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And Still Not Good At It!

Eleventh Hour by Goh Pit Khiam

Once or twice a year, Tom Lensch emails out what he has been working on and lets interested puzzlers place orders. A few weeks ago the email came in just as I had purchased a few others and so my PayPal was tight and I also was aware that if post brought me too much then Mrs S would Whack! Ouch! me into oblivion.......again! I resisted the urge to buy it all and just picked a couple that I figured might just be possible for a man with my meagre bwain and which would not break the bank or Mrs S' patience. A week or so later I received the Eleventh Hour by Goh Pit Khiam (out of interest, I have seen the name as Goh Pit Khiam and Pit Khiam Goh - can anyone tell me how it should be written?).

It arrived in pieces made from what looks like Maple or Cherry and has Tom's fine stamp on one of the pieces. 4 pieces to construct into a 4x4x4 cube - surely, I must be able to manage this without too much difficulty after all these years? I set to work last weekend and very quickly managed to see the final position of all the pieces - yes, this might be an easy one! I was able to assemble any 3 of them quite quickly into their correct places but always was unable to get the 4th piece in. The way the pieces were interlocked always ensured that one was completely blocked from getting past. This was nice and fun - just the challenge I had been hoping for after desperately trying to solve the 3rd in the Hoffman suite from Pelikan. Whilst I have your attention, there are still a few left of the Sukiyaki, Steamboat and Fabrick puzzles on the Pelikan store - well worth a look.

I have had a lot of work to catch up on after my holiday and must  insist on using this as an excuse for my feeble bwain failing on this puzzle for several days. I was only able to play in the evenings but was getting nowhere fast. I even emailed Tom to ask whether this was a TIC but was reassured that it is "just" a simple interlocking puzzle. Damn! I'm rubbish at puzzles! Finally on Friday evening, I assembled my cube with a sigh of relief and a memory of the early days of my puzzling "career" - this simple interlocking cube takes me back to the fabulous creations from Rich Gain's Microcubology. Over that first couple of years of PuzzleMad, I must have bought 15-20 gorgeous interlocking creations (they sit in a tray on display in my second puzzle room - Whack! Ouch!). Only toward the end did I buy them in the disassembled state and solve them that way. I had kind of hoped that I might be better at them but Tom has proved me wrong!

5 days to assemble - that's rubbish!

Goh Pit Khiam also designs some interesting packing puzzles which I usually fail to manage but the Confound Space looked solvable by a mere human and I couldn't resist:

Confound space

6 blocks to place in a box with a limited opening - this is usually impossible for me.

Interestingly, I made a couple of discoveries very quickly and my "what if" sense made me try a few things and I was rewarded with my Aha! moment after just 20 minutes! Phew! I am not a complete eejit!

Pac'ing Almost by Accident

4 PAC by Hajime Katsumoto

This one was Allard's fault! He organised an MPP and I saw the puzzle there and after a very quick fiddle decided I HAD to have one. Mrs S is gunning for Allard for causing yet another toy to arrive in Sheffield. As I wrote last week, I had seen this one receive a prize in the 2021 IPP design competition and forgotten about it until that MPP and then chatting with Tom Lensch (who had made it) and ended up buying several wooden delights. 

It is quite a chunky puzzle compared to Katsumoto-san's previous delights - these include the amazing Penta in a box and Slide packing puzzles which I reviewed here back in 2016 or the 5L Box reviewed here in 2020. Tom's lovely sturdy construction has a box with dimensions 10.4x7.4x7.0cm with the 4 Pacmen all being 6cm diameter and 3cm thick. The aim, clearly is to insert all 4 of the Pacmen into the box through a hole that is just the size to allow a single one through at a time. There are a bunch of hokes in the top, bottom and sides to allow finger poking and manipulation of the pieces. It looks pretty simple really - I could not immediately see what all the fuss had been about but knew that to achieve the accolade and reviews that it had, there must be something special to it. 

Having established early that this was not as simple as it looked, I moved onto the other arrivals so as to have something for the blog. I was relatively horrified when other puzzlers mentioned that they were significantly struggling with it. I finally got a chance to play properly and started (as I am sure that everyone does) looking for ways that the Pacmen could interlink to allow them to fill a 2x2x3 unit space before trying to find ways to get them in to said space through a small hole. It transpires that there are a few very nice pretty ways to arrange the pieces and they all looked problematic. I did wonder whether there would be enough space to make them spin on each other once inside the box and quickly found out that nope! this was not a possibility without cracking the acrylic lid.

This finding ruled out my first attempt at a solution but I had a couple of others up my sleeve and tried those one after another. This was fun until I realised that none of those solutions were achievable either. At one point, during an exhaustive search for a way to flip a pair of Pacmen, I did something that looked fabulous and then went nowhere. I then spent a good 30-45 minutes desperately trying to undo the move I had done - it was really quite tight and needed the piece arrangement just perfect to be possible. This frightened the crap out of me again and I determined not to try that again.

