This new sequential discovery puzzle box is due to be released by the amazing
Pelikan team this coming Friday. It will be limited to a small release of 64
copies so you will need to be quite quick.
Instructions and a certificate
It is a stunning creation made from various woods - it looks like Acacia and
Walnut at least. There are also metal components and magnets. It must contain
something valuable because it is quite large and quite heavy. Dimensions are 11
x 11 x 15.3cm (4.3 x 4.3 x 6") and weighing 985g (2 lb 3oz) making it very
tactile to play with.
The story is that this safe belonged to George Thomas, a wealthy factory
owner, and many robbers have attempted to get into it to steal the huge
treasure that is inside. Your task is to get into it and retrieve the haul for
yourself. It does not need any shaking, spinning or banging.
There is a door on the front held by an ornate hinge and a dial on the front
for the combination. The dial clicks as you turn it to get to the combination.
Apart from this, nothing else seems to move at all. The hinge is not a fake
hinge and doesn't come apart. There are some interesting brass pins on the
side of the puzzle as well. It did occur to me that the feet might be useful
but they don't come off to reveal an alternative locking mechanism:
I got stumped for a little while at this point. The temptation to shake it and
spin it was there but I was a good boy and decided to use my tiny brain on it.
The next few mechanisms were beautifully created and a delight to discover. I
had my treasure after an hour or so!
Or did I?????
This is a wonderful creation designed by Jakub and brought to life by the
Pelikan team. You won't be disappointed in this one. I suspect they will sell
out very quickly - make sure you are ready on Friday 5th September.
I blame Allard! Look what he made me do:
I got by a big customs fee but it should be worth it!
Way back in 2018, I bought my first box from
Jesse Born, the Pi Box
which was
reviewed here with huge pleasure. You all know that I "don't collect boxes" but if
there is something else about a puzzle box that draws my attention then I bend
my rule just a little bit - with the Pi Box, it was the connection to
mathematics that did it for me. I have always loved mathematics (especially the
abstruse pure mathematics) and have collected lots of recreational maths books
and even attended the Open University for quite a few years to study maths
before the job got so busy that I couldn't keep it going. So the mathematical
connection of the Pi Box forced me to make a purchase - I was delighted and
called it "possibly the most beautiful puzzle in the world". To be honest,
having watched the incredible puzzles being made by Jesse, it took quite a lot
of willpower to keep to my collection down to just the one box. However, I was
ever mindful that I really cannot afford a divorce and Mrs S would not want
hordes of bank balance busting boxes being brought to the door, I stayed with
just the one.... until the Fibonacci Box was announced and I placed an order
almost straight away. I hope that none of you blame me for buying another box?
It again has a strong mathematical connection. It did take a very long time for
Jesse to make them and it wasn't until March 2024 that it arrived. Complete with
a certificate of authenticity - I am fairly certain that fake ones are not going
to be possible!
To my shame, I took my photos and admired the manufacturing skill. It is another
simply stunning creation to rival the Pi Box for beauty. It is made from Holly,
Katalox, Cherry, Poplar, Brass, Richlite. I attempted to open it straight away
and for some reason, I could never work it out. You all know the reason - I am
not terribly bright! The description by Jesse claims that it should be easy but
I was being dopey and not getting anywhere. I put it down on my desk after a
week or so and it has been sitting in my study on the desk amongst an ever
increasing pile of puzzles and was forgotten about until Mrs S forced a minor
tidy and it was seen again. I spent another week or so before it was put down.
Two of the most beautiful puzzles in my collection
One thing I noticed when I opened the Pi Box again, was the way I started
counting and I had not been doing that with the Fibonacci Box. The important
thing to realise is that mathematicians (and computer scientists) begin counting
at zero! I should have realised that this might be important because the
Fibonacci series starts at zero:
0 1 1 2 3 5 8.....
Looking tat the number of leaves/petals on the top of the box, I would not
need to go that far along the Fibonacci series. Having worked it out and
performed the series and unlocked the box and backtracked immediately. I then
hit a snag. I had back-tracked and should have a locked box but it was still
open. Very odd. Then I could not perform the sequence to re-open it. The last
move wouldn't work. It was time to contact Jesse and receive some very nice
support via WhatsApp complete with a video of what he thought was
happening. A quick click of the interior locking mechanism and I had it. Phew!
Now I was able to open and close it at will.
Amazing work of art in the locking mechanism!
