Stealthily Lined Up by Alexander

Stealth by Alexander Magyarics (made by Brian Menold)

It's my birthday today (no I am not saying how old but it's an embarrassingly high number) and I am not using it as an excuse not to post on the site. I would have hoped to have something written in advance but I didn't manage to solve anything until yesterday because I am rubbish at puzzles and these were a bit of a challenge for an ageing puzzler like me.

I haven't bought anything from Brian for a while. Mostly that is because he has been living a real life and enjoying himself which has meant less puzzles produced and also because the few that he has been making recently were already in my collection. However, a couple of weeks ago he showed off a few new ones that were released and rapidly snapped up by me and lots of other delighted puzzlers. This sneaked across the pond very quickly and through the customs without raising an eyebrow or a bill and even managed to get into chez Sadler despite frequent Royal mail postal strikes.

The first one (pictured above) was another fabulous packing puzzle by the incredibly talented Alexander Magyarics (someone I am lucky to chat with on a regular basis and consider a friend). When Alexander produces yet another of these packing puzzles I almost always jump at the chance. They invariably have only a few pieces to place but the requirement to leave no visible holes and the interesting piece shapes makes for a really fun challenge. I am less keen on the packing puzzles with lots of pieces because of the random trial and error nature of the puzzling. When there are so few pieces and with complex shapes and other constraints, this forces the puzzler to use thought© and logic to solve them. I was not let down with this one at all.

It is absolutely gorgeous made with a Wenge and Bocote box and having beautiful bright white Holly pieces. It is chunky at 3" in each direction and surprisingly heavy. This was the one I started with because it looks the most solvable by me whilst tired and not good at puzzles. The disassembly level is 11.2.2 meaning that the final insertion was going to be fairly tough to find. As usual, I worked outside the box and found several shapes that would meet the assembly criteria but mot of them could be quickly excluded as requiring rotations to get them past the limited opening of the box. I settle on one that looked good and proceeded with logic and thought and ignored Mrs S laughing at my muttering. She finds it funny that I can't think without muttering to myself! I got stuck for a while as I could not find the correct move and when I thought I had found the removal sequence, I could not remember it for long enough to reverse it! Eventually, I learned the sequence in reverse and managed to place all the pieces. I hate to think about what other facts I have pushed out of my feeble brain in learning something new!

Everything in place

I admired it like this for a while and left it overnight and then couldn't remember the disassembly. Taking it apart required me to visualise what was happening inside and was also fun. This could be an assembly puzzle for some and for less experienced puzzlers, just as good as a disassembly puzzle.

Line Up

How gorgeous is that? This boxed burr puzzle is also designed by Alexander and made by Brian. I chose the Mansonia box with the Chakta Vita and Holly pieces. I particularly loved the checkerboard top and bottom face as well as the lovely curved corners of the box. This is another relatively "simple" design with just 4 pieces to remove and replace from the square tube box. The level (24.3.4.2) is getting up quite high but because there are only 4 pieces, it is perfectly doable for an average puzzler and very much an enjoyable exploration.

I started work on it during the week and found a lovely little starting sequence with only a few blind pathways off the main one. Unfortunately, I struggled to advance more than about 10 or 12 moves before finding myself back at the beginning or stuck with nowhere to go. I was missing a turning somewhere. I played every evening this week whilst watching TV with Mrs S and kept going around and around in circles. What was I missing? During the disassembly the pieces get very well separated but still linked together and it is easily possible to see inside. Despite this, I just could not spot the required pathway. Finally yesterday, I spotted something and tried a new move which opened up a new set of pathways. From this point on the solution is logical but still a bit of a surprise in the direction that the pieces come out. I had my 4 pieces for the photo:

Line up with pieces lined up

I was almost certain that I would need Burrtools to reassemble the puzzle after that (especially as I had scrambled the pieces up for the photo) so I just left it for a couple of hours until a suitable time to get to my computer. It kept calling to me, though and I couldn't resist picking it up and trying to assemble it from scratch with only a very hazy memory of the solution. I wondered whether the checkerboard might help but, surprisingly, it is of no significance at all. The pieces cannot be assemble incorrectly and the placement of them within the box is very logical indeed. I tried a few alternatives and it was immediately apparent that it is impossible to place them incorrectly. Having worked out the placements, the actually assembly was quite fun and did not take me much more than 30 minutes. The cat was unimpressed when I shouted and showed him what I had done and Mrs S just rolled her eyes.
If you get a chance to play with these then go for it, they are beautiful, tactile and designed at just the right level for a puzzler to solve in a reasonable period of time. Even I solved one in an evening! Thank you Alexander and Brian.

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One of my friends (Ross) on Facebook asked about buying some of my Jerry McFarland puzzles from me. I haven't yet ever sold a puzzle (I cannot stand the thought really) but it did make me think about how many I had accumulated from the master. I brought them down yesterday and took a photo. It was so impressive that I thought I would share it with you:

Now that is something to be proud of!

and lets not forget the rather special Caramel case that he produced as well in very limited numbers:

I cannot resist a burrset! This is the 42 piece burrset

Now those definitely take pride of place in my collection!