I was stuck - just as Allard had been stuck for a while. It is very straightforward to put 3 inside but after that there seems to be no movement possible. The placement of the last one is very obvious as soon as you begin to think© about it but leaving that space with the others seemed to be impossible. I spent another week in this position trying inside and outside the box.

I was so stuck that I took out another puzzle that has frightened me to death for a few months - Eitan's edge turning octahedron looks a fearsome puzzle and I had been too fearful to even investigate it but I needed to think about something else for a while and decided to try a few algorithms to clear my mind.

Having tried a few things on that like the edge piece series, a variant of the corner piece series and looked for a way to make a commutator. I decided it was time to go back to 4 PAC. As always, it just looked so simple. The pieces are cylinders with 90º wedges cut out, the box is a 2x2x3 container - how hard can it be? I kept fiddling and even braved my previous awkward move and worked out how to go back and forth with it. 

I was sitting with Mrs S one evening watching TV and idly placing pieces inside whilst trying various moves but not really trying very hard or even paying a lot of attention - I think that Wednesday Adams was distracting me when I suddenly looked down and realised that I had a new arrangement of the pieces and if I just rotated the last one then I would have it solved. Mrs S was not terribly impressed when I showed her (she thought it looked remarkably easy!)

Like Allard, I had almost solved it my accident. I had them inside the box arranged in a way that had not occurred to me to try when looking outside the box. The sequence of moves is particularly clever and the solution really totally unexpected. The sense of achievement (even if I solved it accidentally) was fabulous. In reality, I would say that you cannot solve it randomly, you do need to try certain distinct moves but the final assembly will hit you with a surprise.

If you get a chance to play with a copy then it is very well worth your while. Thank you Hajime and Tom for a fabulous fun challenge.

Counting to 4 in the Correct Order

Number Blocks

Mrs S has been away for over a week visiting the Outlaws. She returned home yesterday whilst I was at work and this meant a  flurry of cleaning up my mess (with dozens of puzzles lying all over the house) and then making the place look vaguely presentable and doing a bit of my assigned DIY over the last few days. This has left me knackered but at least I have managed to solve a few puzzles to blog about. Today I have a lovely puzzle that was great fun and is absolutely perfect to take to work for "normal people" to play with. It's a little bit of a shock to have to finally admit after all these years that I am "not normal"! 😱😱

Recently, I had a little chat with Tom Lensch via email when I was seeking a copy of his award winning 4 Pac puzzle designed by Hajime Katsumoto. This had been very highly rated by Allard as well as appearing a few times in the EPP book. Of course, Tom always has a bunch of creations on the go at any one time and sometimes has a few toys lying around from previous batches. He talked me into purchasing a new version of the Melting Block puzzle (it has a bunch of gloriously coloured woods which I couldn't resist) as well as the Number blocks by Goh Pit Khiam.

New Melting Block

4 Pac

I immediately fiddled with the 4 Pac and realised that this was going to take some serious working out time which I didn't have straight away and suspected that the New Melting Block might be totally beyond me, so I started on the Number blocks. 

This gorgeous puzzle was created and entered into the IPP design competition way back in 2015 where it won a Jury honourable mention award. It has been reviewed by Jerry Loo who really enjoyed the solving. I am not entirely certain how I missed out on this one (I suspect that I ran out of budgeted funds or had been treated with terrible bodily harm by "she who frightens the bejeezus out of me"). I already have the Arrow blocks and the Road blocks already and very much enjoyed them. 

The aim of the puzzle is to convert one to orientation to another:

            1    2                1    2

                           →

            4    3                3    4

There are also several other orders that you can attempt but they are quite a lot simpler (although still a fun challenge). Obviously this cannot be like the traditional 15 puzzle - there is no gap to use to slide the pieces around with. Obviously something has to come out first and I discovered that by turning it over to look at the reverse of the tray: The 4 has no protrusions and then the other pieces can slide. Simple I thunk©, now I slide them into the correct position and reinsert the 4 piece. Of course, our good friend Pit would not have made it that easy - the sliding does move things about but you always get blocked no matter what direction you try. I guess that I had better take all the pieces out?

Now you can see why the puzzle isn't that simple

Maybe the tray needs to be rotated before trying my simple reinsertion? Nope, too easy - the tray just has a slot under the frame all the way around with no obstructions. Time to Think© again - ooh that's painful!

The challenge is not terribly difficult - I think it must have taken me about two hours over a couple of sittings. The lovely thing about this puzzle is that there are 2 very distinct Aha! moments before you can solve it. The first of them I came to quite quickly because whilst I'm not terribly bright, I am not entirely stupid! The second Aha! moment took much longer. I seemed to get fixated on trying one particular thing which was not going to work but I tried anyway...multiple times. Doh! Eventually I had my breakthrough and could count to 4:

I can finally reach 4!

