
There is NO spoiler here - the relative positions of the pieces are
really obvious
Having taken my photos, I then struggled to dismantle the puzzle and put it
back into the storage/travel position. It's a disassembly challenge as well
as an assembly one. I redid it a few hours later and even though I
remembered the vague order of the pieces, it still took me quite a while to
repeat the process.
This is another masterpiece of design and manufacture by Girish and Pelikan.
If you like interlocking puzzles then this should be high on your shopping
list.
My goodness! Is there no end to Frederic's design skills and ideas?? Here we
have yet another wonderful puzzle in the now enormous Minima series. I have
written extensive reviews of
Minima puzzles
over the last couple of years and have to admit that this series is one of
the single most compelling series I have ever played with. I had thought
that Frederic might run out of ideas but there seems to be no sign of it so
far. The Pelikan team have made this version using Jatoba and Acacia woods
with a bunch of magnets. This amazing design looks so simple until you
casually have a play. The usual 2x2x3 box has two entry holes to it and what
looks like some finger-holes as well. Anyone looking at these shapes (1x1x2
sticks) with a hole in one end and another at the front will be able to
think of quite a few ways to get the pieces inside and think this is
simplicity itself. I sort of thought so too until I received the
instructions.
"First place the box on a flat surface.
Pack the pieces inside su that no magnets are visible through any holes
in the box.
Once a piece has been placed in the box, you can not touch or move the
pieces with your fingers or move the box"
Ah! Now we have an entirely new challenge! It is a simple packing but
made challenging by the constraints. The magnets are obviously the key to
manipulating the pieces. To add to the challenge the embedded magnets have
their polarity arranged such that 4 of the pieces have one orientation,
another the opposite way around and one piece has no magnet. First challenge
is to decide which way around the box needs to be placed and then it will be
necessary to use both repulsion and attraction to move the pieces around. If
the pieces are placed through one hole and another piece placed through the
other, then it is quite possible for a diagonal repulsion to occur and
another piece placed to prevent this. There is a whole lot of challenge to
this one.
I worked out an approach after about half an hour of fiddling out of the box
and attempted to do it inside. This taught me that I needed to be very
careful with the exact order that pieces need to be placed. I thought I had
my solution and took this photo:
No magnets visible but....
Having been unaware that this design was being made by Jakub, I had ordered
the same puzzle from Tye Stahly's
Nothing Yet Designs store
and had actually received his copy a few days earlier (thanks Allard, for
forwarding it on to me).
I set about doing the same thing with the 3D printed version and, to my horror,
it would not work! The repulsion of the magnets was not quite strong enough to
achieve one of the crucial moves. This could only mean that my initial solution
was not the intended one. It also means that you have two solutions to find if
you buy the Pelikan version of this puzzle. I went back to the drawing board and
have to shamefully admit that it took me another 2 days to find a solution that
would work with both versions. The actual sequence of moves is really quite
involved requiring multiple steps. This is a must have puzzle!
Minima Drawer
Minima Drawer by Frederic Boucher
This gorgeous creation is yet another Minima design by Frederic. It is also
another of those must have puzzles. This version has been created using a very
beautiful Leopard wood and Maple and is stunning. It arrives with the box
completely closed and one L shaped piece outside. The drawer of the box can
slide in either direction, although on arrival it can will only go one way and
reveals a number of pieces inside. It's not straightforward removing all the
pieces and requires the drawer to be moved in both directions to progressively
release the pieces. Be careful! It's easy to get stuck!
Dowels galore!
Once you have all the pieces, the extent of the challenge becomes clear! There
drawer is prevented from coming out by a one voxel dowel attached to the roof of
the puzzle inside. There is also another one voxel dowel pointing horizontally
inside the drawer. The pieces and extra dowels need to be placed inside the
2x2x3 cavity as usual. Having experienced the minor challenge of removing the
pieces from the transport position, I knew that multiple moves would be required
and sliding the drawer back and forth. Gravity was going to be a key
consideration here. There are a few arrangements that will fit the space given
but it is clear that most are not physically possible. The approach here has to
be to find an assembly and then work backwards to see whether it can be removed
from the box.
No spoiler - it is solved!
I think I got somewhat lucky and found the solution after only a whole day of trying but on the way I nearly had a heart attack several times. The limited opening means that some of the pieces need to be rotated into the box and if they are not right or in the right order, they must be removed using the same rotation. Sometimes this can be very hard to achieve and leave you with a huge challenge and worry that you have trapped them inside permanently.
This one is a minima for true puzzle professionals - it is fabulous!
