Did Juno Con Me? No Way!

The Con Way Puzzle by Juno

Frame assembled

A little while ago Yukari sent out an email to the puzzling world offering Juno's latest creation, the Con Way Puzzle, for sale. it was made from gorgeously grained wood so how could I turn it down? Also it was a design by Juno so how could I turn it down? On top of that, it came with a stand and I am a sucker for a puzzle with a stand for display so how could I turn it down? Fear of the present wife could have made me turn it down but I hit buy before I had time to think about what "she who must be flinched from" even impinged on my mind! Only a few minutes later did I wonder about the Whack! Ouch! that I might receive....again!

This gloriously beautiful thing arrived within a week from all the way across the globe and I lined up all the pieces for my photos. It was beautiful made from New Guinea Walnut and American Cherry. I admired the grain and then looked with horror at the shapes which appeared to be random and then the frame which unexpectedly came in pieces. I have a long history with Johan Heyns' puzzles having wonderful frames to display them on and me finding the assembly of the frames being a huge first challenge! I managed the frame after a few minutes of offing and blinding and had a look at what I had to play with:

This puzzle is based on a design by the famous mathematician, John Horton Conway who many of us have followed as teenagers interested in recreational maths. I remember programming the Game of Life into my Sinclair ZX81 - sigh, good times! The Conway puzzle was a classic packing puzzle that appeared in Stewart Coffin's Puzzling World of Polyhedral Dissections and has been made in some beautiful woods by various creators. It turns out that the original version was not that tough once the puzzler made a certain realisation. Juno had decided to take the initial idea and make it better by making all the cuts skewed. He had been worried that the challenge was too easy but when people tried out his 3D printed prototype they had really enjoyed it. As a result I have another piece of glorious wood in my collection.

I knew nothing about the original puzzle and set to afresh. There are 6 pieces that seem to be based on a 2x2x1 basic shape and then 3 mini cubes that are 1x1x1 voxel in size apart from the fact that only one of the pieces has been cut with orthogonal cuts. Everything was at an odd angle and looking at the pieces, they were all slightly different meaning that finding a basic assembly pattern wasn't going to do it. Juno showed off the solution to one of the versions way down at the bottom of his product page but I was determined not to look at it. 

This is not one to solve on your lap (especially with cats around) - you need a flat surface and I would suggest a ruler or tape measure as well. Knowing that the cube is going to be 60mm in each direction was going to be very helpful. The grain of the wood was not going to be helpful - Juno was careful to ensure that you didn't solve it as a 3D jigsaw with the picture being the grain. I found that the constructed frame was very useful to find corners that were 90º in all dimensions. This helped narrow down what pieces could go where. After finding a few corners (unfortunately several pieces had 2 corners that could have been external and needed a trial and error approach with the ruler. I had sort of decided on what I thought was the only possible basic arrangement of the basic shapes but not workout which ones exactly went where.

I did take it to work a couple of times but got no where with it apart from to make a couple of arthropods laugh at my failure. Home it went for me to have a proper effort on. My basic idea was right but I needed to find which slanted cuts would match with each other - there were not going to be any odd corners internally which definitely helped.

Finally after a couple of hours of thought and a bit of trial and error, I had my Aha! moment and had a rather precariously assembled cube to pick up and place on the display frame, hopefully without it falling apart. I have put the photos behind a spoiler button so as not to inadvertently give any clues but I suspect that the grain in my version will be very different to yours and the pictures will to be helpful.

One Con Way Puzzle assembly

The single voxel cube is in the centre

I love a puzzle with a stand!

There are still 5 of these left in stock as I type. If assembling cubes is your thing then this will not disappoint you. It is a thing of beauty when on display, the frame is a puzzle in itself and this might be a really good puzzle to give to "normal people" to play with! it's very tactile and compelling to play with.

Thank you Juno and Yukari for yet another lovely fun challenge!

I Have Worked As Fast As I Can!