I then brought this wonderful challenge to work where I tortured a few ODPs, nurses and medical students who needed a break from my barrage of information. It was really quite fun to watch them all go through the same process as me. The got fixated on the same problems and eventually had the same Aha! moments (occasionally with a little nudging) and were all delighted with the challenge.

This fabulous puzzle is well worth obtaining and sharing with friends if you can find a copy.

---

Dale Shows Passion Before Wedding Vows are Allowed

Passion Puzzle by Dale Overy

I have enjoyed Dale's company at many MPPs over the years. He sits quietly solving stuff with ease and enjoys showing off new finds and new creations. He has a particular penchant for disentanglement puzzles which is a delight for me because so few puzzlers seem to really love them. I had purchased a few little toys from him at the last MPP and promptly hidden them when I got home so that Mrs S did not see me moving a bunch of extra toys into the house after a day away. With so much work on my plate, I promptly forgot them and only found them again whilst "she who makes murder hornets fly away in fear" was away.

The Passion puzzle may look very familiar - it looks rather like the classic Wedding Vows puzzle which I reviewed in 2015. The aim is to move 1 bead across to the other side alongside its' lover. Of course, the bead will not fit through any of the holes in the puzzle. There are a number of similar looking puzzles that I have reviewed in the past but they have had very different solution paths. It is definitely not a hugely tough puzzle compared to the monstrosities that I have acquired from Aaron Wang or some of the worst of the sadly missed Livewire company puzzles. But the challenge is really quite fun and, dare I say it, probably suitable for beginners or non puzzlers.

The fun thing for me is the realisation that this lovely challenge is one step before the Wedding vows. You definitely need to go through the Passion puzzle stage before reaching the Wedding vows:

Very clever.

I still have a couple of others to play with from Dale that will keep me jingling and annoying "she who can freeze a lake with just a look". Whack! Ouch!

Type 4 Zig-zag design by Dick Hess

I have no idea what it is called - it's in Czech

All at Sea and Hitting the Bottle

Ship in a bottle

It would seem that every Sunday when I write my blog post I sit down with tears in my eyes and almost unable to see. Not for any emotional reason but this is the time that I have to do one of my employer mandated twice weekly lateral flow tests. 15 minutes before I start to type, I have had a good swipe at the back of my throat (pharynx for those of you keen to learn some anatomy) enough to make me significantly gag (Mrs S uses the affectionate term "boak") and then stuffed the thing far enough into my nose to feel like I am doing a brain biopsy. At the end of this with tears streaming down my face, I sit down to think about puzzles. Yep, I'm a truly depraved individual - who could think about puzzles after that?

Recently I might have received a little package from Tom Lensch and one of the puzzles that Arrived was a puzzle from last year. Ship in a bottle was designed by Goh Pit Khiam quite a few years ago and was entered into the IPP design competition in 2003 (that time made by Walter Hoppe). Tom rereleased it in 2018 and I sort of ran out of money at that time and turned it down. Of course Allard bought a copy, described it as a brilliant puzzle and immediately made me regret my decision. On top of that, at several subsequent MPP's it had been brought out and people playing with it seemed to enjoy it and further make me regret that decision - another reason for tears! Somehow I never actually got to play with it there as I am very easily distracted by other shiny things and squirrels.

Simple instructions - turn the ship around

Well, the last year has definitely encouraged me to hit the bottle - this bloody pandemic seems to have increased everyone's alcohol intake considerably. My own personal gin collection has increased enormously. When Tom let me know what he had available recently, he said he had some new copies of Ship in a bottle available and so I jumped on board and sent some PayPal. The package crossed the pond really quickly and before I had had time to warn Mrs S that yet more stuff might be arriving the postman had knocked on the door. She then knocked on me when I got home from work. It seemed like a good idea to hit the bottle as an analgesic!

Beautifully made from Walnut and acrylic with nice brass capped screws the bottle looked lovely. Tom had sent out the ship blocks (Maple I think) outside the bottle to protect it from being broken by the pieces in transit. The "cork" in the bottle is also made from Walnut and is held in place with a magnet. Pulling that cork reveals the only way to insert the pieces into the bottle. There are gaps all the way around the outside so that fingers (or as Tom suggests a pencil capped by an eraser) can be used to manoeuvre the pieces into whatever position you wish and then slide them around each other. I started on the first position and quickly achieved this:

Ok I'm hooked - definitely floating on a stable sea

Photo taken, I take the pieces out and reverse the orientation of the bottle. Now let's reassemble that ship...oh, now I see why everyone liked this puzzle. The presence of 3 vertically oriented pieces which appear to need to be inserted last (which is impossible) suddenly presents a challenge. Allard is right again (damn him!) I need to think© outside the boxbottle and this hurts (maybe I have sampled too much brain with my lateral flow swabs?)