Hanayama Cast Cross

Hanayama Cast Cross - man, these things are tough to photograph!

Every now and then after a chat with my wonderful talented friend, Frederic Boucher, he decides that I don't have enough puzzles and he spontaneously sends me a lovely (not so) little care package containing a bunch of his new creations and others that are available only in Japan. Luckily he doesn't speak to Mrs S who has completely the opposite opinion and who would very much prefer it that I don't order any more. Luckily she who must be flinched from has spent the last week up in Edinburgh visiting the outlaws which allowed to me receive a new pair of toys as well as my bunch from Frederic without her seeing the sheer size of the packages. I hope that she doesn't get to review the Ring camera video footage and realise that I have been very baaad! Do I dare tell "her" about the new twisties I have recently ordered? Gulp!

Amongst the lovely package of toys from Frederic was the new Hanayama Cast Cross. I had fiddled with it idly at the last MPP and realised that despite the Hanayama 3/6 (PuzzleMaster 7/10) difficulty rating, this was not going to be one that I would solve really quickly and having realised that the movements needed to be very precise, I decided to wait until I had my own copy. I was delighted that Frederic saw fit to give me one (he's so so generous). 

Having unpacked my parcel and stashed them where Mrs S wouldn't notice (have I told you before that I haven't tidied my study in over 5 months?) and I set to playing with this one on Wednesday whilst attending a virtual conference (these are a wonderful new thing since Covid started - if you are a home-body like me then these are fab!) I idly fiddled with my new toy whilst watching a talk. I quickly realised that the two pieces of this puzzle are almost identical apart from one key feature. This is effectively a disentanglement puzzle using chunky metal instead of wire. It is rather satisfying to play with. The first move is nice and linear giving me the expectation that all moves would be using the rectilinear grid, including rotations to get the pieces to end up with 90º position changes. However, after the first move it became apparent that this was not quite so simple - the end positions are always at 90º from the start of a move but to achieve each position change requires very slight angulations to get the bulkier sections of each piece past obstructions. The moves need to be very very precise. This frightened me a little as my usual to and fro technique often resulted in me really struggling to undo a move or sequence. At one point during my exploration I tried to turn a piece in a particular direction and it seemed to be blocked. Stupidly I put a tiny tiny bit of force on it and it clicked past the obstruction allowing a whole bunch of new moves which didn't seem to help me. It had perturbed me that this had used force (albeit only a minuscule amount) so I thought I would backtrack again and realised I couldn't do it! Aaargh! Panic ensued and I had to put it down until the lunch break in the conference as I couldn't concentrate on both at once.

When I did return to the Cross, I spent a good ½ hour on it before managing to undo my stupid earlier move. Having learned my lesson (I can learn something once in a while but it has probably made me lose something else more crucial - there is not much room in my tiny brain!) Having got back to the beginning, I started again but tried to move in the opposite direction. The crucial move proved tough to find but I got there and after that managed to separate the pieces:

Finally! It took me a good hour or two

As you can see, the pieces are almost identical - only one has the required gap to allow them to be separated. I left the pieces for the rest of the day before reassembly which then took me another hour having forgotten the moves.

This is a really nice design by Edi Nagata who also designed the Cast Coil which was one of the first Hanayama puzzles I ever attempted and reviewed way back in 2011. Both are beautifully designed requiring a fun and well hidden sequence of moves. I think that the Cast Cross is probably the same difficulty as the Cast Coil (rated as 4/6 Hanayama and 8/10 Puzzlemaster) and I would tend to disagree with the difficulty rating for the Cross and increase it by one point. It is definitely one that should be in your collection. I would suggest that it probably should not be handed to non-puzzlers to play with because if forced then it may be irrevocably locked up.

Kumikisaurus Made a Fool of Me on MS Teams!

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No it is a Kumikisaurus!

Juno describes this as:

"This 9-piece dinosaur-shaped puzzle offers unique solutions for levels 10-13. That is, it takes 10 moves to remove the first piece from the assembled shape and another 13 moves to remove the second piece. It is a relatively easier puzzle compared to many of Juno's diabolic burr puzzles, yet it is still challenging to solve. Some of the pieces are shaped in such a way that it is obvious at a glance which parts need to be assembled where. The difficult part of the challenge is in which order the pieces have to be assembled.
The puzzle is shipped to the customer incorrectly assembled, so it must be disassembled and reassembled to form a perfect dinosaur shape."

It is 173 x 76 x 100mm, made from 9 pieces of Queensland Silver Ash. How could I resist?

As a fairly senior doctor (that means bloody old), I chair quite a few meetings for my organisation - they used to be in person but since the pandemic began they are almost all done via MS Teams (an abomination of a program but mandated by my employer). My aim in these meetings is to ensure that the various bits of equipment and consumables the wards and operating theatres can order and get sent are compatible and fit for purpose. There is a lot of work that goes into the background activities of running a major hospital. Now, many of these meetings are pretty niche and not terribly exciting (unless we are spending a LOT of money on new toys) and so I brighten the dullness up by setting my background as a view of my study (it is actually in front of me) and use an old picture showing a small fraction of my collection which many colleagues are astonished by.