Coming soon from the New Pelikan Workshop

I showed off on my New Additions page that I had just received another huge batch of puzzles from Jakub and Jaroslav that they were hoping to release soon. I know that you all want to know about them as soons as possible and they want to sell them soon as well. I know that they like for me to write a bit of a spiel about them for their site and hence I start work as quickly as I can. Luckily I had a week of annual leave this week and did get a bit more time to play than I usually would BUT Mrs S is still a woman to fear if I don't do all the chores and duties that she has decided I must do and hence I did not have quite as much time as I needed. Plus...I am only human and my very feeble brain can only solve so many puzzles in a short period of time without feeling like it is going to explode. There are 9 in this release and I have managed to solve 5 of them so far. I will work on the remainder as quickly as I can.

I have no idea when these will be put up for sale so keep an eye out on the Pelikan puzzles site for updates or (if you are North America based) then keep an eye on the Pelikan section of PuzzleMaster for them appearing there (this normally happens a few weeks after the initial release).

I will start with the 2 puzzles from my friend Alexander Magyarics - right up front I have to shout out that HE IS ON FIRE!!! The puzzles that Alex has been designing recently have been not ownly beautiful in their design but absolutely astonishingly fun designs to play with and solve. He has got just the right difficulty level and play experience recently and these are the very best he has produced.

Colliding Galaxies 2

 Colliding Galaxies 2 by Alexander Magyarics 

Let me say from the beginning that for me this was the pick of the bunch - it may not be for everyone but I seriously struggled with this and the Aha! moment when I managed it was something truly special. Yet again this is another 3x3x3 cubic packing puzzle with a fancy box and a complex restricted entry which must be completely closed once solved. The title comes from the rather nice 3 armed hole on opposite poles of the box - the one pictured above is made from Cherry and Wenge and of course, like all of Jakub's work it is superbly made. The 4 pieces are quite restricted in the way they can be inserted into the box but so much that there is only one choice. Alex is not going to make it too easy by restricting too heavily.

Solving this was an unusual experience for me - I did my usual of trying to solve it outside the box and got only so far before having to change my approach - this may because I am stupid I guess. I found a few ways to construct a cube and felt this part was quite fun. Finding which orientations would fill the entry gaps was rewarding too and I had narrowed my assemblies down to only one or two. My next step is to seat the box on my lap (or the sleeping cat on my lap) and alongside it put the assembled shape I thought might be correct and then work through the possible disassembly. The problem for me was that these shapes and the holes in the box were too complex for me to keep visualised and held in place during the process. I tried this each evening for several days and just could not do it. Eventually I abandoned that approach and did something I have almost never managed before - I actually tried to assemble it within the box without having worked out what order or sequence to use first. What a challenge! Which pieces to put in first etc? Eventually I managed to get 3 of the pieces assembled inside but the 4th was a problem. I could do this with several combinations of 3 different pieces, Aaaargh! I spent 3 evenings desperately trying to get this together and always found that the crucial move that I needed was blocked until I noticed something special. A few slides later and:

At last! Fabulous!

I had not tried a particular set of positions before (I don't know why but I just had a mental block and couldn't see it) and suddenly I found the setup position I needed and AHA! It went together like a dream - this is a STUNNING challenge. You may find it easy but for me, I just could not seem to visualise the sequence. It forced me to work in a different way to my usual.

Play-boy 2

 Play-boy 2 by Alexander Magyarics 

It arrived like this

Yet again, we have another puzzle based on a non-rectilinear grid. Only Pelikan seem to have the courage to do these sorts of puzzles - probably because they must have a way to create the necessary jigs cheaply and easily. This puzzle has been made from Pink Oak and Padauk. Taking the pieces out of the box as it had been packed for transport, I could see just how accurately these had been made - the pieces had sharp corners and I had to be careful not to stab myself. I am sure that you can see it straight away but for me it took a few days for me to realise that this one is also "just" a 3x3x3 cube to be fitted into a box with a complex entry hole. The special feature is that this box and the pieces have been sheared along the x-axis to make a shape that is also quite difficult to visualise in your head (of course, YOUR head is probably more capable than mine).

I had taken this to work because I knew that I had a vascular case down in our angiography suite which was going to be a very easy anaesthetic and a VERY long procedure. I needed something to keep me out of mischief (I get up to all sorts of pranks if I am not kept properly occupied) - this puzzle was going to save the staff from being annoyed by an anaesthetist with the mind of a 12 year old and a low boredom threshold!