Like most of you, I have solved the 15 puzzle many times before and initially thought that this would help but nope, not really much help at all. There is quite a lot more to this than just sliding tiles around, the presence of 2x1 tiles in both orientations really limits your options. 

In the end I solved it in about 45 minutes (probably much longer than most puzzlers) but I was distracted by TV and a cat trying to knock the 1x1 pieces off my lap. The assembly of the ship requires a fairly long sequence of moves and provides a very nice Aha! moment. After that it's time to reset to the beginning and of course, I had completely forgotten the correct sequence and had to work it out again. Really lovely!

Oh yessss! Definitely as much fun as everyone promised

Having reassembled the ship in the start position, I tried again and still couldn't do it without a struggle - this is an absolutely delightful challenge. It's not too difficult for an experienced puzzler but still fun and will be a wonderful challenge for a beginner or a child. I think I will be taking it to work to torture my colleagues with - at least they stand a chance solving this one (I have one particular orthopaedic surgeon who starts to cry whenever I threaten him with Tomas Linden's Symmetrick puzzle - if you don't have a copy then go and buy one right now!)

Having hit the bottle and completely consumed the contents (Hic burp!) I then decided to play with my balls:

Of course they are not my balls!
I just own them

My recent bunch of puzzles from Mine included a copy of Dog and Balls that he had managed to unearth. I couldn't resist adding it to my pile especially as all men like to play with their balls. The aim is to swap the green and red balls over without lifting anything off the tray. This is not as challenging as the Ship in the bottle despite needing many many more moves. Also quite fun.

I'm not very good at sliding piece puzzles but these were very enjoyable - if you find one for sale then definitely worth adding to your collection. Now it might just be time for some more gin. Cheers everyone.

Everyone Should Have Some Tray Puzzles...Or Maybe...

Everyone Should Have a Tray of Puzzles?

My Tray of Shame!

It would appear that I have not (yet) committed murder and been carted off to prison! Mrs S continues with the demon cough all night and I continue to have unrequited thoughts of assassination but have so far managed to hold myself back! I have to think of the cats...who would look after them if I killed her and went to the clink? Whack! Ouch! No dear, that's not the only reason I've kept you alive!

Yes, on the floor next to my armchair in the living room I have a tray - it's a nice wooden one which Mrs S insisted on me using rather than spreading out across the whole living room. It is my "tray of shame" - puzzles I have not solved but can't actually put away. I still keep picking up all of these puzzles fairly frequently and getting nowhere with them. Some puzzles have been there for several years! I really need to solve them some time but then, I really need to get better at puzzling! Allard has the puzzling machine (Louis) come over to solve his outstanding failures but I don't have anyone here like that.

The actual subject of this blog is about a group of puzzles that I have very little experience or skill with - tray puzzles. Today, I can report that I have solved a whole series of them and actually enjoyed it. I received a bunch of toys from Tom Lensch late last year and admired them, quickly played with a few and failed dismally so added them to my tray of shame. I tend not to be good at packing puzzles because I have no patience for puzzles that are solved with huge amounts of simple trial and error (especially those that have high numbers of pieces). These puzzles did not have a high piece count and because they were designed by Goh Pit Khiam, I was fairly sure that they would have required a decent bit of thought and understanding with a great Aha! moment. He is a fabulous designer.

Having failed with all three of the "3 in 1" puzzles, I stopped trying until a few weeks ago and had a play with a different set -

Rectilinear

This is a series of 5 challenges all marked out by lovely laser etching inside the tray. The aim is to place the start and end pieces as shown in the tray and then place the other pieces so as to create a single continuous pathway to join them together (the walnut squares are blank fillers):

Challenge 1	Challenge 2
Challenge 3	Challenge 4

Challenge 5

It looks easy, doesn't it? I have to say that as a starter for tray puzzles, for someone with very little confidence, this is just perfect! Whilst watching TV with Mrs S, I found solutions to the first 4 in a single evening and struggled with number 5. These are not simply trial and error - it could be solved that way but a little thought certainly cuts down the sheer number of random piece placements required. Having failed for a long time to solve almost anything, this was just the pick-me-up that I needed. The fifth challenge was taken to work and in a quiet moment during a period between operations, I had another go. Yess! After another 20 minutes, I had solved the final challenge and could take another puzzle out of my tray of shame once and for all. Fab! This is perfect for newbies or people like me who need a bit of a boost of confidence.

No, I am not going to show the solutions - it's not so hard as to need to give anyone help.