Just one of the varying backdrops on MS Teams

A bit of a distraction!

I have to use an old picture because I have turned the study into a huge mess by not putting anything away for the best part of 9 months and Mrs S knows it! Whack! Ouch! The picture lightens the mood in a meeting before we have to get on with our real work. We also have our departmental educational and service meetings using the same system often attended by over 150 colleagues and associated paramedical staff. They know me and my "foibles/madness" and just look in amazement. If the meeting is not terribly interesting and I start to doze off (embarrassing in a video conference) then, to prevent it, I often start to play with one of my toys. Apparently I was a huge distraction during one conference when I spent a good hour solving the Skewby copter plus whilst being watched by everyone else who was supposed to be listening to a talk. I had completely forgotten that my video was still switched on after I had presented my bit. Whoops!  

Let's just say that Juno's latest creation had arrived and I might have done the same thing. Except this time I might just have made a fool of myself. That be would be another whoops! A couple of weeks ago Juno announced the imminent sale of his latest burr creation the Kumikisaurus. This is "obviously" a Kumiki puzzle of a dinosaur and it is very reminiscent of the collaboration with the fabulous Brian and Sue Young (MrPuzzle) in the creation of the wonderful Kumiki Airlines puzzle that I reviewed here.

Like the Kumuki airlines puzzle, the Kumikisaurus is sent out in an incorrect assembly (as pictured above) and whilst playing on screen, I received a couple of text messages to the effect of "nice bird" and I indignantly replied that it should be a dinosaur. Then my cat wandered through the camera view and I received a chorus of "nice pussy" comments which I sheepishly had to agree with. I sometimes think that my workmates have very poor attention spans...rather like me. 

During the proceedings, I explored the disassembly of the bird/pterodactyl and had a thoroughly nice time (I was still attentive to the discussion) as I gradually removed the first two pieces which required quite a lot of moves in a wonderful logical sequence. I then got a bit stuck trying to remove the third and found it very suddenly without expecting it when a couple if sticks fell out into my lap in front of the watching audience. I must have reflected the shock on my face inadvertently as someone noticed it and sent me a derisive text message. Blush! I then spent another 30 minutes during the meeting desperately trying to put it back together and back to the beginning. After a struggle I managed it and in relief put the puzzle down and stopped playing for the rest of the afternoon meeting. 

Back to play later that evening and I managed to disassemble it and was happy that I had sort of learned the approach:

9 Pieces of dinosaur

Having taken it apart, the challenge is to reassemble it in the correct shape so that it looks more like a Brontosaurus than a Pterodactyl. Now I am usually awful at assembly puzzles and fully expected to have to resort to Burrtools to solve this. Luckily, due to the shapes being relatively simple and with the top and bottom surfaces of the dino body having chamfering in the correct positions, the placement of many of the pieces were quite restricted. I set to, trying to find the placement that might work with the top section missing. I found a few possible assemblies with the top section off and tried to imagine the disassembly moves from the start and very rapidly realised that most are impossible. Having limited my possible positions, on my third attempt I found a series of piece placements that would allow me to begin a disassembly process. Despite having an awful memory and being truly rubbish at burr assembly, I managed to put it together in about an hour. This was awesome fun!

I actually assembled a burr from scratch!
Dinosaur shape at last.

I will still make myself a Burrtools file because that is half the fun with these things and prolongs my enjoyment of the puzzle. This puzzle is unfortunately sold out now but quite a lot were made. I am sure that one will come up at auction and it is worth getting a copy (don't pay a huge amount as it really is a relatively straightforward if fun challenge).

Thank you Juno! I loved it and it will end up on display in a prominent place once I finally get working on my study!

It's Easy But Very Hard!

David Pitcher's 4 Corners Cube
Named this way because only 4 corners can be moved - notice that the top front corner is fixed

Back in May I bought a bunch of twisty puzzles that had been released in the previous year that I had been fascinated by and I felt the "need" to catch up (yes, I told Mrs S that I needed them!) I was particularly interested in the 4 Corners cube which was a design by the incredibly talented David Pitcher who I had been delighted to meet at the Paris IPP. I was amazed that he designs these incredibly complex puzzles and has them 3D printed and yet does not solve them. He understands geometry and yet cannot solve twisty puzzles. I, on the other hand, studied Geometry in some the Open University courses but never got to understand the sort of shapes that David deals with. Like him, I struggle to solve them as well.

The 4 corners cube was mass manufactured by Lan-lan and they did a superb job. This puzzle moves and works beautifully. My initial interest (beyond owning one of David's creations) was because I absolutely adore edge turning puzzles and the jumbling/shapeshifting that goes with them:

Edge turning and jumbling

This photo was taken after just 2 moves and you can see the shapeshifting and immediately see something that frightened the Bejeezus out of me! Firstly, it isn't really an edge turner...it's a sort of corner and edge turner together. This means that my feeble bwain is going to get very confused when it starts to move and, second, the split between edge and corner is aligned in such a way that it blocks subsequent moves - it bandages. Aaaargh! For this reason, I had it in my work bag with me for 4 months and did nothing more than fiddle. It was fearsome. 