I worked on this in my usual fashion - assemble the correct shape outside the box and then work out whether and then how it can be placed inside. I am not good with a non-rectilinear grid and just finding the shape took me a little while. There are some big clues as to what is needed in looking at the shapes. The restricted entry is very helpful in limiting the possible assemblies and I was pretty sure that I had the correct one settled on fairly early. Time to work through the disassembly first outside the box and the skewed shape made it hard for me. After about ½ an hour I had it worked out - solved in about an hour? Not so fast! Actually doing the assembly proved an extra fun challenge - gravity has to be utilised just right and a good bit of dexterity - it was almost like a non-rotational version of the Rollercoaster puzzle which I reviewed here. The nursing staff and my ODP had watched me working on it with fascination and were almost as delighted as I was when I stood up and showed them this:

That was FUN!

Yet again Alex and Pelikan have produced something wonderful and requiring a different thought process to usual.

No Pelikan release seems to be complete without something from Osanori Yamamoto - the next two were his challenges.

All Tetra Pod

All Tetra Pod by Osanori Yamamoto

This puzzle has been beautifully made from wenge and Padauk. This was the first one I tried from the current batch - I thought I might manage to do it fairly quickly because the pieces are relatively simple being just the complete set of tetrominoes and also because I distinctly remembered having solved a very similar challenge from my good friend from South Africa, Johan Heyns. He had produced the Tetro puzzle from Ishino's site complete with a frame and a stand - I had written about it here and had enjoyed it a lot.

Tetro pieces - see the similarity?

Assembled in the stand

And there was my first mistake - the similarity was only superficial - Johan's puzzle was relatively easy because there are 63 possible assemblies into that corner shape and whilst finding one of them was not trivial, it was not too many hours of work. The new design from Osanori-san has a much more restricted entry (in fact, it is a corner shaped box with only a slot for entry). I think I had made about 6 different corner shapes which would not go inside the frame before I realised quite how much more of a challenge this was. I needed to think in terms of the restrictions as well and that really added to the challenge! Over an afternoon I think I lost most of the rest of my hair from this puzzle - it is a massive challenge and it transpires there is only a single assembly out of the 63 which is assemblable inside the box. It requires a lot of thought and a LOT of trial and error - fabulous!

That took me a very long time!

Palace

Palace by Osanori Yamamoto

Palace has been made from Pink Oak and Wenge. I know...it's yet another packing puzzle! Yet another of those 3x3x3 cubes that need to be inserted in a box so that they fill all the entry holes! Over the last few years I have bought dozens and dozens of these puzzles and I never ever get fed up with them! They are all very similar in idea yet all very different in challenge. I absolutely adore them because they require several different trains of thought and then some fun manipulation of pieces and even some dexterity too. Osanori (and Alexander) are the absolute masters of this subtype of the packing puzzle group (I consider it a mixture of packing and interlocking along with some dexterity).

Palace looks pretty simple because there are only 3 relatively small pieces and they don't look terribly complex but there is the challenge - such compact pieces still need to fill some very big gaps in the box. It is quite easy to make a few shapes outside the box which will fill the gaps so maybe the challenge will be small? Unfortunately the entry is really not very restricted at all and therefore it requires a lot of trial of different orientations and assemblies before the appropriate thoughts begin to percolate my dense noggin. Like most of Osanori-san's designs, the pieces need to dance around each other quite a bit - in this case there is one particular move that I really struggled to find at first. The Aha! is tremendous when it hits you and everything finally slots into place.

Palace solved - magnificent!

I would be interested how all of you store these puzzles? Do you leave them in the solved state? Do you put them on display in pieces or just assemble into an incorrect shape for the shelf?

Web 3

Web 3 by Dan Fast

Finally today, a new design from a man we have not heard much from in a long time...Dan Fast (he used to be called the CrazyBadCuber but has given up that moniker now) has designed a few puzzles over the years (both Twisty and interlocking/burr) which I have had the opportunity to review and enjoy a few times on the blog. Dan got into Burrtools a few years ago and has recently been playing with it again. He sent me a few BT files a month or so back to ask my opinion and I was fairly positive about them. Jakub also got to see them and was enthusiastic enough to make a quick prototype (really really quick!) and made the decision to produce one of the easier of the designs. Web 3 is the result. This has been gorgeously made from Garapa and Ovangkol (stunning grain on it). Dan has designed a whole bunch of these up to 8x8 but I think jakub wanted something more approachable for all puzzlers.

