Having received the new puzzles from Jakub and Jaroslav, they promptly went on
holiday and I thought I might have had plenty of time to solve and write about
all these wonderful new designs. Oh boy, I was very wrong. Even whilst on
holiday (vacation to the yanks) they still think about all their devoted puzzle
friends and sent me a message asking if I could have a review to them before
Friday 15th. OMG! The pressure is on! I really went for it. This was not made
particularly easy by the fact that there are several difficult packing puzzles
this time and I am terrible at packing puzzles. Many of you will have read my
reviews when they went up on the Pelikan store describing the puzzles - if you
have then no need to read on. I just didn't have time to publish the reviews
with decent photos here until now.
I have not managed to solve them all but I certainly have a review on them all
for you and hope that this helps when you are choosing what you should buy.
Without further ado, on to the puzzles:
I absolutely love this particular subgroup of the interlocking/caged burr
puzzle. A lot of the high piece number caged burrs can be extremely difficult
and quite a few have completely beaten me. There are a small group consisting of
a frame with just 4 burrsticks sitting inside that I really enjoy the process of
exploration and disassembly. The reassembly is a challenge but definitely
possible with such a low number of pieces.
Galaxy
Galaxy Z
Mysterious Galaxy
The master of this type is Osanori Yamamoto who
began my love of these
with the incredible Galaxy, Galaxy Z and Mysterious Galaxy puzzles. This kind
of puzzle can be expanded to make them more difficult and maybe slightly more
interesting (as Dan Fast did with the Stir the Coffee puzzle in the last
release. Osanori has designed a lovely little challenge here which Jakub and
Jaroslav have brought into the world beautifully using Jatoba and Wenge. The
fit is perfect and the exploration is great fun. There are quite a few short
blind ends and it's possible to go in a loop. I got stuck at one point and
could not find the critical move - everything is visible as you progress but
due to the ends being at 90º to each other I found my moves were easily
blocked. After a couple of evenings of play I suddenly found my hidden move
and I was able to take out the first piece.
It's a fun reassembly too
Having disassembled it, I scrambled the pieces and attempted reassembly and
really struggled. I did manage to work out what went where and in what order
but the hidden move that I had found fro the disassembly was also hidden on
the way back to the beginning. Brilliant puzzle which is just the right level
of difficulty and beautifully made.
This absolutely stunning puzzle designed by Alexander Magyarics was sent out to
me fully assembled. I suspect this was done to prevent the captive piece
rattling around in the post and getting damaged. If Pelikan does decide to send
it out assembled then I would very much suggest that you get your significant
other puzzler in your life to take it apart for you and then you treat it as an
assembly puzzle. It is truly gorgeous having been made from Zebrano and Jatoba -
the grain is just stunning! It is also a substantial puzzle in your hands being
an 8cm cube. This size is very welcome so that you can easily get your fingers
inside to manipulate the pieces. There are 3 pieces and the box which has some
pretty big holes in it. Only 2 of those pieces can be removed and the other has
to remain inside.
Insider pieces (the third is captive inside)
The disassembly is a nice little exploration and after that the captive piece
can rattle around into any orientation. This means that as a packing puzzle you
cannot create your shapes outside before working out how to put the pieces back
inside. Mrs S never agrees to play with my puzzles and I dismantled it and
scrambled all 2 of the pieces and left them for several days. As expected
(Alexander had suggested that I do this), the reassembly is a significant
challenge - I am critically dependent on creating my shapes first and working
backwards. This is not possible and I had to try and do it in my feeble mind. It
took me a couple of days before I succeeded and that was only because I
understood the disassembly. If I stared from scratch then I might still be doing
it! Beautiful AND brilliant.
This is one that I will put on display in the assembled form - just
gorgeous!
It made me stop and work out how I could get the awkward pieces inside - there
is only one assembly but there are 2 ways the pieces can be put inside. A really
difficult puzzle for me and will be beautiful on display in the puzzle room.
Lucie Pauwels is well known for designing really clever and fun challenges which
are often variations on a familiar theme which she extends or alters to make
them more interesting. Jakub must have seen how good this was and decided that
we all needed to experience it. He has created a stunner using very vibrant
Padauk and Wenge. In essence this is "just" another Soma variant - take the
simple tri-ominoes and tetrominoes and create a 3x3x3 cube! But, and it's a
really big BUT... Lucie has taken away one of the tetrominoes. Does this
make it easier? Yes, it makes it very easy to create a cube with a 4 voxel gap
in it but the she has made the puzzle MUCH more difficult by giving us a 3x3x3
box to assemble the cube in with a rather restricted opening and that 4th
tetromino is actually fixed into the roof of the box - yes, the roof of the box
is part of the shape. I find this also quite mind-boggling because I cannot
create my complete shape outside the box easily. Having taken the pieces out to
take my photo, I couldn't put any more than 4 of them in and actually needed a
rotation to do that! OMG! This was going to be really tough for a Soma idiot
like me.