I did realise that simple 3 cycles would be possible and this might be useful but after working this out, I could not see any way that this might be helpful. I put the bloody thing down again! Time to Think© but Allard wasn't going to be any help here.

I could see that using setup moves I could 3 cycle the centres into more or less wherever I wanted them to be but how was this going to help with all the other pieces? It wasn't going to be a very fun challenge if all I dared to do was scramble the centres. I took the puzzle with me up to Edinburgh with the intention of spending some decent time with it while not having to work but again it frightened me to death and I got side tracked by the fabulous Akaki Picnic basket puzzles.

Bring up bottom edges

Perform 3-cycle

Move edges back

After a bit more study, I realised that I could 3 cycle the edge pieces along with the corners as shown above. It just needed the correct setup moves again. I was making some major thought breakthroughs just by idly fiddling and trying just short sequences at a time.

Having found the above cycle, I had an epiphany - I am certain that you all will see it. Having done my cycle ending with that third picture it is clear that the top corner is now isolated and can be moved away. This means that I have found the first part of a commutator and a potential piece isolating sequence.

The second half of the commutator

Different corners but a corner 3 cycle found

Having worked this out and managed to perform it several times I was ready for a scramble! Except it is not an easy cube to scramble. It gets blocked up very quickly. I had to do setup moves to scramble edges and corners properly without getting blocked and then only at the end of a bunch of these could I just let lose and randomly turn. It got progressively harder to find sections that would actually turn properly or even at all. I (actually, David) had created a monster:

That was a very silly thing to do!

I seriously regretted what I had done and had serious doubts about being able to solve it. It has taken me most of this week to get to grips with this challenging puzzle. First of all, try to get the wing shapes (those that sit on either side of the centres) back into the correct orientation. This was fun but not easy - it was soooo blocked up that it was like unravelling a knotted piece of string to get it into something resembling cube shape. Once this was done then the 2 colour edges need to be placed into position and I thought this would be pretty straightforward until I found a scenario rather like this:

Here I have created it with just one edge but there may be several like this

Somehow some of the edges and corners have been positioned but flipped 180º. OMG! This is a nightmare for me! I know that it means that at least one of the centres has been invisibly flipped as well but trying to fix it is so so hard. I am sure that several of you brilliant twisty puzzlers out there are screaming at my website that it is an easy fix. But remember...my whole knowledge of how to do this puzzle is based on performing simple 3 cycles and using a pair of simple 3 cycles to move corners around. I literally have NOTHING more complex than a 4 move cycle (yes, it's a variant of my up, up, down, down system). 

I needed to fix the problem using my 4 move sequence and a whole bunch of setup moves and maybe do it several times to place things out, rotate them and place them back (often having to move them all the way around the cube in the process). I have performed this several times during multiple scrambles and have yet to actually understand a simple way to do it. I can manage it but only after multiple attempts and a LOT of swearing! Once the edges are all placed then the next step for me is centres (it could be the other way around):

Edges placed - the easy bit left to do

As I had mentioned above, placing the centres is really easy but can take a bit of setting up and then all that is left is to magically use my commutator to position the corners (easy peasy!)

What the hell is this?
All corners placed but 2 rotated in opposite directions! Aaaargh!

The first time I solved the puzzle, my corner commutator worked it's magic perfectly and I had my cube finished, let out a whoop and frightened a cat as well as annoyed the present wife! I was on a roll! Time to scramble again and see if I could master those blasted edge positioning moves (nope! still not managed it). I struggled yet again with those edges but finally got them done and expecting success, I moved my corners around boldly and sat back in disbelief. What was going on here? I had everything placed but 2 corners rotated - Nooooo! Fixing this took me several hours - as stated, I only have my 4 move 3 cycles - nothing more complex than this and I had to try and use them to take the corners out and rotate them back into place facing the right way. I have managed it a couple of times now and in the process found another variant where I all corners are in but 3 are rotated all the same direction. I can fix it but it takes me a long long time!

Should you buy this puzzle? Absolutely yes! It is a fabulous design and turns beautifully. I am sure that you will be able to solve it with much less trouble than me. The amazing thing is that it does not require anything fancy to solve it. It just needs a 4 move up, up, down, down cycle of 3 pieces used in imaginative ways. If you do it this way then it requires a lot of thought and planning but that is half the fun. If you do know of any better ways to fix the reversed edges then please let me know.

Thank you David for a fantastic challenge - I hope to get some more of your amazing puzzles soon (I am aware that there is a plus version which un-bandages the edges allowing for a much more complete scramble. I don't own this one yet but it is on my list of puzzles to buy. I need to wait for Mrs S to be away visiting the outlaws again before I order anything else! She keeps picking up sharp objects and looking at me with narrowed eyes!

Ali Was Wrong But Also Very Right!