The aim here is to slot the pieces into the frame to create a lattice that sits flush with the base. My first attempt at this had it solved in about 5 minutes and I was left with a feeling that I was missing something. I took it apart and gave it to a coworker and they really struggled - I must have got lucky. They eventually put it together and were very pleased with themselves so I tried again. My second attempt was less straight-forward. It requires a little trial and error but mostly, after the first few attempts, a definite plan and logical approach. It is still not hugely difficult (I think that a 4x4 version might be really really tough - too tough for me) and they final assembly gives a nice satisfied feeling. This is definitely suitable for beginners and experienced puzzlers alike. Dan has commissioned Alfons Eyckmans to make a full set for him up to 8x8 - now that will be a wonderful puzzle set for his collection!

Fun challenge and looks great on display

I am continuing to work on the rest of the puzzles and will hopefully have reviews up for you all soon. 

Taking it Slow but NOT Easy

Matrix by Émil Áskerli

Unfortunately work has interfered with my puzzling and blogging this weekend - the NHS never stops and never sleeps and as the pandemic begins to ease again, the workload to try and catch up with the backlog is going to increase. Unfortunately I am missing a virtual MPP and having to write this review in advance.

My friend Johan Heyns unfortunately decided to abandon making puzzles (except for his own enjoyment) and selling them on his store which is now shut down. I am very pleased that in the few years that he was selling I managed to buy quite a few of his creations (starting with the phenomenal Really Bent Board Burr designed by Derek Bosch). Most of Johan's puzzles had a number of features in common - he made them from sticks which he cut very accurately and then glued together (this is really obvious in the photo above) and also almost all of his creations were supplied with a stand especially designed to hold a particular puzzle. Some of the stands are almost as complex as the puzzle itself and I distinctly recall that one of them needed assembly and it took me ages to actually work out how to put just the stand together!

Stand perfectly designed for the puzzle

Tray of shame! Matrix always present.

Back in 2017 I bought the Matrix puzzle from Johan. It looked interesting as a stick burr that was combined with a complex frame made from interlocking boards. This puzzle does not have a particularly high difficulty level with a solution requiring only 45 moves to remove all pieces (21.3.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.3.2). Despite this so called ease, I have been completely unable to solve it for years. Many puzzles like that get shelved and brought out periodically to be tried again (and again and again) being put away between attempts each time. The Matrix, however, was different...the moves were really quite interesting and I always seemed to be making progress but then getting stuck about 15 or 16 moves into the solution. I couldn't bring myself to put it away and it would always end up returning to my tray of puzzles I am "currently" playing with. It has been on that tray in the living room for 5 years being picked up and fiddled with every few weeks/months. Always always, I would get stuck at exactly the same spot. Maybe I was down a dead end? It seemed unlikely that one would be this long but I could not find an alternate path and have remained fixated on this blasted puzzle for years.

There is something really special about the designs from Émil Áskerli - Eric made the Clamped cubes back in 2017 (if Eric makes something you can always assume that itis a very interesting puzzle)

Clamped cubes

Clamped cubes pieces - looks simple?

I also received a gorgeous version of Émil's Tvan from Johan and it also remains compulsively unsolved but stunningly beautiful on display.

Tvan on stand

This week, I have had to medicate one of our boyz and he is not enjoying the process. In the evening, by the time I get to settle down with a puzzle, he is usually clamped to my lap and I realise that I have forgotten to put out any of my new acquisitions to play with. So this week I have been forced in the evenings to continue playing with Matrix - after all, it has been within reach for 4 years!

Each day I have repeated the same sequence of moves and been unable to get any further until Thursday when I have a fabulous Aha! moment. I've found a move...a REALLY complex move that involves the frame shifting along with several of the sticks. I don't know why I found it this time. I suspect that I must have been holding the puzzle in such a way as to squeeze it and initiate the move. Johan doesn't use a smooth lacquer to finish his creations and this may have created some friction which made it harder to find the hidden move. Having found the new move, I was on my way and I quickly laid a pile of pieces on the purring boy. It soon became obvious that I was never going to get this back together again without Burrtools and have spent a happy few hours creating the solution file.