I will be working on the remaining 4 puzzles over the upcoming week and will finish the reviews next Sunday.
Last week I
wrote in frustration
about the final one in the numbered Minima series (number XIII or as Allard
would make it - XXXXLIII). I have owned this one (from Frederic himself) for 4
years and a delightful portable plastic version from
Tye (if you ask him nicely, he might make some more). I had failed and failed
on this and eventually owned up to it as a catharsis on my little corner of
t'internet.
Of course, as soon as I confess to the puzzling world about how useless I am
at packing puzzles, disentanglement puzzles, boxes etc, I have one of those
wonderful Aha! moments. This time was no different. The day after my
confession, I was working from home chairing a meeting and then in the
afternoon we had our departmental Morbidity and Mortality meeting was held on
MS Teams (No I didnt have to confess to any mortality!) I tuned in from
the comfort of my conservatory with a pile o'puzzles next to me. My colleagues
are now used to me playing with toys during these meetings and I get quite a
few comments from people when I solve a particularly fearsome twisty during
the meeting. For some reason, they think I'm some kind of genius and they are
unaware of quite how bad my failure rate is.
The pieces of Minima XXXXXXXXXCIII were in a pile waiting to be put away and I
couldn't resist another period of self flagellation and set to work again.
This time, after a few minutes of trying the same tricks over and over again,
I looked at the slanted cut on the tetromino and wondered to my self:
"Self, what could you do with this odd cut?"
Suddenly a new idea hit my rather like the back of Mrs S' hand and I found a
new and interesting possible movement that I hadn't thought to try before. It
was too beautiful a move to be anything like chance - it had to be designed
in. Suddenly, this made me look at the slanted cuts in the two triominoes, and
again I was slapped on the back of the head - these pieces could be positioned
in such a way that the fancy first move would slide by. Oh wow! What an
incredible idea!
All that was left was to use the more conventional Minima type rotational
moves to set everything up. It's a rather gorgeous sequence of moves to end up
with all the pieces packed into the box and almost left me gasping with
delight.
Four years of puzzling!
The Minima 13 was the first of the series I received and was, I assume, the last
of the series that Frederic designed. To my mind it is the very pinnacle of the
Minima puzzle design - if you don't have a copy yet then try and find one to
complete your collection (I assume that you have the rest of the set from
Pelikan???) In
the title of my post this is the "sublime".
The look of exultation on my face when I finally solved it during our
departmental meeting did not go unnoticed! I saw a few colleagues grinning and
got a couple of messages. It was time to carry on with some more of them.
The Minima series from Frederic is really quite extensive now. Not only has
Frederic expanded beyond the original 13, others have jumped on the bandwagon
and seen the huge possibilities of "simply" packing a 2x2x3 box with smaller
pieces that may or may not require rotations. Lucie Pauwels, is a very prolific
designer who has appeared on these pages
many many times. Lucie decided to try her hand at Minima design and here is one that I have
had sitting waiting but not tried due to lack of time. It's the the Minima Nest which I purchased from Tye at the end of last year. It is also currently
sold out but again, if you ask nicely, maybe more can be printed. Lucie took the
standard 2x2x3 box and stood it on its end and then shifted each of the 3 layers
a half voxel sideways. She then took some simple pieces and shifted several of
them a half voxel across as well.
Solved it in a single afternoon! Maybe I'm getting better at puzzles?
That puzzle was ridiculous - so clever but not too hard.
Finally we return to another sublime one - it's probably a bit ridiculous
too!
Minima Twig by Frederic Boucher
Frederic hasn't finished with the Minima designs! This one was released
around the time of the last IPP and produced again by Tye of
NothingYetDesigns. It's also sold but there's no harm in you all sending him thousands and
thousands of emails clamouring for a remake. It has also been sitting in my
pile to be solved in the conservatory (yes, Mrs S is not really happy at how
many piles I have dotted around the house). I still had another hour of
meeting to go and therefore picked up a third challenge of the afternoon.
The Minima Twig again consists of the standard 2x2x3 box but in this case
there is just a single entry hole in one corner and each of the six faces
has either a single drilled hole or a track the diameter of the hole. There
are 6 domino pieces to be placed made from a choice of woods (I cannot
remember what the one above is) and with a steel pin in the centre of a
single voxel on each of the 6 pieces effectively making triominoes. There
are 3 L shapes and 3 straight lines. Obviously each of the metal pins is
intended to protrude from a hole drilled in the box. Rotations are allowed.