It was finally possible to have my two mathematical boxes open side by side:
Amazing mechanisms and beautiful workmanship
I would absolutely love to buy more puzzles from Jesse but fear for my life
prevents it. Maybe I will get to try some more at an MPP in the future. It is
not as if I have too few puzzles to play with. What I have is far too little
time and not very much brain power to solve them!
In 2023, Chinny collaborated with
Robert Yarger
to make a fabulous exchange puzzle, the "Smack-N Moles" puzzle box. Chinny gave
it away to about 100 people in IPP40 at which I was not present. Luckily for a
whole bunch of us who couldn't make it, there were more available direct from
Stickman's website and I eagerly jumped at the chance to buy. My copy arrived in
October of 2023 and has been in my second (or maybe third or fourth 😱) pile of
puzzles to be solved. This time, my pile in the conservatory at the back of the
house. I tend to sit there in the mornings at weekends and when off work and
play with puzzles in the south-facing warmth. Sometimes I fall asleep, sometimes
I play...I seldom seem to solve anything! The Smack-N Moles has been in that
pile, played with weekly for about 18 months! I was beginning to get desperate.
I felt a little bad for my failure but, in my defence, remember that I really
seldom do puzzle boxes and don't really have a repertoire of the types of moves
that they often need. Also in my defence, I note that Allard received his at the
IPP in August and the
write up
was only published in December. Now, Allard is a huge Stickman aficionado with
one of the few complete collections in the world and I am absolutely certain
that despite receiving a lot of puzzles at the exchange, he will have made a
beeline straight for this one and if it took him a few months then I can feel OK
about taking 18 months!
This is a nice diminutive little box at 3.5x3x2.5" in size and my copy is made
from Walnut. The aim is to open the box and release the moles. These cute
little critters are engraved on the top of some Maple dowels that appear to be
locking the sliding lid. Poking at a mole makes one or more of the others pop
up when that one sinks down. You are given a tethered hammer to Smack/whack
the moles but I doubt very many people are going to solve it by using the
hammer that way. The hammer is tied onto the box by a loop of wire that is the
perfect length to prevent the hammer being removed. Initially all you can do
is poke at the moles and see whether there is a sequence of presses that will
allow all the moles to be sunk below the surface of the lid.
I am slightly ashamed to say that I pushed and poked and even grabbed and
pulled at the various moles for quite a long time trying to work out the
sequence to release the lid. When I say a long time, I mean months!
BLUSH! Remember that I am not terribly
bright - it says so all over this website, so it must be true. At some point,
I can't remember when, I managed to find a tool to be used but absolutely
nowhere to use it so I carried on poking at moles and achieving nothing. I
grew desperate - it's really quite frustrating to have a tool and nowhere to
put it! I ended up shaking the box gently which also did nothing until I shook
it in the right direction.Suddenly something happened and I was able to notice
another "feature". After playing with said "feature" for a few minutes, I
managed to manipulate it to get me a hole. At last! I had somewhere to put my
tool. Now, now, keep your minds out of the gutter (especially you,
Steve). I stuck my tool in the hole and wiggled it about and even rotated it for a
while. Nothing happened, but it was very satisfying. Eventually, sticking your
tool in a hole and swivelling it starts to get boring when there is no
response - maybe it is my technique?
After a few moves something interesting was happening to all the moles and
before long I had my wonderful long-awaited Aha! moment! Such a relief.
Moles are free and the box is open
I was now free to look at the mechanism properly and it is really quite clever.
It really isms terribly difficult but the movement of the moles is designed to
make you think all the wrong things and lead you in the wrong direction.
The reassembly is significantly fiddly but knowing how it works means that a
bit of perseverance is required. I then had a look at the piece that needed
pliers and realised that some lacquer had gotten onto it and effectively fused
it in place. There was absolutely no way that I was ever going to shift that
without using my tool. This means that you can stop berating me!
I can finally put another puzzle away and this will join my small, but
well-loved, Stickman collection. I have missed out on the subsequent releases but I am ever-hopeful that Robert will let me buy another one sometime.
🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻
A little underwhelming?
Finally, with a little encouragement (but no real clues from Goetz) I can finally say that I have completed the Ages sequential discovery burr having found the compartment that contains the piece of Lightning Ridge opal. The opening of that compartment requires construction of a very clever tool and using it to manipulate the cover in a counter-intuitive way. It is classic Brian! Thank you my friend. I can finally put it away after so many years!