"Just" a soma cube? Not for me it wasn't!
It took me several hours to solve this one and a huge sense of achievement. It
is perfect for anyone who really likes to collect all the Soma variants out
there (Haym Hirsh has created quite a few that Brian Menold has made over the
years and they are massive challenges).
This gorgeous construction is another magnificent burr design from Alfons
Eyckmans. This one made from Bubinga and Wenge looks ferociously difficult.
Anything with this number of pieces frightens me but I still cannot resist
them. My fear is always getting badly lost in the disassembly and then being
unable to return to the beginning or make progress. This puzzle is complex but
not so complex as to worry anyone about being unable to make progress. The
reason that Pelikan decided to make this is because it is effectively a 6
piece burr (albeit with stick length of 8 voxels) held within a frame made
from relatively simple burrsticks. I absolutely loved the initial exploration
of the movements as there were not too many available and certainly no chance
of me getting stuck. The first piece takes 25 reasonably logical moves to
release and thereafter the rest of the solution progressed very enjoyably. The
puzzle remained remarkably stable (if a little squishy) even after 6 pieces
had been removed and I eventually managed to remove the entire frame (which
consists of 6 identical versions of two types of piece) and was left with the
5 piece burr intact and remaining to be dismantled.
The pieces look fearsome but it was a really fun disassembly
The reassembly will
definitely require Burrtools but that is half of the fun.
This incredibly striking puzzle is yet another fabulous creation by Tamás
Vanyó. It has been made with Elm to match the pale city that was shown in
Peter Jackson's amazing Lord of the Rings films. Like the Caste builder set in
the previous release, the Minas Tirith is constructed using 2x2xN sized pieces
that fit in a frame which has restrictions in it. Unlike the castle builder
set, the frame actually forms part of the outer wall of the puzzle and greatly
restricts the ability to insert the pieces and means that the order of
insertion is crucial. I have to state that I have not had time to solve this
puzzle. The aim is to create a "city" so that none of the inner rooms are
visible externally and also there is an extra challenge which Pelikan have
added. Once the puzzle has been dismantled you will see a bunch of interior
channels cut within many of the pieces. The aim is to assemble your city so
that the supplied metal ball bearing can be inserted into the hole near the
top and then can navigate the carefully assembled maze so that it can exit the
exterior door after tilting it back and forth in the correct direction. This
will be a huge challenge for any puzzler and will leave you with a stunning
puzzle to put on display afterwards.
So which should you buy? Well all of them of course! I know that most of you cannot buy them all so will state that my favourites are Insider for the extra challenge of the captive piece, Golden Pot because it is just so beautiful and Scrooge because it is still a six piece burr but made more interesting!
Now I had better reassemble Scrooge before a certain cat runs off with a piece or Mrs S chucks them away for cluttering up her kitchen!
Yet again, this blog post nearly didn't happen because of the flakiness of my old computer - but luckily I have worked out that the Dropbox app is the cause of most of my woes - it is such a memory hog that it reduces everything to like wading through treacle. Once I had quit the app, everything returned to its normal level of slowness which is just barely tolerable rather than the totally intolerable level I had before. Phew! If anyone has any idea how to use Dropbox without the horrifically slow Mac app then please get in touch.
Back to my puzzling...
Up until a few years ago, I would regularly buy puzzles from my friends Alan and Leon Stein at PuzzleMaster but more recently I have been sidetracked by much more expensive and, one could say, I have fed my wood fetish (although many of the Pelikan puzzles can still be bought from them). They contacted me recently to ask if I would like to review a few of their more recent productions that they have commissioned in-house. I hesitated for a small microsecond and as you can imagine, jumped at the chance of having more beautiful stuff to try. I don't have a huge number of metal puzzles and am always keen to see what they can add.
Beautiful in wood
Their most recent release has been reviewed by a couple of the YouTube puzzlers and also by my friend Gabriel (one of the longest-running puzzle bloggers of all). I had to jump on the band-wagon as well but especially because this puzzle did ring a particular bell in my very feeble brain...I remembered that I had bought a copy of this from Jakub quite a few years ago and had completely failed to solve it. This gorgeous puzzle is a complex design by Yavuz Demirhan (who has designed and produced quite a few of my favourite puzzles and has reached my top 10 a few times). I recall vividly receiving the Chiasma in beautiful Walnut and trying lots and lots of very interesting movements but never managed to solve it and never reviewed it on the site. Having received another copy from PuzzleMaster, I really had to make an effort to solve this and write about it.