3 in 1

Next up was the series that had completely beaten me for a couple of months! I just could not seem to think about these in the right way. The 3 in 1 is also designed by Goh Pit Khiam and beautifully made with a Canarywood tray and 3 sets of 5 different shaped pieces - Cherrywood, Maple and Walnut.  Pick a shape and try to insert all 5 of them inside the frame. The tough feature of this is that the frame has a lip and the pieces need to slide under the edge. It is so perfectly made that no piece can be slid inside without lying it flat first. There is no squeezing it diagonally under the edge.

This was the puzzle that I stared with when I first received these months ago...and I completely failed with all three of the challenges. Off it went to my tray of shame and got played with at least weekly without success until well after Xmas. Finally, in exasperation, I took it to work to torture other people with as well as to spend more time with myself. I had a couple of very senior trainees with me who did not help me at all. I was kind of hoping they might solve it for me. I even plugged one of them into Burrtools which told me that it could not be solved - those of you in the know will be aware that that fact is particularly helpful and prevented me spending more time attempting the impossible! As a result, I spent more time trying to place the pieces on the tray whilst it was upside down and ignoring the lip. Only after I had found a possible assembly or two would I then turn the frame back over and try through the limited hole.

One afternoon, waiting for some blood results, I had ½ an hour to play and I suddenly had a breakthrough - I thought about other puzzles by the designer and something went click in my head. Initially, I thought that was my old man's neck going "crack" but it ended with a wonderful Aha! moment. Yess! One down, 2 to go!

The next 2 still took me another week or so - I got my final motivation when someone (I think it was Mike) at the last MPP told me they had solved their copy without a lot of trouble. Damn, I'm thick! I worked on the last ones at work and one of them has an absolutely delicious solution - classic Pit Khiam! The other one came as a huge surprise...it is solvable by Burrtools and when worked out it is a very nice sequence.

At last, another puzzle series can be removed from my tray! Maybe I can relax and join my boyz in their favourite place, the nice warm conservatory:

Oh, Lord! I want to be a cat!!!!

It's The Time of Year For Packing

5 wonderful new packing puzzles from Yavuz Demirhan

No! Mrs S has not chucked me out of the house just before Christmas! Although that may still happen when my latest order from Eric arrives! If anyone has a spare room for me to sleep in that may be very useful soon. At this time of year, it's the time for giving, which means present packing...or in PuzzleMad terms, packing puzzle packing.

If you are wanting wonderful packing puzzles in the New Year, then you should head over to the amazing New Pelikan Workshop and whilst there you can order the puzzles that I reviewed last week. Most of them are still in stock (although Euklid has sold out already). If you are in North America, you could buy the 3 Osanori puzzles (and a few others) from PuzzleMaster here.

The puzzles pictured above are from the amazing (and very lovely) Yavuz Demirhan. He announced on Facebook that he had a series of 10 packing puzzles, beautifully made from Walnut, Maple, Ash and Acrylic/Perspex coming up for sale. A lot of us jumped on them when they went up for sale and they sold out very quickly (none left just now). With my recent spending (puzzles and Xmas), I could not buy all 10 of them (although I now wish I had) and chose 5 that looked the most interesting in terms of low numbers of pieces and less likely to be just trial and error to solve. My choices were Raya Box 1 to 4 and Snake Pit 2. They arrived earlier this week and I set to playing with the first one straight away.

Raya Box 1

Lovely detail on the base

So where to start? Ermmm maybe logically at Raya Box 1? I removed the pieces from the storage position and took my photo and started playing in the evenings this week. The woodwork is lovely - the Walnut box is 70x55x42mm and has beautiful shouldered joints and nice edge beveling. The base is floating and appears to be made from a different wood (maybe Mahogany?) Set into a groove at the top is a precisely cut acrylic lid with a fairly large window cut in it. The interior space is 60x45x30mm (a 15mm voxel) and interestingly the window is set offset from the voxel positions meaning that pieces clash as you try to put them through the gap in the top and really adds to the difficulty.

As I usually do with these puzzles, I set trying to find an assembly with the right shape outside of the box. This was surprisingly awkward! I managed to find a couple of assemblies and then set to trying to put them inside. Trying to be systematic, I realised that each of my assemblies had 4 possible orientations to try and put inside. This is just delightful! I felt I was being logical and clever and then I realised that the offset lid (which does NOT slide at all) really gets in the way! Damn! I couldn't put all the pieces inside! In fact, having quickly worked out that I needed to leave it so that a certain 1 or 2 pieces were placed last, I managed only to place 2 pieces inside and couldn't even get the third in! After one evening I had to give up and go to bed! I was sure that I'd get it the following day...WRONG!

I worked on it for 4 evenings this week and got myself into a real "thought rut"...I was completely fixated on a certain arrangement of the pieces as this would perfectly allow the entry of the final pieces. It was obvious from early on that rotations would figure here (Burrtools would not be helpful) but there was very little room around the pieces inside to manoeuvre rotations. Last night, just as I was running out of puzzles to write about, I had an ecstatic Aha! moment and realised my fixation had been a bad thing (they usually are). I worked out an alternative assembly and realised that this was much easier to get inside the box (still tricky and needing rotations but perfectly doable). After nearly a week of work I had Raya Box 1 packed:

Very heavily obfuscated - this picture really gives nothing useful away!