In the right light the pearlescent opal colours do shine
The Snowman Puzzlebox by Kyle Chester-Marsden
Someone has stolen the poor snowman's nose
I hadn't managed to attend many MPP's last year and also don't really have time
to lurk in the Discord and hence missed out on a few of the beautifully made
puzzles from Kyle and from what I have heard, I have really missed something
special. In mid November he put out a little announcement on the
Mechanical Puzzle Community Facebook page that he was making some more of the Snowman boxes available again as
potential Xmas presents. He had made these as presents for Xmas 2023 but as
usual, I had not seen them and missed out. They had been
reviewed
back in February by Steve and looked fabulous. This time around I saw them
announced and contacted him immediately! Phew! For once, I had not let it get by
me. The handy thing was that he had one available at the last MPP of the year
and I picked up a nice brown box and sneaked it into the house. "She who must be
feared" saw it amongst all the other acquisitions on my return and, luckily, it
didn't register when I told her that was going to be her present to me at
Xmas.
We don't tend to do Xmas presents much because, by and large, we each buy
whatever we want throughout the year and it seems pointless to buy something
just because of the time of year. I know "she" will be buying clothing etc and
"she" knows that toys will be arriving. We just try not to complain about it
too much unless the clutter escapes into the shared areas.
Nice box with magnetic closure
Beautifully packaged
I hid the brown card box box in my study and totally forgot about it! I'm an
eejit! I blame work mostly because I ended up in the operating theatre through
most of the holiday period and just didn't seem to have much time. Finally just
in time for New Years Day, I remembered it and unpacked. Marvelling at the
packaging, I was delighted to see something just beautiful inside. We have
a small box with a disfigured Snowman on top. The top and bottom plates of the
box are made from vibrant Padauk and the main body along with snowman, made from
what looks like Maple. When turning it upside down there is an interesting
clicking noise.
Time to explore and I quickly found that the snowman could swivel on his box
but only a fraction of a turn before stopping dead. It could return but that
was all that was possible. Examining it from all angles showed me that things
moved inside and sometimes they allowed the snowman to turn further or turn
back further... and sometimes turning it didn't allow any turning. Hmmm!
This being stuck seems to be something that happens to me a lot. Mrs S says
it's because I'm an eejit and rubbish at puzzles. She is starting to insist
that I shouldn't ever get any more. Sob! I thunk for 10 days until it occurred
to me to have a proper close look at the puzzle using a magnifier app on my
phone. At this point I had an idea and tried to implement it. I was so certain
that I was right that I put the puzzle in a room with a dehumidifier and after
24 hours my suspicion was confirmed. The puzzle seemed to be rather tight and
loosened slightly with the dehumidifier. This then allowed me to carry out the
next movement and with a bit of a squeak, I was able to see the rather clever
mechanism inside. There was no nose to be seen but part of the mechanism
dropped out and looked like something that had an additional function. A few
minutes later, after nearly 2 weeks of trying, the snowman and his nose were
reunited:
Even Mrs S thought this was delightful!
Thank you Kyle, I love it. It's a clever mechanism with a nice added extra step.
My only excuse for how long it took me was being busy and the humidity in the UK
just now made it really quite tight. This will look lovely on display.
If you get a chance to try it or buy it then you will not be disappointed.
Unfortunately, I missed out on the Reluctant Drawer from Kyle which won
accolades at the End of Year Puzzle Party as well as in the Mechanical Puzzle
Discord. Hopefully I'll get to play at an MPP in the future.
Last week, when I mentioned Juno's incredible Tornado burr, I showed off
(one of my) trays of shame:
A LOT of unsolved puzzles here
After another 24 hours of playing with the Tornado burr, I finally did manage
to reassemble it and even did it again a second time. It's a bit fiddly but
certainly very approachable for a lot of you geniuses out there. Don't be put
off by the "burr" in the name. It's really not a burr in the traditional sense
- I would recategorise it as an interlocking puzzle. Juno still has a few for
sale
here
if you are interested.
The white bag at the back of the tray pictured above has been there for 18
months! I bought the incredible Euroka 10x3 puzzle from Juno in Feb 2023 and put it on
display on a windowsill for nearly six months when a moment of madness made me
disassemble it. I thought I could do it piecemeal and take sequential photos
which would help with the reassembly. I wrote about it
here.