At long last!!!!

Absolutely brilliant puzzle! I hope that Émil continues to design and that other craftsmen will make his designs. I know that Johan has several other hobbies and a grandchild keeping him busy. I will miss getting puzzles from him as they are very different to those produced by others. I hope that everyone who went to the MPP had a good time? Hopefully we will be able to meet and play in person soon.

Finally, I know that some of you have subscribed to my email list to get these articles emailed to you. Unfortunately, Google has announced that it is withdrawing this service very soon. I apologise for this - I am still looking into making a jump away from the Blogger platform (as Steve C has done with his Boxes and Booze site) which has become increasingly frustrating to use. This is another factor motivating me to jump ship - hopefully I can find the time to do it sometime soon. 

Happy New Year - My top puzzles of 2019

Happy New Year Everyone! I hope that the new year and, indeed, the new decade will be a great one for you!

In 2019 I seem to have done rather well (especially in terms of the amount of hard-earned cash spent) in my accumulation of toys. Mrs S is less than enthusiastic but as long as my study is kept tidy she tolerates it...barely! 

I am always triggered to start writing this post when I receive the annual email from Peter Hajek asking for a puzzler's top 3 acquisitions (for his end of year puzzle party). My aim in this post is to highlight the very best puzzles of the year - I only include puzzles that I have actually managed to solve this year in this list - if I receive a puzzle in a previous year and solved it in 2019 then it stands a chance but others that I have bought this year but not solved will not be in my list this year.

I try to make it a top 10 but that is totally impossible and so I cheat by bunching puzzles into groups too. It might not be technically right but it's my blog and I'll do whatever I want as long as Mrs S lets me. Whack! Ouch!

So let's start off by breaking a rule straight away!

Fabulous Puzzle Not Allowed In This List


This year Mrs S and I celebrated our suffering of 25 years of wedded bliss (Whack! Ouch!) and to commemorate that we gave each other some lovely gifts. Mrs S received some specially commissioned jewellery and I, at last, received the one(?) puzzle I had lusted after for quite a lot of years. I managed to get a copy of Miguel Berrocal's Goliath. This has taken me months of wheedling and cajoling and it finally arrived in time for our anniversary. Why is it not in my proper top 10? For 2 reasons mostly - first of all, I have really had an incredibly busy year this year and had no real time to spend on a puzzle of this magnitude. Mostly I have not solved it because Mrs S is very frightened of the weight of it - it is MUCH too heavy to solve on my lap in my armchair during my evenings in front of the TV. Mrs S won't allow it in the kitchen for fear of a tile or granite catastrophe. I, therefore, need to organise a space in our dining room and this has not happened yet. Hopefully, in 2020 I will have the chance to explore this beauty fully.

Drum roll..................And now on to my "Top 10ish puzzles of 2019"

---

Continuing with breaking the rules lets start at number 12!

12) 136 Minute Cube/205 Minute Box

136-minute cube solved and ready for reassembly

Reassembled as the 205-minute box

The sequence cube was an incredible design by Aleksandr Leontev which he shared with me at the beginning of the year and when he tried to make a copy discovered that it proved to be impossible to construct in a stable manner. As a compromise (which probably actually saved my sanity) he created a variant with only a single removable piece rather than entirely dismantleable. This was called either the 136-minute cube or 205-minute box depending on which pieces were used. Those numbers were supposed to denote how long it should take but in my case, the numbers were considerably higher! It was a wonderful piece of 3D printing and a masterpiece of N-ary puzzle design.