This puzzle (and I assume the rest) is a perfect packing challenge for experienced and newbie puzzlers alike. I will be bringing this to work for a while to challenge/torture my colleagues.

Yavuz has sold out just now and I don't know whether more are coming - keep an eye on his Etsy store. If you are interested in other puzzles designed by Yavuz then have a look at these on the PuzzleMaster site.

Missing Tile

Also packing a punch for me this Xmas was my latest delivery from Tom Lensch. These puzzles had been requested many months ago and have arrived just in time. Unfortunately, I only have 2 days off to play but intend to work hard on solving some new toys as well as writing my Top 10(ish) of the year.

One of the beauties, I received from Tom was Missing Tile, designed by the incredible Goh Pit Khiam. There is a beautiful wooden tray and 8 rectangular or square pieces. The aim as stated on the paper is to pack the tray full with 7 of them (minus the small square) and then redo it with all 8 pieces and still completely filling the tray.

It is a lovely chunky puzzle and a few very interesting quirks to the 3D shapes of these pieces. Once this has been properly understood then it takes just a fun ½ hour or so to manage both packings. It's not hard but IS quite clever and perfect for a beginner puzzler.

Another puzzle (in fact 3 in 1 puzzles) which arrived from Tom was the, wait for it.......3 in 1, also designed by Goh Pit Khiam.

3 in 1

A beautiful Yellowheart tray with a circumferential lip under the edge and 3 sets of 5 pieces providing, yes, you guessed it, 3 puzzles in 1. The 3 in 1 is considerably tougher than missing tile - so much so that in 3 weeks, I have completely failed to find even one of the solutions! It makes a wonderful worry bead which is just as well but it does tend to stimulate the odd swear word!

Now I should probably get back to packing Mrs S' Xmas present!


Have a great time over the Holidays (yuk! I hate that Americanism!) Look after yourselves and your loved ones and don't forget to look up from your new toys to actually enjoy each others' company. I will be back with one more post this year for you next weekend.

Packing with Purpose

Box Rebellion

This post follows a little discussion I had with my friend Dave Holt (of the Metagrobologist) who has an absolute fixation on packing puzzles...the more complex the better! He had shown off a picture of one of his recent acquisitions from Tom Lensch, the CRUMB/Melting Block puzzle designed by Bill Cutler and John Rausch.

Dave's CRUMB puzzle

The CRUMB consists of a full set of 28 lettered pieces shown above in their larger storage box with one non-lettered piece as a small spacer to fill the box. There is also a standard box to work on all of the many puzzle challenges and a 3 sided 'corner' box with dimensions of the bottom, sides and depth of the box (created to avoid 'in and out' attempts (as called by Bill and John) which eliminates reaching in and out and easier to slide pieces around). There are 76 doubly-unique solutions to the packing ranging from the 10/11 piece CRUMB (which is relatively easy) to several 13/14 piece ones, which are very difficult to solve manually. Whilst I really appreciate the beauty of the craftsmanship and the incredible variety of puzzling provided by this amazing multi-puzzle, I commented that I am not a huge fan of packing puzzles with so many pieces in them as there is far too much random trial and error and not enough deduction in the solution process. A wonderful and far more eloquent follow up comment from George Syriaque stated it beautifully:

"The issue is that ‘figuring out where the pieces should go’ requires far more effort than ‘figuring out how to get them there’"

This sums me up with packing puzzles entirely. I did eventually solve and review the Melting block a long time ago but have seldom attempted such a complex packing challenge since. I definitely prefer my packing puzzles to be about getting the pieces into position rather than finding where they should go - this sort of follows on from my love of interlocking puzzles. One example of this is the Box Rebellion pictured at the top of the post.

I was very proud to get a copy of the Box Rebellion puzzle (Coffin #195) from Tom Lensch quite recently. Tom had made a bunch after some discussion with my friend John Rausch who had reminisced that the 4L puzzle had been getting a lot of attention recently and that he had exchanged Stewart Coffin's Box Rebellion (#195) at IPP24 in Tokyo which had a number of similarities. I had absolutely adored the 4L puzzle back in 2016 and would always seek out something similar if it came up for sale. By the way, if you don't yet have a copy of 4L then get one NOW - Eric has them for sale here - they are an ESSENTIAL purchase.

John's original exchange puzzle had been made by Walt Hoppe. Like 4L, it has 4 L-shaped pieces that must fit into a restricted-entry box. Unlike the 4L, the acrylic top is not fixed in place, it can slide back and forth 5/32" (Lord, why can't the US embrace the present and the future and go Metric?),  which is enough to allow an L piece to fit on one end, and enough for one cube of an L piece to raise up on the other. Unlike 4L, the L pieces for this puzzle are made from three cubes.