Lovely on display
Unfortunately the puzzle doesn't really come apart sequentially. I took it
apart from the top and removed 3 layers before my Aha! moment collapsed in a
heap on me leading me to the epithet below:
You Stupid Boy!
Over the subsequent 18 months I have
repeatedly attempted reassembly only to be surrounded by pieces, a very high
blood pressure and a new-found reliance on swear words. I have access to an
unlisted video from Juno showing the assembly as well as the picture on his
info page about it. Multiple attempts have failed and after last week's success
with the Tornado burr, I was determined to assemble the bloody thing.
held by rubber band
This time I had a new advantage! I had a rubber band! These wondrous items
have never been allowed in our house due to the fascination that our cats have
had with them. They adored chewing them and once broken would swallow them. It
all sounds perfectly reasonable and slightly funny until 24 hours later they
reemerge from the cat at the opposite end. Picture the cat zooming all around the house with an
itchy bum and a rather hideous springy brown
kebab emerging from his back end. Then add to this wonderful image add a picture of me chasing him around with a piece of kitchen
paper to try and catch and extract said kebab and rubber band. Whilst this seems funny to most blokes,
it is not funny to Mrs S and as a result rubber bands are VERBOTEN!
Our last cat unfortunately left us last year and I felt brave enough to keep a band or two
in my study for emergency puzzling situations. This was just such a situation
and I put said rubber band to good use. I managed to assemble the
bottom 5 pieces and placed the band around them. I then built up the next 2
layers on top and it suddenly became stable. After this, I just had to work
out how to place subsequent middle layers and finally, after several hours of attempts, I got them all to engage with a
click.
Hooray!
I'm not taking that apart again!
Mrs S was actually impressed when I showed her that it was finally assembled
and threatened for a moment to take it apart for me. I snatched it away! I
now think I could do it again but not for a while!
My other tray of shame has been removed from the living room! The weight
of it has marked the carpet and I am told in no uncertain terms that I
must redistribute them so that there is less weight on the tray. Some of
these puzzles have been there for several years, unsolved but with a vague
hope that I might one day mange them:
Marks on the carpet? Whack! Ouch!
Some fabulous and difficult puzzles here
In particular the Popplock T13 remains unsolved as well as Brian Young's Ages sequential discovery burr (not even found the first hidden move! Sigh! I must try harder!
Way back in June I ordered and received this gorgeous little (gulp!) box from
the amazing Dee Dixon. The goal of this puzzle is to remove the center piece so
I guess I cannot classify it as anything other than a box but I won't let that
discourage me from denying that I collect boxes. It is vibrantly beautiful made
from Canarywood and Purpleheart and measures 5 x 5 x 2". I set to playing with it as soon as it arrived
only to rapidly get stumped. Dee had said:
"Orbit is a seemingly simple puzzle that will have you going in circles
trying to decipher the mechanism that keeps it firmly locked in
position."
And he wasn't kidding. I wondered whether the odd shape on the lid had any
significance but couldn't seem to find one. Maybe that shape was just there to
act as a handle? The lid spun around freely most of the time until at odd
intervals, it went click and wouldn't spin any more - I had absolutely no idea
why! Sometimes I found that things inside had shifted and I could tilt the lid
and when tilting it there was an alarming sound of what I thought might be
ball bearings inside. Every now and then, if you peek around the edge of the
disk with a bright light then you catch a fleeting glimpse of something shiny
- was this confirmation of my ball bearing thought?
I went round and round in circles, spinning and not spinning, tilting and
pulling and generally getting nowhere. This went on for months! I moved it
from my tray of allowed puzzles in the kitchen (thank you dear) to my other
tray of allowed puzzles in the living room where I played whilst watching TV.
All the while I kept doing the same sort of thing over and over and over
again! No matter how many times I did the same thing, I never seemed to be
able to make any headway. The odd thing was sometimes things moved and
sometimes they didn't. This was despite doing the same moves repeatedly! Maybe
Einstein was wrong and sometimes different things happen? After about 3 months
I had to stop for a while and just went back to it every now and then. Until
the recent MPP!
Someone had also brought in their copy of Orbit (I think it might have been
Allard but in my confusion of solving and playing with so many puzzles in one
day, I couldn't be sure). Another admission that this copy had never been
solved made me feel a lot better and it was handed to another puzzler who
claimed to know how it worked. My jaw literally hit the floor when he opened
that copy of the puzzle in about 60 seconds - that was absolutely bloody
bonkers! I briefly looked inside and saw things that were surprisingly not
ball bearings. Hmmm! I did see what looked like a locking mechanism but tried
not to look too closely.