Akaki's Picnic Basket from Eric Fuller

Correctly solved Tsubomi

Just a quick one today, I’ve been up in Edinburgh visiting the outlaws and wining and dining with Mrs S. it’s been a lovely break but not much time for puzzling. I have to start with an admission of error…

Last week's blog post was me raving about the amazing Tsubomi packing puzzle from my wonderful generous friend Frederic Boucher. I had owned it for an embarrassingly long time and failed to solve it due to a combination of working my arse off and having too little time, doing a huge number of big cases at work which definitely don’t leave me any ability to solve or play with toys at work and, much to the delight displeasure of Mrs S, I might have acquired rather a large backlog to solve before and after Tsubomi arrived.

I wrote about the puzzle having been delighted and dismayed when Ali solved it at the MPP in under an hour. I should not have been surprised because Ali solves most puzzles in under an hour - he is a machine!! Unfortunately Ali got it wrong. He did solve the puzzle sort of but in the wrong way. I had totally misunderstood the aim and thought that just placing the pieces in the box using linear moves and those were the instructions I gave him. I was contacted by Frederic the following day to tell me that I had got it wrong and hence made Ali get it wrong. The actual aim was to place all the pieces in the box leaving no visible gaps. This requires rotational moves. I will need to give it back to Ali to play with again. I, of course, have singularly failed so far! My friend Theo has made his own copy and had it solved (hence the photo) in under 24 hours - he’s amazing.

Whilst at the MPP Ali waxed lyrical about the Akaki's picnic basket puzzles. I admitted that I had bought them from Eric when he produced 3 from the series back in August last year. I then had to rather shamefaced admit that I had not even touched them beyond taking a photo for the database. I had carried them around at work for a few mo this but never found time and then I put them away in the study in my "to do" pile which completely buried them and I lost them for several months. Having been told that I MUST get them played with by Ali and everyone else who had played, I decided to put them in my bag for my trip up north.

Clearly from the picture at the top, I had not really worked out what was needed. I referred back to the instructions on Cubic dissection to establish what was required. Eric wrote:

"Akaki's Picnic is a wonderfully creative Packing Puzzle. The goal is to pack each 3x3 cube into the Picnic Basket so that all pieces are flush. Assembling the cubes outside the basket is trivial; the challenge comes when you try to fill the container. The handle of the basket blocks your progress, causing you to analyze the situation and think outside the box.

Akaki named the cubes after different foods you might find at a picnic. Each has a unique solution, representing a range of difficulties. We have chosen three of the more challenging cubes for this release. Each cube has four pieces and requires rotations:

• Egg (Birch) has a level 3.4.7.2 solution
• Sandwich (Jatoba) has a level 3.5.5.2 solution
• Wine (Bloodwood) has a level 4.4.5.3 solution"

At least I now realised that the mixed up colour pieces were just the delivery packing.

I started on the Sandwich and struggled to even make the bloody cube! I had to persevere - Ali had insisted. After about a ½ hour, I had the cube and then time to put it in the beautifully made Zebrawood basket. Luckily I knew that rotations would be needed and I didn’t waste any time. With 2 missing voxels in the exterior, this left me just 3 faces that could point upwards and 2 possible orientations of each face. Some possibilities could be dropped very quickly because there was no way on earth one of the larger pieces could be packed that way even with rotations. This was tricky but fun. It actually took me a couple of evenings to find it but when I did the delight was palpable. The perfect craftsmanship made for beautiful smooth movements and I was delighted to be able to take my first picture:

The Sandwich is packed

Next up, the Egg. This must have come from a Wombat's rear end because…cubic!!! I was on a roll as I managed to find the cube quite quickly but with only one vacant voxel on an edge I had 4 possible top faces with 2 orientations. The shapes had less restrictions to their insertion and orientation but the basket handle really does cause issues. It took me another whole evening of play and annoying Mrs S by ignoring her whilst on holiday but I was able to annoy her more with a shout of glee and showing her something she had absolutely zero interest in.

One Egg in a basket

I had saved the Wine to last. It had the highest solution level and one of the pieces was huge and very restricted in its' ability to be inserted in the basket. I actually spent quite a long time trying to find the cubic assembly before I could continue (as you know, I’m really not terribly right). To my horror, there is only one central empty voxel meaning that there are 5 possible top faces and 2 orientations. None of the assemblies was easy to drop because it was possible to get the pieces in all of them individually but only later in the assembly did it become apparent that the interaction of them blocked a lot of moves and allowed certain orientations to be ruled out. This final assembly was really tough for me. There is a big clue in that one of the pieces is a simple 3x1x1 cuboid but there was no removal of a piece with a single move which helped a lot to cut down the choices. The solution to this last one is superb! It was so. I have fun that I could not help myself and assemble and disassemble it repeatedly. Eric's beautiful wood finish made this a delight to play with.

Wine generally best in a bottle rather than a basket

The Bloodwood is absolutely gorgeous in this puzzle.

So…whilst Ali was wrong initially with one puzzle, he was absolutely dead right with another one. If you can get hold of this then don’t hesitate.it is beautiful and a whole lot of fun. I am told that Akaki sells these in plastic from his Etsy store and you can buy the stl files to make your own. There are also a whole lot more in the series. I would love it if Eric made some more of them to fit in his basket as I’d buy them ina heartbeat. But failing that, it would appear that Akaki's version will work with Eric's basket too. WTch this space.