Chiasma is a board burr which consists of 4 identical boards interlocked into a rather attractive X shape. PuzzleMaster have commissioned it to be manufactured for them in Canada out of Aluminium and anodised in various colours. unlike their previous anodised puzzles, this one has been finished with a powdered texture which gives it a matt finish and makes it very nice to handle and, whilst less shiny, it is rather attractive. My copy is black and silver but it is also available in Black and Brown, Brown and Gold, Silver and Gold or a combination of all 4 colours. Either version will be lovely but the colouring will not help you solve it. It is pretty chunky too - it is 7.5 x 7.5 x 4.7cm and feels solid in your hands. The best part of this puzzle is that the individual boards are 9.5mm across and have very minimal beveling on them. The end result of this is that it seems to remain quite stable for a while until the pieces are well separated from each other - it does prevent inadvertent locking up by misalignment. Chiasma is nearly $100CAD but the quality is very high indeed.
This week I have had a little annual leave to give me a bit of relief from the catastrophe that is the NHS (and all other health services) just now and apart from having some gardening and some exercising to do, I could concentrate on spending some time with the present wife and also maybe solve a puzzle or two. I set to on Chiasma. Initially there are very few possible moves but after the first couple it suddenly opens out and there are a huge number of possibilities. My initial attempts, like those I tried back in 2013, involved mostly trying to keep all the pieces in symmetrical patterns in the hope that this was the secret of unlocking it gracefully.
At one point during my several days of attempts, I did discover a rotational shortcut which would allow a more rapid disassembly - if you have managed the proper disassembly then try and find this one as an extra challenge.
There is a rotation possible which allows a quicker solution
Unfortunately, Yavuz wasn't going to be nice to us by giving a puzzle with a lovely symmetrical logical solution! after a day or so of risking my life (Mrs S hates metallic clinking noises and this is quite noisy), I realised that I was going to have to abandon that approach and actually hunt for a release method by watching how the pieces move and aiming deliberately to get a piece released. The key feature (apart from the fact that they are all identical) is that the pieces have a single gap to allow them to lock and unlock together. The secret is to manipulate them in such a way as to allow the gap to line up on 2 pieces simultaneously. Sounds easy? Not for me it wasn't! The open shape allows you to see everything that is going on and, theoretically, make deliberate move decisions to advance to your goal. The disassembly level is 16.4.6 but it took me an awful lot more moves than that to find the sequence. The metal version was much easier to hold and manipulate stably than the wooden one.
On day 3 I had a breakthrough and suddenly I could see the final steps to line up the pieces and my first piece came out - Yay! I had 4 identical shaped pieces:
It is stunning despite being metal!
There was no way that I was going to get that reassembled from memory and I spent a nice happy half hour making a Burrtools file for it and then used that to disassemble my wooden version (I hope that you are impressed that I can find a single puzzle from 7 years ago?)
I had to make a second solution within Burrtools because the pieces can be assembled into 2 mirror images of each other and the wooden one was the other way around.
4 identical wooden pieces
I couldn't resist taking this photo comparing the 2 versions
If you did not manage to get a copy of the Pelikan version all those years ago then this is well worth picking up a copy of. It is a seriously tough challenge - I have to agree with PuzzleMaster's level 10 (Mind Boggling). Not really ideal for beginners but good for anyone with a bit of burr experience.
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.
For several months now I have been chatting with the genius (yes, you know that I am referring to Derek Boscch) about his latest ideas. Some he seems to struggle with but I always know that he will get there eventually. One design that I loved the idea of from the very first mention was the Split Maze burr.
The original Maze burr was a wonderful design by Kagen Schaefer (now Kagen Sound) which predated my puzzling addiction but when Tom Lensch produced his own (more versatile) version I couldn't resist it and it retains a special place in my heart as the first ever seriously expensive wooden puzzle that I bought - I wrote about it here in my two year celebration. I went on to buy a copy of Derek's Rhombic version and absolutely love it even if it fries my brain keeping track of so many faces. It was probably the first sign for me how much of a genius he really is.
When he told me about his exploration of a version with 2 maze pieces per side I was at first amazed and then hopeful that he would be able to 3D print a copy for me to play with. Later on, he showed it to the Doctor of wood, Eric Fuller, who said that he would look into making it in wood and acrylic. Very surprisingly, it did not take Eric long to work out all the kinks of the construction and Derek continued to work on a computer analysis of the best plate/maze combinations and a puzzle booklet to go with the commercial production.
Eric's update (with quite a few stunning puzzles) went on sale just about 2 weeks ago with 61 copies up for sale. I was rather fortunate in that I had been assigned to be the "duty floor anaesthetist" that afternoon, providing cover for the theatre suite (17 theatres) and the recovery room and hence would likely be free when the site went live. At 5pm dead, I had set a todo alarm to check Eric's site and in between boluses of a vasoconstrictor for a patient, I quickly checked the site and made a purchase on my phone...thank heavens for the mobile internet and Apple pay! There were several other simply amazing puzzles going up but I had my eye only on one and after my recent splurge decided that I really should stop there! The rest of them sold out in a few hours as did the simply GORGEOUS version of the Casino puzzle which I had reviewed here and which was last years puzzle of the year from Pelikan.