Placing the pieces in the box and posting the pin through the holes can
restrict the movement of the pieces and cause blockages. This will require
careful planning. I found that the requirement to pierce the holes made it
much easier to work out possible assemblies and then in my head working out
whether a disassembly would be possible was quite fun. There is a wonderful
critical sequence to rotate pieces into the box that is required and within
about 45 minutes I had my third puzzle of the afternoon solved. I
personally found that my afternoon Mortality and Morbidity meeting was
a very productive time. Maybe I should ask the bosses to allow us to have
more frequent meetings to get me out of the operating theatre so I can play
with my toys.
Three in one afternoon!
Speaking of operating theatres, I am in one just now doing a trauma list -
Trauma doesn't stop and weekends. I have written this in advance and set it
to auto publish. Isn't the internet a wonderful thing? I hope that you all
have had a wonderful puzzling weekend.
At the end of last week's blog post the intrepid puzzler had tracked through a
puzzle lock and opened it and closed it. He then boasted about it and posted
photos of said lock on his website and some social media. Needless to say he
felt very smug! That is until the creator of the challenge pointed out that he
had not seen a picture of the ant that had to be hunted. Ah! Maybe the puzzler
is less bright than he thought he was? He should have realised he wasn't very
bright - if he had read his own website, it would have told him in no uncertain
terms how dense he really is. Doh!
I actually thought that one of the tiny metal pieces that had been
retrieved during the solution was the ant. I showed Boaz the photo of all the
pieces and what I thought was the ant and was disabused of the idea very
quickly! Time to go back to the drawing board and solve it again and search
for the ant. Oddly doing it this time showed me that I hadn't fully understood
the opening mechanism because despite having opened it 5 or 6 times before
writing about it, I couldn't repeat it. after another 3 or 4 hours, I opened
it and noticed something new and realised I had manipulated it entirely by
accident the first time and then not reset it properly. This meant that my
subsequent solves were accidental. I went on my extended ant hunt and found
the sneaky creature that Boaz had left for me to find. Phew! Finally
completed.
Next I had to work out exactly how to fully reset the puzzle every time. I had
managed it once by accident and also failed several times. This time I had it
properly done. OMG! There is a lot more to this puzzle than I had initially
thought - go and buy it - you won't regret it:
Having finally completed that puzzle, I needed another quick success because I
knew that I had a busy week coming up and the MPP (yesterday). So what did I
do? I went back yet again to another masterpiece from the great
Yuu Asaka. I had bought the Freeze 14 from Mine along with a bunch of his own
creations back in January (most of which I have failed to solve) but it is
available from many other stores (PuzzleMaster has them
here, Brits can get them
here or
here,
Europeans from
here
or
here
and from Yuu-san himself
here.
There are 3 each of a small square piece and a circle as well as 8 wedges
that have cutouts for the squares and circles (one of which is oddly combined as
well as 2 semicircles o=attached to the wedges. All of these pieces need to be
packed inside of the octagonal shaped tray. Should be simple? Yeah! Right! It
might be simple for you lot but for me I have spent 5 months proving that either
it's not simple or I'm thick! Mrs S frequently tells me one of those and she
tends towards the "thick" decision!
I have spent quite a long time trying to put the wedges together approximating
the two halves of the cutout holes to make space for the 6 shapes to be
inserted. With the positions of the cutouts, there really aren't very many
options for positioning the wedges. I confidently placed them and also ensured
that the semicircles were also contained in a hole only to find that there was
alsways one (or more pieces that I was unable to place).
Close? Definitely not close enough!
I tried multiple variants of this over the months. I did it in the evenings, I
did it at work and always failed much to the amusement of my colleagues. They
used to think I was a genius but I have definitely proved to them that "thick"
is a better word to describe me. 😱
At one point (or even several points, to my shame) I even attempted a
higgledy piggledy assembly of the wedges in the hope that alternating the
orientation of them might make more spaces to place the small pieces. It
didn't take me long to give up on that idea - I am think but not that thick!
I put it away for a while.
I will not be showing you the solution but that Yuu-san is a very very
devious man! I really should have seen the answer much earlier - in fact the
box states that the puzzle should take just 40 minutes and has a difficulty
level of 3½ out of 5 (PuzzleMaster make it a Level 8 on their 5-10 scale).
It certainly took me a LOT longer than that but Mrs S has stated the truth -
I am thick - so 40 minutes for a normal puzzler equals 4 months for me! OMG
Blush! Such shame!
At the MPP yesterday I received/purchaased a few new toys and expect that they
will take me several years.
I didn't recall what this STC puzzle is called but I don't have enough hands
to assemble it:
I don't remember what it is
This won't go in without coordinate motion
Mrs S has made several useful suggestions but not actually offered any hands in assistance!