Humiliated by Fred and Ali…

Again!

Tsubomi
A unique puzzle (VLE = very limited edition) from Frederic Boucher

Quite a long time ago I received a wonderful puzzling gift from a very generous friend of mine with a bunch of fabulous new toys to play with (including the amazing Visitor Q which I parallel solved with a loan copy of Res Q from the very trusting Andrew Coles). These have kept me occupied for the best part of a year. One of these beauties was the Tsubomi packing puzzle. It is named for the Japanese word for Bud and the puzzle has 5 buds to be placed inside the rather beautifully made wooden box. Frederic's craftsmanship is always quietly understated - he doesn’t use fancy woods but everything is perfectly made and the contrast in colours along with some lovely grain is always a delight. I am really proud to be one of only 2 owners of this particular puzzle.

Minima XIII

In my odyssey with Visitor Q which took me such a long time, whenever I put down one of his puzzles, I would invariably pick up another to try. It was often Tsubomi or Minima XIII (which I solved after a few hours only to be later told that Fred had made a mistake and once he had sent me an updated version I cannot solve it). The Tsubomi had frighten me because of the sheer complexity of the pieces and I was somehow convinced that there might be a rotational move. I had picked the puzzle up probably 30 times over the year and somehow could never manage to solve it. Humiliated by Frederic again! Aaargh!

At the recent MPP XLII the Tsubomi was in my box of puzzles for people to try. A few people had a look at it but no one seemed keen to sink much time into it. I was kind of hoping that someone would solve it to give me some confidence to try it again myself. After lunch Ali picked it up, asked a few questions which I didn’t know the answers too and set to it. I was heartened to see that he takes the same approach to these as I do. Part of me always wonders whether I go about them completely wrong which might account for how I seem to struggle. I guess that if we have a similar approach and I continually fail the best explanation is that I’m not very bright or very good at puzzles! To my shock/horror Ali solve the bloody thing in about an hour. I was flabbergasted! I took it home in the saved state and the following day took the pieces out and saw that the solution was entirely linear (I had tried rotations on several occasions but there is very little space inside the box for such bulky pieces to be allowed to rotate. Humbled by this, I scrambled the pieces and put them aside. I then got really really busy at work and did not find time to play for a good couple of weeks.

Eventually I got back to it and, as expected, discovered that I had absolutely no recollection of the solution (or even the order that the pieces went back inside). Yet again, try to make a 4x4x4 shape - there will be quite a few gaps and 6 of the missing voxels will need to coincide with the cubies attached to the interior of the box. Humiliation!!! I still couldn’t do it! I was a able to make a cube but not coinciding with the captive cubies and then eventually after a few hours I managed to make a cube that would fit in the space but the orientation of several of the buds was such that they couldn’t be fed through the 4x2 entrance hole at the top of the box. Wow! This was some challenge for a man who is a self confessed packing puzzle idiot.

I couldn’t let it go! I had to solve it… I had a blog post to write. Just this morning, I still didn’t have it finished. By pure luck whilst considering my failure, I absently put the pieces together and I had a cube with gaps in the right places and, ooooh the pieces oriented correctly. I hadn’t even really been concentrating. Was it right? I did the reverse of the solution outside of the box and… YESSSSSS!

Months and months of attempts and I solve it by accident!

Such an amazing feeling to finally get it solved. Frederic Boucher designs and makes incredible puzzles (this is why I could not resist buying his latest collaboration with Eric -  the jammed gem). I was rather shocked at how difficult this one was but the sense of achievement when I finally got there was enormous. 

I cannot wait to see what the next production and designs bring for us. He is simply incredible! Thank you my friend.

The Limcube Fission Skewb

A Skewb Which Doesn't Solve as a Skewb

The Limcube Fission Skewb

Stuck after 3 steps!

I bought the Fission Skewb way way back in May this year along with a few others and have not touched it apart from to explore what it does when it moves. Why buy it you might ask? I adore these fancy new twisty puzzles! The technology in their design and manufacture is incredible and there is so much more to them than the old style Rubik cube. BUT I am a simple puzzler who is not terribly good at most puzzling and the problem with the new twisties is the very thing that attracts me to them...they are just so so complicated. So many things move in so many different ways and I am terrified of scrambling a mess and getting totally stuck. I know that the internet is full of solution videos but I really don't want to cheat like that. So I waited until I had some courage - plus I recalled that someone had said on FB that this particular puzzle really isn't that hard. I had been playing with Angry Walter and after the first 2 or three steps had gotten completely stuck needing some more of that darned Thinking© so I decided I had better try another puzzle or else not have a blog post for today.

I picked up the Fission Skewb and reminded myself of what it does. It is of course a deep cut corner turner (hence the skewb moniker) but also is an edge turner. I would like to say that it is similar to the Curvy copter but it is not because the edge turns to not overlap with each other...interesting!

One edge turn followed by a skewb turn

A partial skewb turn with an edge turn

You can see why this frightened me!