A week or so later, I had a third Maze burr for my collection:
Maze Burrs - the box is for the fully disassembled Cubic version from Tom with extra plates
The Split Maze burr is made from Granadillo, Birdseye Maple and Acrylic with metal screws as the maze pins and measures 9.9cm across each face. There was a downloadable pdf with a whole bunch (50) of challenges ranging from 31 to 382 moves. Derek has offered to make a nicely printed and wire bound booklet for sale to people who bought this puzzle and I am hoping will also provide a huge bunch more challenges as a pdf to download. This will make this a very good value puzzle despite the $189 price tag. It was set up as problem 1 when it arrived:
The premise is exactly the same as the other Maze burrs. Each face has a shape cut into it with a pin protruding through from the layer beneath. Only one of the faces has a pathway from the shape to the edge allowing a face to slide off completely. As each piece slides back and forth it will make room for adjacent faces to move if the track will allow it.
Even with the low-level puzzles I found this a real challenge - trying to keep track of 2 mazes per side is a huge challenge for my feeble brain and it did require a number of backtracks before I was finally able to get it. Once the first puzzle is solved then the acrylic maze piece with an exit can slide out of the puzzle.
The exit maze slides off
At this point, I discovered a catch - the pin plate could not come out - it was blocked by the acrylic piece on the side (you should be able to see it on the right in the picture above) and I then had to continue the maze movements to allow that blocking piece to drop and then could remove the pin plate. This means that there is often 2 challenges per set-up and thus even more puzzling fun.
Yay! Solved puzzle challenge 1
Inside is a nice little bag containing an Allen key to allow the pins to be unscrewed. After that, the other pins need to be unscrewed and then the plates removed so that the next challenge can be accepted. Having these unscrewable pins is a huge advantage over the original Cocobolo Maze burr from Kagen as it means that at any time that you get lost or confused then it is just a matter of unscrewing some pins and then resetting the puzzle. It also means that the puzzle does not need to be moved through the full solution in reverse to set up each challenge.
Once fully disassembled then one can fully admire Eric's masterful craftsmanship - it is simply superb:
Just gorgeous!
So far I have worked my way through the first 8 puzzles and am enjoying the progression - it certainly starts to get very very tough for me as I approach challenges requiring 50 moves - I suspect that I will never get above 100! If Derek can provide a whole bunch of level 30-60(ish) challenges then I will be a very happy man. Thanks to Eric and Derek for another fabulous toy for my collection!
I do not know whether Eric plans on producing any more of these - he doesn't usually rerun a puzzle unless there is a huge demand - I am sorry if you missed out after they sold so quickly.
Front - the cube is 1 voxel off the frame on each side
Back
My friend Yavuz Demirhan has been at it again! He released a bunch of gorgeous new designs on his Etsy store a few weeks ago and I jumped at the chance having been tantalised by them when he showed them on Facebook a while ago. The first that I bought and solved was the Maze cube (currently sold out) which consists of a cubic maze made from Sapele with Wenge slipfeathers which is partially seated in a frame made from the same woods (but with the woods reversed). The maze is seated on 3 maple dowels on each of the 3 faces and the cube needs to move through 3 mazes simultaneously to be taken off the frame. It is 8cm across each face.
The aim is for it to be seated fully inside and flush with the frame. There is apparently only one solution to this. I initially did not understand and took the cube off without too much difficulty and then put it back to the same position and thought I had solved it really easily! Silly me! I then repeated it and realised that there are at least 2 paths to seat the maze cube in that starting position. At this point, I had my "Doh" moment and realised there was more to it than that. A proper analysis was required!
After a good 2 hours of working my way through numerous starting orientations and playing with various directions, I was finally able to say that I had beaten it. It is a lovely thing to look at and a delight to play with - not too tough but just right. The final position is hidden by the show/hide button. If you don't want to know the orientation of the maze in the final position then don't look:
Flush with the frame - only one approach possible.
Mrs S Makes Me Tidy Up!
If you go to my New Additions page then you will see that Mrs S bought me something very special for our upcoming anniversary. After it arrived she rather pointedly told me that my puzzle room/study was a shithole and I could not really disagree with her. She said that until I tidied it up, I was not allowed to play with any of my wonderful new toys. I could not say no after her present arrived earlier this week. The shithole is no longer a shithole!
Yes, I really do need to sort this out!
After several hours I had this:
Much better.
The rest of my collection has been partially reorganised - I will show this off at a later date.
A Whack! Ouch! has been temporarily put on hold - phew!