When I came home I quickly got working on it and used my phone as a torch. At
this point, the Aha! moment almost knocked me on my back. It is so
simple...why could I not work it out?
No clues here.
Some of the rattling was coming from the little flame that was inside and
maybe that had confused me. I can now categorically state that the shape on
top is useful for more than being a handle and I can also conclude that I am
not terribly bright!
Having finally understood the mechanism, I can now understand all the funny
things that seemed to be going on inside like the tilting, the spinning which
sometimes wouldn't happen and the clicking noises inside. I have now opened it
from fully locked inside of 60 seconds and feel very smug about it! It is genuinely quite simple in design but, for me at least, seems impossible to work out without some sort of clue. Sigh!
2 sets of salt and pepper shakers! Something is wrong with the
lettering though!
I saw that Jon Keegan and Tartarus puzzles were offering the Sandfield salt and
pepper shakers in their beautiful metal version. Even though I have the original
proudly displayed on the shelf directly in front of me, I could not receive
something similar of Jon's quality.
They have truly managed a beautiful recreation of the original puzzles with
only the odd lettering and a slight tiny change in the detail of the solution.
It took me about 15 minutes to recall the process and redo it until I had a
bunch of pieces and my seasoning:
Salt and pepper released from the cruet set
Even Mrs S agreed that they look gorgeous on display. If you get a chance to own
it or at least play with them then jump at the chance!
Today I am reviewing the upcoming release of gorgeous delights from Jakub, Jaroslav and the Pelikan team. You may have seen the
video
already by Ivan - he also does all the photography for the Pelikan site and he
is brilliant at it.
Twister Box
Twister Box - a new Pelikan design
This beautiful little creation is a
Pelikan design
and it is really REALLY clever with a wonderful laugh out loud moment when the
secret is discovered. The team has made it using Mahogany, Walnut and
magnets…LOTS of magnets and really REALLY strong ones too. Don’t
put this near your pacemaker! They have made some lovely slipfeathers and an engraved spiral on top to make
it even more pretty. The aim, obviously, is to open the box. Bear in mind that I am really
bad at boxes (I have several sequential discovery boxes sitting in my kitchen
annoying Mrs S because I have failed to find any moves at all). Reading this paragraph there are a whole lot of "really's" in it but this puzzle needs all of them!
I discovered the first step of this puzzle quite quickly which is how I knew
there were magnets. Once this discovery is past you then it’s time to play
with what you have found. You do this by feel and intuition and have to try
and understand why things inside seem to be flipping over and back at times.
The odd thing is it just all feels rather random. You need to keep at it for a
while and all of a sudden there is a change and you’ve opened it. I would
guess that most people will open it mostly by chance and then laugh and then
play with the open box mechanism for a while to understand what you did and
work out a cleaner quicker way to do it. I can now open and re-lock it in a
matter of a minute now that I understand the clever mechanism. I must say that
I have never seen anything like it before.
It took me a whole week to open it and I’ve been playing with it for a few
hours now and it still makes me smile when I look at the mechanism. This is
stunning.
Little Tetra Flop
Little Tetra Flop by Dr Volker Latussek
This fabulous new challenge from
Dr Volker Latussek
continues the wonderful Flop series but showing that he can now see the
benefits of the side holes over the loss of purity from an incomplete box.
Pelikan has created this beauty out of Wenge and American Cherry, keeping
the 4x1 piece outside of the box (which is 4x3x2 voxels with a 1½ voxel deep
entry postbox on top).
The first challenge is to work out how to remove the pieces from the box. As
we all know Volker designs both the puzzle and the delivery conformation to
be a challenge and this one really takes it to the max - it took me a good
30 minutes to get all the pieces free. I love this aspect of these puzzles.
Having taken them out, you now have 6 of the usual set of tetrominoes to put
back in using the trademark flop moves.
First thing to do is find the possible assemblies of which there are 14.
Obviously the restricted entry helps limit the numbers and you also need to
decide whether Volker would stoop so low as to use the side hole of the box to
place the last piece. So how should you go about narrowing down the
assemblies? I got slightly lucky and managed it after a few hours of trying
random positions before realising that the most important thing to do was to
leave enough space for the insertion of the pieces that can only be rotated
into the box.
The Aha! moment is wonderful with this puzzle. It’s yet another example of
Volker’s genius mind. It’s not too horrendous and very very clever. Having
solved it, I then had to try and find the delivery assembly all over again.