As usual, I started out with a gentle exploration trying to ensure that I was able to undo any moves I had done to get back to the beginning and as usual I got lost within about 2 minutes and ended up with a mess that I couldn't back out of! Aaaargh! Well in for a penny...

That was a really silly thing to do!

After my initial panic I figured that I had better get rid of all the spiky bits and make it cube shaped again. At this point I realised that some of the V shaped edges are now obstructing some of the Skewb moves and a bit of planning is required to allow the wanted moves to occur. It's not hard but needs to be watched for. Some of the straight edges can be formed by just lining up to wonky ones and Skewb twisting to make them straight. After the easy ones were done then the remaining ones were a little awkward because straightening them broke others but in the end a little thought© and intuition got this sorted out and I now had a scrambled cubic puzzle.

What approach was needed now? Do I reduce it to a Skewb by solving centres and then making the edges up and finally solving as a Skewb? I thought that this seemed like a good approach because creating the Skewb centres is pretty easy:

Skewb centres created and placed
Wrong approach

It only took me about 5 minutes get all the centres in place - I was on a roll! Maybe I am not a dunce after all? Hahaha! What a ridiculous thought! Having done that it was time to work to put the edges in place and... Bloody impossible! I could put them in no problem but each time I did so it removed the centre edge pieces that I had already placed and after placing a few of these outer edges I couldn't place more without destroying what I had done. Yes, I know, this is the perennial problem with twisty puzzles but I had no fancy algorithm and could not work one out on my scrambled puzzle. Oh no! Was I going to have no blog post? I had to keep trying.

I scratched my empty noggin and then removed the splinters from my fingers before having another Think© and decided to try the outer edges first. Initially I was not sure about this approach because it seemed such a difficult thing to do but in the end it was a nice intuitive thing to do requiring no algorithm and just an easy three cycle of the pieces. It got a little more awkward as the final ones needed placement but really not tough and just a little figuring out.

Outer edges all placed - quite easy really

So how could I move the inner edges around? I searched for some kind of 3-cycle that would work as it had on my abortive attempt but I could not find one easily that would not destroy what I had. At this point I had a brainwave which is very unusual for me - the word "commutator" floated into my head and I realised that there was one very easily available because of the simple Skewb centre swap. Performing a simple Down, Down, Up, Up using the top front corners as axes moves the centre squares about.

That bottom front edge only has a single white edge in it

Rotating that edge and undoing the center swab does this

A simple 4 move set up followed by an edge flip and undoing that 4 move set up produced exactly what I needed. Time to work through it. Mrs S was much annoyed by me reciting Right Left Left Right Flip Left Right Left Right over and over again. Sometimes she was so fed up with it that she would randomly call out Left or Right to confuse me which, of course, worked very well and I descrambled the bloody puzzle! After amusing herself a few times doing this I growled at her and she let me continue in peace. Phew!

Nearly done - about 8 to go

As I worked my way through it I had to do set up moves to get the triangles in the right place for the commutator to work but surprisingly complex setup moves were never required. At the end I was left with just 3 triangle edge centres to place and needing a single setup to make it work.

R->B->O required.
The edges are not placed correctly but a single Skewb turn fixed that

After another 10 moves and it was done! Flushed with success, I immediately did it again and again. This is quite a fun puzzle and is really not that difficult once you have that realisation that a simple commutator is required. It would have been better to have realised it early on before I scrambled the puzzle but the actual sequence is so simple that I was able to find it even on a scrambled puzzle.

In the end, this is a Skewb variant that doesn't rely on any Skewb methods to solve it. This hit me by surprise and actually added to the enjoyment because Skewbs are very confusing to me. It is definitely worth any puzzler buying - if you are a true twisty puzzler then it is essential (if not terribly tough) but if you only dabble in twisty puzzles then this is a nice one to try before you get into the really tough ones.

Pelikan Summer Release Part 2 - The Wonders Continue!

Seven puzzles due to be released soon

Last week I reviewed the first four of the upcoming Pelikan summer releases and they were all amazing. I had to keep the final 3 back as they are much more complex and were going to take me a LOT longer to solve. Thank heavens there was no pressure from Jakub to solve them quickly!

Tau

Arrival packing position

Pieces are very odd

The reason for the name

I have to start off by saying that this puzzle is the pick of the whole release this time. It is abso-bloody-lutely amazing! Dr Volker Latussek has a mind like no one else and he comes up with some absolutely stupendous challenges that will keep you incredibly busy and will have you sitting back open mouthed in wonder after you have solved them. The Tau puzzle is possibly one of his very best yet. 