Tom's lovely version is made with a Walnut box (complete with small finger sized holes in the ends to allow manipulation inside and an oddly shaped acrylic top which has a little movement to it. The 4 L shaped pieces are beautifully made from Yellowheart. The premise is very simple and with only a little thought, it is obvious how the pieces are to be positioned in the box. Getting them there is another thing altogether. If you have done the 4L before then you will not be overly troubled by this one because the thought processes are similar. But it still takes a bit of planning and a fun little struggle with moving the pieces around using just the little holes and gravity.

Very clever - I will be storing it unpacked though, to allow torture of colleagues at work

If you have never solved 4L then this is will be a much greater challenge but still possible without spending weeks on it and it may be a nice work out for when 4L finally comes your way.

Next up os another packing puzzle with very few pieces and a placement challenge:

Petit Ring

Of course, I cannot buy just one simple little packing puzzle from Tom and have it shipped 1000s of miles! He also offered me the opportunity to buy one of Osanori Yamamoto's latest designs, Petit Ring. Made from the same woods as the Box Rebellion it is another "simple" packing puzzle with just 3 relatively simple pieces to be put into a 3x3x2 box with oddly restrictive but wide open holes in opposite corners of the top and bottom. The fact that there are holes in both sides gives an idea that this is going to be quite a challenge. Again, it is more interlocking puzzle than packing and I love the challenge. It looks at first that the holes are wide open and that this will be easy but that diagonal half voxel is a real problem - the end result of it is that the entry holes are L shaped which is seriously restrictive.

These 3 pieces do not completely fill the cavity of the box but I assumed that the final result should have the entry holes completely filled and any gaps are concealed inside. The similarity to Pack 012 (also by Osanori) and the false solution to that one made me quite wary. There are a few ways that the pieces can slot together in a 3x3x2 shape and it is a fun challenge to work out which of those are physically possible to get inside the box.

I came up with a very promising way to put the pieces together quite quickly and then moved the puzzle to the box packing part and quickly ran into trouble. The larger shape will only go into the box in a few orientations and needs a lot of manoeuvring space to get it in. As soon as the other pieces are introduced that manoeuvring space disappears very quickly. After a bit of thought, getting 2 pieces in is achieved and then the final challenge is how to get that final piece inside. I could find 2 possible orientations for it but it was terribly blocked. Changes to the entry order were no help and I struggled with it for a few evenings.

Eventually, I had a thought© which is an unusual event for me but as is more common, that thought had an error! Many of Osanori's puzzles have very ingenious rotations in them and I wondered whether that was required for the Petit ring? The tolerances in Tom's craftsmanship are fabulous and rotations are almost impossible. After another evening of experimentation I had finally achieved the final puzzle state:

Solved it! This photo was taken after a rotation

I was really pleased with myself for solving it and then I had a look at the page on PuzzleWillBePlayed only to see that I had solved it but in the incorrect way. It states that there are 72 assemblies of which only one is achievable and, crucially, it makes no mention of the need for rotations. Now Ishino san is very meticulous in his maintenance of the pwbp pages...if a solution needs rotations in the solution then it is always described (have a look at the listing for Osanori's Galette puzzle here - it clearly states that rotations are required).

The lack of this mention forced me to go back to my puzzle and spend another few hours on it. Finally, I got it! That is a wonderful design - not really one for trial and error but requiring planning and thought©.

If you have a copy of Petit Ring then your challenge is now to solve it both ways. Can you find the correct solution and then do it all over again with rotations? It is brilliant and I cannot wait to get more of his fabulous "low number of pieces" designs.

Osanori's Packing - Heaven and Hell

Pack 012 - heaven

Quite a long time ago Tom Lensch was kind enough to let me know that he was going to be making another beautiful copy of the Hoffman Packing Puzzle in gorgeous woods and, being a collector who loves his wood, I jumped at the chance. When the notice that he had completed them came through and the request for a little (quite a bit) of PayPal arrived, he also said that he was about to begin making a few copies of the latest packing delight from Osanori Yamamoto that had been showed off on Facebook recently. This new one was called Pack 012 which I initially struggled to understand why it had been so named. I had wondered whether it was because of the number of cubies/voxels in the shapes but was baffled when I counted 13. Now looking at the photo above I can see that the 3 pieces are effectively shaped like an O, a 1, and a 2 - Doh!

Pack 3

Tom had made the frame from Maple with the lid and base available either as American Walnut or as more Maple - I am a sucker for contrasting woods and you can see what choice I made. I think that the pieces to be packed were made of Padauk. The craftsmanship is stunning - the angles are beautiful and the joints perfectly smooth - I adore this sort of quality. This puzzle is surprisingly reminiscent of another recent puzzle from Eric Fuller that I had reviewed, the Pack 3. This puzzle also was very beautiful and surprisingly difficult (with one false solution).