11) Rex Beats Me

Kusing 25

Rex Rossano Perez has continued to produce top quality sequential discovery puzzles made from laser cut acrylic. I received the Kusing 25 as a wonderful surprise gift earlier this year and which I solved without understanding initially. It took me another 3 weeks to decide to cheat and open it up and look at the mechanism inside. Even with being able to see inside, it took me a good ½ hour to fully understand the mechanism. It is a work of absolute genius and beautifully implemented

10) RDS Interlock Puzzle

RDS Interlock PLUS

My Bulgarian friend Stefan worked with the genius that is Derek Bosch to produce a full analysis of the RDS interlock puzzle and produced a wonderful set that included all the pieces needed to make all the possible constructions. In total, there are 27 assemblies possible with the provided pieces and I had a wonderful time trying to find as many as I possibly could. This was made all the more challenging by the dexterity needed to hold all the pieces in place whilst placing more into the puzzle. Inside the outer shell is another puzzle which is also great fun, the 4 Dimensional Trapsticks which has only one assembly which took me 3 days. Apart from the superb puzzling provided by this multilayered puzzle, this was made all the more special by the incredible 3D printing by Stefan (in my opinion he is the best in the world) and especially the fact that this was given to me as a gift. Thank you, my friend! 

9) Ternary/Quinary Cube

Ternary/Quinary Cube

Johan Heyns has been producing wonderful wooden creations for a few years now and I have managed to obtain quite a few of them. He has also developed a fascination with the N-ary puzzles and after a discussion with Aleksandr Leontev, he produced a batch of Ternary/Quinary cubes. These gorgeous puzzles smell as good as they look and provided a wonderful challenge. Arriving in the Ternary form, they require 170.2.2.2 steps to solve and then the maze plates can be flipped into a Quinary form which requires 1251.2.2.2 to solve - a fun challenge...EXCEPT that I had not paid attention to how my plates were originally orientated and had the additional challenge of assembling it into a fully functional puzzle - it only took me 3 or 4 hours to work it out. After I had put it away, we were informed by Jack Krijnen that this puzzle actually has 4 challenges as the orientation of the maze plates can be mixed and matched. Brilliant puzzle!

8) Combination Lock

Combination Lock

The Combination lock is a wonderful sequential move puzzle that I bought from Diniar Namdarian. I actually hesitated to buy this puzzle along with the others because I was feeling a little guilty at the amount of money that I had spent! Diniar argued with me and I am soo soooo glad that he did. The combination lock here is a reproduction of a classic puzzle produced by the Combination Novelty Company and designed originally by DE Dow. I finished off my review with the statement that if you order other puzzles from Diniar then make sure that you pick up a copy of this. No matter how many times I have solved it, I struggle to do it again. Brilliant!

7) Brass Monkey #3

Brass Monkeys all lined up

My very good friends, Big Steve and Ali have formed a wonderful puzzle company which produces items of quality! The third in their series of Brass 6 piece burr puzzles (BM#3) was released this year and apart from being beautifully made, it is also a lovely clever challenge which might also be rather painful to solve. As a set, they look incredible on display and the weight of them makes Mrs S nervous when they are played within the kitchen. It was a wonderful challenge which took me a while. Whilst you are at their Etsy store, you should also buy a copy of their Nova Plexus and the Hyperboloid burr or to save on postage in North America buy from PuzzleMaster.

6) Fidget Burr

Fidget Burr

Whenever Jerry asks me if I am interested in offering feedback on a new design, I just say yes! I don't think about it - the answer is always gimme gimme gimme. After a little exchange of PayPal and a long wait as the Royal Mail holds things hostage, I get to play with a puzzle that is classic Jerry (you can tell who made it instantly). This puzzle can double up as a fidget toy - it has magnets in like the last few that he has designed and it makes a wonderful noise as you move pieces around. It is quite a challenge to find the second move with this one and when you do, the Aha! moment is wonderful. Even after the very well hidden move has been found, there is still a real challenge ahead to fully dismantle the puzzle. It requires a lovely piece of logic to solve and then reassembly is just as much fun.

5) TICs Galore

A BIG bunch of TICs from Bernhard

Let's not forget the rather large number of TIC's that I bought from Brian! This is just a small selection

Andrew Crowell has taken the puzzle world by storm! He has been designing Turning interlocking cubes the last 2 years like the world was about to end! They vary in complexity from relatively challenging to totally mind-boggling. I absolutely adore them! Initially, I wanted to receive them fully assembled into beautiful cubes and work out how to take them apart but now as my skills have improved I can actually appreciate the challenge of them entirely as assembly puzzles. Some are still kicking my butt but it's a very enjoyable failure. Of course, absolutely no-one makes these as well as the incredible Brian Menold! who's choice of glorious woods is inspired!