I had been a bit mystified at the name - none of the pieces looked like the greek letter and I had not really looked terribly hard at the arrival position before taking the pieces out and even if I had, it actually requires a bit of squinting the eyes and some photo editing to realise it. It actually took an email from Volker himself with a photo to make me understand. In the arrival position, the gap in the top surface forms a letter Tau. I am not terribly bright and I actually struggled to put the pieces back into the box in the start position to take a proper look (yes this is another challenge for you. The aim here, like quite a few of the recent Pelikan challenges, is to pack the four interesting pieces into the box such that the top surface is completely covered (the inside will have quite a few gaps in it). Volker did tell me that the challenge had been influenced by the wonderful No holes barred puzzle designed by Laszlo Kmolnar and beautifully made by Brian Menold that I had reviewed a few years ago:

No holes barred

The single 45º cut single voxel in the entrance to the box was going to be a major issue with the solution here but that was only one part of the considerable challenge. First of all you have to find a shape that you can build that would fill the entrance and be stable sitting on a work surface. There are quite a few ways to make that shape but not many are self supporting and then you need to find one that is even vaguely possible to be placed into the restricted opening left by the half cube. I had imagined all sorts of nice diagonal sliding movements and whilst there is one of these sliding movements, it is not where I expected it to be and was a relatively minor part of the challenge. I found it a fun challenge to reduce my solution set to just one possibility. Having convinced myself that I knew the placement I had to work to put them inside. OMG! What a tremendous challenge! It has taken me a whole week to find the solution and on numerous occasions I had convinced myself that I needed to go back to the drawing board with my assembly to start finding new possibilities. It was with huge relief that I made the cat shoot off my lap with a shout of joy! This puzzle is BRILLIANT! Volker is a genius! Buy it!

The version that Jakub and Jaroslav had manufactured had been made from wood that had not dried out enough and had shrunk after manufacture. This does not interfere with the solution but leaves a bit of looseness in the packed puzzle and they are remaking the whole batch. This may delay them going on sale.

Dino 2

Dino 2 by Alfons Eyckmans

One of the most prolific burr designers in the world, Alfons Eyckmans is producing some fantastic and beautiful puzzles. My favourites are either his cube or cuboid puzzles (of which I have an embarassingly large number) and the burr zoo with all sorts of creatures hidden inside many different types of burr shapes. This particular beauty is an unusual 14 stick burr with a dinosaur inside. The woods chosen by Pelikan are a gorgeous vibrant Purpleheart, Padauk and Wenge with an Acacia dinosaur. Many of this type of puzzle can be impossibly difficult and consequently not so much fun unless you are a huge fan of ultra complex burrs. Jakub's skill here lies in choosing the versions that are just the right challenge and still a whole lot of fun to explore. The movements are beautifully smooth with the puzzle being just tight enough that pieces don't slide about without your control and there is a very nice logic to it. The solution level is 11.5.4.2.3.3 which for me is fun and challenging without becoming impossible (fun is what I am after and not horrendously difficult). Amazingly, once I had found the removal of the first two pieces, I thought the third (adjacent) piece would follow straight away but this was not the case. This had me stumped for a good 15 to 20 minutes as I desperately tried to free up a piece that was not going to be released until 2 others had come out first. After the first 5 pieces are out the puzzle is remarkably stable but now there is a LOT of possible movement and this is where most people will get stuck. I had tried everything possible - it was all moving all over the place but nothing was coming free (remarkably there was only one rotation at this point and it was not useful). I was getting anxious that I would be left with a tangled mess of sticks that I could not advance or go back when suddenly I had another Aha! moment and a critical pieces was removed (I had my dinosaur). This made a lot more space for disassembly and it rapidly came apart thereafter and I was able to take my photo:

Roar! 

There is no way that I will reassemble that without Burrtools but that is part of the fun. My burr zoo is getting quite extensive and I love it!

Maahes

Twins?

Yes, you have seen this puzzle before on my blog! This wonderful design by Terry Smart was previously made by Stephan Baumegger. I wrote about it in 2016 when it made it to my top ten puzzles of the year.

I am delighted that Pelikan have decided to make more copies available to everyone as it is a stunning burr that looks lovely on display (the twins are on display on my mantlepiece along with my other animals) and as well as that, it is a really fun challenge with some really hard to find moves. The disassembly level is not terribly high at 15.3.4.2.2 but several crucial moves are incredibly well hidden and there are a lot of possibilities that open up to you as you work your way through. I remembered that I really struggled with Stephan's version and I did it again this time. Don't tell Mrs S but I could probably go back to all my old puzzles and have absolutely no recollection of them and solve them again as if I'd not done it before - I probably don't need to buy any new ones but where is the fun in that? 

After a couple of days of desperately trying to find the missing move, I had my breakthrough. Even after that there are still a lot of moves to sort through o find the rest of the disassembly. I had a wonderful time and now have to go back to my BT file to reassemble it. This one is beautiful on display and a perfect medium challenge.

The grain of the wood is gorgeous.

I don't know when these will be released but I doubt it will be very long. Which ones should you buy? All of them of course but if you cannot afford that then I would suggest that Tau is an absolute essential and after that it depends on your personal tastes. If burrs are your thing then Maahes and Dino 2 are wonderful and fun and of course the Zeus by Osanori-san is a beautiful object which is easy to disassemble and tough to put back together. You cannot go wrong with the classics from Stewart Coffin and mixing the two together adds a whole new dimension to them. If packing puzzles are your thing then don't underestimate the multiple challenges of the Broken box by Lucie.