It was only
a month ago
that I wrote about the last release from Jakub, Jaroslav and team's
Pelikan puzzles. At that time they had beautifully reproduced the first 4 in the Minima series
designed by the incredible
Frederic Boucher. This time the next 8 are here in yet another gorgeous selection of
woods and you really need to add them to your collection. The four from the
last release that I have written about are
stillavailableasindividual
puzzles or a
set of four. There is a Minima 13 but only so far only released by Frederic himself
and Tye Stahly) it is possible that will also become available in the future as well.
From Nothingyetdesigns
Original from Frederic XIII
If they are going to be released like the last set then they should be in
sets of four as well as single puzzles. The wood choices are perfect:
Minima 5 - Limba and Bubinga
Minima 6 - Ash and Ovangkol
Minima 7 - Wenge and Maple
Minima 8 - Ovangkol and Zebrano
Minima 9 - Acacia, Padauk and Wenge
Minima 10 - Zebrano, Purpleheart and Maple
Minima 11 - Merbau and Padauk
Minima 12 - Bubinga and Acacia
Obviously, like the rest of the Minima puzzles, the aim is to pack the
pieces into the box and leave it so that no gaps are visible through either
the large holes, small finger holes or slots that facilitate rotational
moves (if the number of voxels is less than the 12 that would completely
fill the box). Continuing with the pathway that the first four took, these
get progressively more difficult but are always very fun to solve. The
rotations are beautifully facilitated by the various holes and slots cut
into the box and no force is needed. Some of the rotations are really quite
tricky to work out and in several puzzles there are multiple rotations for
one piece. As before, the wooden box makes the challenge much more difficult
as you cannot see what is happening inside once a piece or two have been
placed. I had not managed to solve Minima 8 in the acrylic box version
despite months of trying
after receiving them in September last year. Minima 8 doesn't look like too much of a
challenge with 3 simple L-shaped tri-ominos and a single 3 voxel straight
stick but there I had huge problems with it and was gratified when a couple
of correspondents agreed that it was a really difficult puzzle.
Minima 9 and 10 are slightly different having pieces of 2 colours and whilst
packing is the aim, the difference is that with Minima 9 the puzzler has to
place them so that only one of the colours is visible through the holes in
the box (for that one there are 2 solutions - one for each colour).
Interestingly, I found one colour quite a bit harder than the other. Minima
10 has only one solution and needs to have only the vibrant Purpleheart
visible from outside of the box. Minima 11 and 12 are very deceptive having
relatively simple pieces and quite a lot of large holes in the box but they
are also a huge challenge - almost as difficult as number 8. They both took
me 2 or 3 days to solve but at least not the several months of the
former.
These puzzles are so much fun and this explains why I have a
HUGE collection
of these Minima puzzles of varying types and from various designers.
Basically I will purchase any of them when released to add to my
collection. I would say that these are ESSENTIAL purchases for
anyone seriously into packing puzzles - they are stunningly beautiful and
a fabulous challenge and the Pelikan team have made them so well!
The other puzzle being released by Pelikan alongside the 8 Minimas is the Empire burr by Jorgos Anastasou. This beautiful and complex 11 piece burr is presented as a rather dense block structure with a sort of dome on the top as would be seen on an emperor's palace. It has been made with a lovely set of woods (Padauk, Wenge, Acacia, Purpleheart and Maple for the vertical sticks forming the dome and a very warm Cherry for the walls). The first move is very well hidden partly because the pieces are quite snug and it required a good bit of pushing, prodding and pulling to find what could move. Once you have found the first move then it is quite quick to remove the first piece (there are just 5 moves required to separate it from the puzzle) but removing the next piece will prove a considerable challenge. It is only another 7 moves but finding the correct ones was very difficult for me. I went round and around in circles for a long time failing to find a critical move until I found it quite by accident. Unfortunately I did not notice what I had done until I realised that new positions were available to me and I was completely unable to backtrack! After a good half-hour of trying to return to the start, I gave up and continued with the disassembly which was great fun as it remains pretty stable right to the end. The final disassembly level is 5.7.1.2.3.2.2.2.1.2 which doesn't look terribly challenging but for me it is just right!
Reassembly required me to have a lot of fun with Burrtools but I think that those of you who remembered your pathway might manage without it and the genii amongst you might just manage to put it together from scratch.
Jorgos is really designing some fantastic puzzles and I am so pleased that Jakub is agreeing to make them available to us in such fancy woods. This one will look stunning on display in your collection.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