4) Derek & Eric'S Marvellous Split Mazeburr

Magnificent Mazeburr

When Derek showed me his designs for a new version of his Mazeburr puzzle (I had previously adored the rhombic version) and promised me that I could have a 3D printed version if he could perfect the design, I was over the moon. I love to have series’ of puzzles and this would have been great. Then the Doctor of wood, Eric Fuller, decided to have a try at making one, I knew I had to have a copy. In fact, whilst pacing the Post-operative care unit, looking after a bunch of patients at 6pm, the email came in and I took the required 60 seconds on my phone to buy a copy. It was stunning in wood and the booklet that Derek had designed to go with it provided a whole lotta fun for several months. I’ve only scratched the surface with it but it has to be one of the best designs and creations of the year!

3) Pelikan Packs A Whole Lotta Brilliance Into 2019

A Whole bunch of Packing puzzles designed by Osanori Yamamoto

When Jakub and Jaroslav team up with the amazing Osanori Yamamoto then you are absolutely guaranteed a fabulous puzzle! It will be beautifully made and the puzzling will be just the right level of difficulty - a stunning challenge to go back to again and again. The pictures above are not all they produced this year but they were some of my favourites of the entire year. I am generally not good at Packing puzzles but these are making me change my mind - they have just the right number of pieces to ensure that trial and error are not required and we are left with a puzzle that is a delight to solve.

Incredible designs by the unbelievably talented Volker Latussek

Of course, there were a number of puzzles designed by Volker Latussek this year and 2 were produced by Pelikan - The Dunant was an amazing and very interesting challenge which was one of the very few where I began my review with the words "Go buy it now" as the very first thing I wrote. It is a tremendous and very difficult challenge which took me a few days to work out with a wonderful Aha! moment. Then also by Dr Latussek, there was the Harun/Guillotine puzzle. My copy was a wonderful gift from Allard of the basic Rombol version but both Eric and Jakub produced more beautiful versions. This also is a tremendous puzzle finishing out the year of wonderful puzzles from Pelikan.

2) Juno’s Sequential Discovery Puzzles

The most amazing sequential discovery puzzle of the year - the Slammed Car

Sequential Discovery Board Burred Box

Chubby Crocodile - being attacked

Juno had an incredible year - he produced a bunch of sequential discovery puzzles which the world swooped on very quickly. They rapidly gained acclaim from puzzlers everywhere including on my blog - Slammed car, Board burr and Crocodile. The Slammed car won the 2019 Jury grand prize in the IPP design competition and for very good reason - it is a Tour de force puzzle with so many steps and a very complex end step which kept me stumped for many weeks. The quality of the craftsmanship and the extent of the puzzling make this one of the very best puzzles of the entire year.

Juno has released (on Boxing day) a new SD puzzle which may be of interest to you all - the Ring Case is a box/SD puzzle and is still available at the time of writing - you may want to check it out as there is a chance that it might end up in next year's top ten.

BUT Juno is beaten out of the top spot this year by another fabulous challenge that may be a surprise to many of you:

1) Skewby Copter Plus

Yes, my puzzle of the year for 2019 is not made of wood! It’s not a burr or an interlocking puzzle! It’s the best twisty puzzle I’ve ever seen - an amazing work of design and manufacturing ending with a fabulous logical challenge. It’s the Skewby Copter plus, designed by Diogo Souza and manufactured by MF8,  is an incredible hybrid of the Curvy Copter Plus (an improved unbandaged version) and a Skewb. It is so complex that one needs a plan just to scramble it and end up with a horrific mess. The approach to solving it is a multistage process which is logical and fun. There are no complex algorithms as the solution uses basic principles. There are several fun parities to contend with as well and I think, one of the best puzzles ever designed and produced.

Do you agree with my top 10? If you have any different thoughts then please comment below or even use my Contact page to tell me how wrong I am. I look forward to your thoughts.


Usually, I try and show off some photos of the "State of the Union/Collection" but at this moment in time, my study has relapsed into being a huge shithole again with puzzles and papers everywhere. I will, no doubt, be forced to tidy up again before long and then I will endeavour to update my collection photos.