Brilliant fun!
Centrifuge
Centifuge by Lucie Pauwels
This lovely little challenge from
Lucie Pauwels
has been made in a gorgeous red grained Merbau and a very white contrasting Ash.
It consists of a square frame surrounding a 3x3x3 hole to be filled with the
unusually shaped pieces. There are holes in each other the 4 walls of the
frame which need to be filled once the pieces are packed.
I spent a good 15 minutes trying to construct a 3x3x3 cube which could fit
inside before I sheepishly came to the realisation that a) this was
impossible and b) would make the holes in the frame totally superfluous.
Having had my eejit moment I then looked at constructing the shapes that
would fit inside. This is a nice intuitive challenge because the pieces have
½ voxels sliced off in strategic places which really narrows down the
possible arrangements. Obviously it is important that none of the ½ voxels
are visible from above or below or in the holes and this adds to the
challenge.
Very clever solution
This is not terribly tough but the sequence is clever and the aha! moment is
very nice. It’s especially good if you don’t waste your time trying to do the
impossible!
Shiba Inu
Shiba Inu (Limba version)
Garapa version - deliberately not showed off the shape of the dog
Here we have a couple of challenges in one from the amazing
Girish Sharma. It’s a 6 piece burr with a single solution (no key piece) and then a 7
piece burr with the addition of the little dog inside the burr. Jakub and team
have created two versions of this one. One made from a gorgeous Garapa and the
other from a beautifully grained Limba. These are sent out as assembly
challenges which will cause you some significant difficulty.
You would think that I, as a self confessed burr lover, would find this easy,
but you’d be completely wrong. I may adore burrs (especially those that are
part of the burr zoo) but I am awful at assembling them from scratch. I’m
more of a puzzler who works to disassemble them and gain a muscle memory to
help with reassembly (or I resort to Burrtools). I have multiple burrsets
and yet still struggle to assemble a standard 6 piece burr - especially if
the level is greater than 1 (hence the key piece comment). I started work on
this one morning and it took me a whole 2 days to find even one assembly of
the 6 piece burr. I was only able to do it because the solution that I found
had a level 1.2 solution (i.e. it had a key piece that didn’t look like a
solid key piece). Yes, I had found the simplest possible assembly of the 6
piece burr. Once I disassembled it and set the pieces out on a table in the
correct orientation, I realised that there was no space inside for the
doggie. There must be at least one more assembly that has a different
interior cavity. It had taken me 2 days just to find one simple one - this
was going to be a puzzle for Burrtools.
Not quite there!
Just the 6 piece burr assembled
Luckily I love making BT files and this was a nice easy one. The fabulous
computer program showed me that there were 14 solutions to the 6 piece burr
and only one of them was able to contain the dog. There was no way I would
find the assembly myself so I used BT to tell me which burr sticks went where
and after a good few hours managed to assemble the complete 7 piece burr.
There is a nice little surprise for you when you do get it together (no
spoiler here though).
Lisa and Lottie
Lisa and Lottie by Dr Volker Latussek
Remove the pieces this way
This incredible piece of puzzle analysis by Dr Latussek is definitely
one for the collection of the hard-core puzzler. It is not for the
faint-hearted - it is difficult…really REALLY difficult! The Pelikan
team have made this exquisite puzzle from Bubinga with an Elm box.
Unusually for one of Volker’s creations it is sent out completely assembled
in the box. The entry hole seems much much larger than the usual we have
seen for the Flop series which gave me hope…until I tried to take them out
of the box. I managed to take 4 of them out and then got stuck - are there
rotations? No matter what I tried, I could not rotate any of the remaining
pieces at all. This was very odd. Jakub never makes mistakes like this so I
had a closer look and I then noticed that one of the sides of the boxes was
removable. Once I had actually seen all the pieces, I had a bit of a panic!
There were a lot of pieces and they were quite complex.
Volker said this about the puzzle:
“_Some of my puzzles start with a complete set of pieces, for each of
which I have looked for a matching box to formulate a packing problem.
Published examples of this are YIN YANG (6), TETRA-FLOP (8) and today
LISA AND LOTTIE (10).
For LISA AND LOTTIE, Toshiaki Betsumiya had already proposed a complete
set of ten pieces with GEMINI in 1987, each consisting of two half cubes
(0.5x1x1) with a common contact area of at least one quarter (0.5x0.5).