I set to playing with this straight away - the aim, obviously, is to pack the 3 pieces inside the box. It looks very simple but the diagonal hole in the corner of the box, through which the pieces must be inserted, is surprisingly restricting. I am always very suspicious of puzzles by Osanori because a large number of them require rotational solutions and I automatically start exploring and looking for any sneaky little trick that may be possible. Tom's sturdy box and accurate pieces showed no sign at all of having any room to rotate at all in anything other than the z-axis i.e. the pieces could be twisted in the box but not made to stand up or lie down once they were inside. Maybe this was not a sneaky puzzle? After about a ½ hour of play, I had found a way to pack all three pieces inside.

They are inside but this is curiously unsatisfying

After my initial frisson of pleasure, I became aware of a curious dissatisfaction. Whilst all 3 pieces have been packed, the conformation is just not elegant. One thing to realise about Osanori's puzzles is that the solutions are almost always pleasing to the eye and leave a feeling of satisfaction at their elegance. This same thing had occurred to me with the Pack 3 puzzle and after discussing it with my genius friend, Derek, I was left knowing that my solution was not the required one. Back to the drawing board.

The following day, I returned to it and, again, convinced myself that rotations were not part of it. I proceeded to try various assemblies outside of the box. Luckily with just 3 fairly simple pieces, it is relatively straight-forward to make an assembly and then work backwards through a disassembly. Derek had assured me that this one should not really tax me much and, having put aside my disbelief, I worked on it for another ½ hour. AHA! He was right - this is perfect! It is simpler than Pack 3 which seriously challenged quite a lot of puzzlers. It is probably quite on a par with the Pin Block Case - about an hour of pleasant fiddling for most puzzlers. I don't think that the picture of the solved puzzle gives too much away but I have hidden it behind a button. Only push the button if you want to see the completed packing.

All packed up - a lovely challenge!

The Pack 012 was the packing puzzle "Heaven" - what, therefore, is the packing puzzle "Hell"? This, my dear reader, is the Galette packing puzzle, also designed by Osanori Yamamoto.

Galette - hell

I had first come across the Galette puzzle as an entry in the IPP design competition in Paris in at which it was one of the top ten vote-getters. I had spent quite a lot of time on it in the competition room in Paris and had singularly failed to find a solution. I was delighted when Tom had offered it for sale after the IPP was completed and my copy arrived in October last year.

It looks like a simple packing puzzle with 5 tetromino pieces to be inserted into the covered rectangular space inside the frame. Again, rotations are possible (even required) around the z-axis but there is no way to stand a piece up on its edge. This is explained by the name - Galette is French for Wafer. The extra little twist to make this really tough is that the entry to the packing space is only through a 3x2 unit space in the lid or through a 1 voxel space in the lower edge. The extra interesting feature is that the bottom edge entry is part of the packing space - there are 21 voxels available and 20 voxels in the pieces - where is the gap supposed to be?

I went to play as soon as this arrived last year and after a week got quite demoralised. I put it away for a month and then tried again - nope! This went on for several months - I just could not find a solution! I became convinced that there must be 100s of possible assemblies to sift through and trial and error was required. After about 4 months I made a Burrtools file to count the assemblies - the required rotational moves told me that BT could not solve it for me, but at least I could find out how many hundreds of possible assemblies there might be.

BT worked on the challenge for exactly........1 second (on my 13-year-old computer) and told me that the space could hold the enormous number of 11 assemblies! Damn! I am really not very good at puzzling! I have picked it up again for a week or so every month and had a play - one of my issues with many packing puzzles is that I feel that there is too much random trial and error and not enough deduction in the solution challenge. Here, there is the challenge of finding the assembly and then working out how to put it in the box through the 2 small openings. I ended up taking notes on the shapes that I had tried and ruled out before suddenly finding something critical in February. I had my rather lucky Aha! moment and was left wondering why it had taken me so long. For me, this has been packing puzzle hell!

At last!

I really do not know how I did it and actually doubt whether I could solve it again! I am left wondering why it did so well in the design competition? For me, the amount of trial and error was too great. I love the craftsmanship but am not in love with the challenge.

As for trial and error, my initial approach to the gorgeous Hoffman packing puzzle has been one of frustration.

Hoffman packing puzzle - OMG - hell on earth!

The aim here is:

Fit twenty-seven blocks, measuring A x B x C into a cubic box with sides of A + B + C.
A, B, and C must be different and the smallest dimension must be larger than (A+B+C)/4

There must be a mathematical way to work out the best approach to this but if there are then it is way way beyond my skills! I guess this might take me several months or years too - gulp!

Hopefully, I might obtain a puzzle that I can actually solve soon!