A few years ago, I initially asked myself which eight pieces could be
packed into the cube-shaped box (2x2x2) of CASINO. At that time, I had
to find the answer with the help of a self-written Fortran program in
order to be able to present the BOX (2.5x2x2) for the ten pieces
today.
There are 25 ways to build a corresponding cuboid (2.5x2x2), but only
one way to put the pieces through the opening - which is the reason why
I asked Pelikan to make a small batch of LISA AND LOTTIE. The uniqueness
of the solution is very surprising to me, as I assumed there was no
solution, even though the opening (1.5x2) is impressively large.
If you are willing to look at the ten pieces and how they interact, you
will find the solution. Along the way, you can store the ten pieces in
the box. _”
All ways to join 2 1x2x2 tetrominoes
This meant that if I could find one of the 25 possible cuboid assemblies then
at least I could get it back inside. Off I went on my search. So far I have
been totally unable to assemble even a cuboid to put back through side of the
box, let alone find a way to put them all in through the hole in the top. I
made a BT file for this one and found that the assembly in the box is not
possible without some rotations so even if you do cheat a little bit then
there is still going to be a huge challenge for you - there are 25 assemblies
and 4 possible orientations of each to try. 100 possibilities even with the
actual assembly shown is definitely a massive task. I am saving this for when
I have a LOT of time on my hands. This is an incredible piece of puzzle
analysis and something for the true puzzler.
Open Frame
Open Frame by Lucie Pauwels
This is a second of these amazing challenges by Lucie Pauwels to match the
Minimal Frame from the
last release. Like its' predecessor, it is a very colourful 2D packing puzzle with
multiple different woods combined with an anti-slide puzzle using a very
minimal frame but this time the edges of the frame are formed by single voxel
pieces in the centre of each side (unlike the last one which had only 2 corner
pieces). There are 9 pieces to be fit inside the 7x7 square. There is an
overlap between the two puzzles with some shared pieces but the very simple
ones are different.
Close but not there
I went to work and yet again, realised that tray packing puzzles are
very difficult for me. I did manage after an hour or so to find a single
assembly. It is oddly difficult to place these pieces into such an open tray. Like the Minimal frame, I was able to get many not quite there solutions but
actually making the complete square shape proved very tough. The solution I
found was satisfying but it did not fulfil the anti slide requirement. There
are 2 pieces in the puzzle which must be oriented in a certain way to prevent
them slipping out an edge or you must find a way to confine them to the
interior of the assembly shape.
A quick resort to Burrtools showed me that there are 15 possible assemblies
of the square but only one of them is also anti-slide. I won’t show the
final solution but once you look at it, it is a marvellous thing to behold!
This is a huge challenge and very attractive! If you have the Minimal Frame
then you owe it to yourself to get this one to go with it.
X-Ray
X-Ray byBenjamin Heidt
This beautiful creation made from Wenge, Purpleheart and Maple is the sixth of
the puzzles from Jakub designed by
Benjamin Heidt. Like most of his designs there is always something different and
clever about them and this is no exception. It looks like a standard 6 piece
burr made with tubular burr sticks, except there are 10 sticks in total, with 4 of them
split into 2 halves. It is designed so that you can see right through it to
work out what is going on inside, hence the name. Being based on a 12x12x12
grid it might give you an idea that there could be some rather involved
movements and you wouldn't be wrong. My initial exploration managed to move
the pieces a long way apart whilst still interlocked and nowhere to go.
Almost there? Not a chance!
Interestingly, there are very few blind ends in dismantling this one and those
that there are, are relatively short. The challenge here is to find the
pathway. The hollow nature of the sticks means that you can see almost
everything but despite this I got blocked on numerous occasions. Part of the
reason for this is the rather sharp internal edges which need very precise
alignment but once you think that you can see a move, stick with it, make sure
it's all aligned correctly and it goes very smoothly. Whilst the level is a
pleasant 14.2.3.2.1.1.1.2, it is a really good challenge to effectively
work your way through the maze. I find that for complex burrs the teens and
twenties is just about right for an enjoyable experience.
Brilliant clever design
These wonderful puzzles should go on sale at Pelikan's website on Wednesday, 13th November at 10am CET (9am GMT, 4am EST & 1am PST). Whilst you are there, there are still a few copies of the wonderful Sukiyaki which I reviewed here and Benjamin's incredible Steam Boat which I reviewed here.
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