Back to the Beginning Plus a Bit More

Locked Domino Tower

I'm a bit knackered today having spent 10 hours yesterday and 2 more hours today writing the Dec/Jan rotas for my department and also being on call for 24 hours today. So this post will be a quickie.....but hopefully as high quality as the puzzle I will write about.

Die Doolhof

This time I couldn't resist something that takes me back to the beginning. My puzzling began just about 7 years ago back in October 2010 (after a horrific occurrence at work) and I began blogging my crazy progress in March 2011. For me the puzzle that started off my "obsession" was the Revomaze, a hidden maze inside a cylinder. Those first puzzles were made of metal and very finely engineered. After I went through months and months and more months of effort solving the series - Blue, Green, Bronze, Silver, the defective Gold (which I did not write about) and also the fabulous Orange, I ended up stopping because the company wasn't able to fulfil the orders that people had made - this issue has apparently improved a bit now. But my habit now tends more towards wood (although I do love some seriously good metal like that from Wil Strijbos) so how great is it to get a similar hidden maze puzzle made just as finely in wood? Thanks to my South African friend, Johan Heyns, I have a Die Doolhof made from Wild Olive and a copy of Oskar's Domino Tower with a locking central piece which is also a hidden maze which must be navigated before the coordinate motion puzzle can be unlocked. It is beautifully made from Silky Oak and Sugarbush. Johan makes puzzles as his sole means of income and I always try to buy something from his offerings each time he makes them.

The mark of a Johan Heyns puzzle.....there is a special stand

My puzzle was held up by customs for several weeks and Johan was worried that his stand was the cause. One of the features of a Johan Heyns puzzle is that if they are not naturally flat or are best displayed at an angle then he ALWAYS makes an interesting display stand for them. This particular puzzle has a Warthog tooth as the stand. It is stunning and full of character but he did worry that the customs men had a problem with an animal tooth being sent in the post to the UK. Luckily when it finally arrived (after I had paid a ransom for the pleasure) there was no sign that they had even opened the box.

When I finally got some time to play one evening, I decided to start with the Domino tower (I will save the Die Doolhof until I am on leave in a week or so). I knew there was a locking puzzle but only when I initially investigated did I realise that it was a mini revomaze:

It's a mini revomaze!!! But not fully hidden.

It is not quite a revomaze as the maze here is far less complex, the maze becomes visible during the solve and there are no traps or resets inside. But it was a very pleasant experience to work my way through it and then remove the lock from the tower:

Perfection!

I then moved onto the Domino tower which I do have a similar type of puzzle from My friend Neil - the Hex stair:


I was familiar with how these puzzles work and it was just a matter of finding which bits to push in which direction. It is remarkably stable right until the very very end of the travel:

Perfectly stable

Just an extra mm of pushing and it breaks apart into 2 pieces and then another 2 after a further push. The quality and accuracy of the craftsmanship now becomes apparent!

Fabulous!

The reassembly is also fun and being able to finish it off with the reverse solve of the maze is a nice icing on the cake for me. Well I have just finished in the nick of time - I will need to go in to the hospital in the next 30 minutes for a motorcycle crash victim......perfect timing. Enjoy the rest of your weekend everybody.

Fourfold and a brief MPP tale

Fourfold

Today will need to be a fairly quick blog post. I spent all day yesterday down in Birmingham at the 21st Midlands Puzzle Party and so really owe the present Mrs S some of my time this weekend. She has had me doing chores and the weekly shopping but has generously allowed me to write my weekend post as long as I don't spend too long. I don't want to risk a Whack! Ouch! or worse so this is a quickie (but still a good puzzle to be reviewed).

The puzzle pictured above is the Fourfold puzzle which I bought from Tomas Linden's Sloyd puzzle store. It was designed by Ad van der Schagt who seems to have been reasonably prolific in several puzzle areas. Puzzle Master have some of his burr designs and Sloyd have quite a few disentanglement designs. I picked this because it looked horrific with a very long string intertwining everything and because it was rated as 4 stars out of a possible 4 in difficulty by the producers - Eureka puzzles. I have had quite a few new disentanglement puzzles recently and have singularly failed to solve most of them. Either I have lost my mojo or I have picked out some seriously tough puzzles to work on! I took the Fourfold to work one day in the hope of finding a moment to have a play. Several of my colleagues were fairly horrified at the complexity of it and I expressed the fear that a very large knot may ensue which I might not be able to undo. But these challenges are sent to try us!

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!

3 Fantastic Craftsmen....

2 Brilliant Puzzles Each.... 
1 Puzzle Uniquely Mine

Erm... I guess it's the Closed Box?

Vauban H5

It has been a while since I bought anything new from the New Pelikan Workshop. The last time I wrote a review the puzzles in question sold out within a few days and I'd like to think that I may have played a small part in that. Jakub contacted me 2 weeks ago to ask if I'd like the opportunity to buy an early copy of a puzzle that they were making and maybe I could write them a few words on it. Of course I was delighted - their work has never disappointed me and I jumped at the chance to buy! Both these puzzles will be available to buy on their site on 8th July. I was stunned when I first took them out the package and started to explore. The accuracy of the workmanship is simply stunning - we are accustomed to Pelikan's work being good but this is taking it to a whole new level! The pieces are so so smooth and the tiny fine bevelling on the pieces allows them to slide over each other with minimal catching - they are a delight to play with.

Changing my Thought Processes in the Cubozone

Volantis

Last week I posted on my New Additions page some lovely pictures of some gorgeous toys that I received from Yavuz Demirrhan. Yavuz lives in Turkey and despite struggling to obtain good quality equipment he manages to produce quite a few lovely puzzles and has very recently opened his own Etsy store. It was originally named Creacubes but apparently someone else has reserved that name and forced Yavuz to change it to his current name of Cubozone - seeing as so many of his gorgeous creations are cubic, I think the name is quite apt.

My first purchase from his new store was some time ago and the delivery was very delayed because first of all Yavuz sheepishly admitted that he had taken orders for more puzzles than he actually had made (of course I didn't mind waiting - I know that quality takes time and is worth waiting for) and after he had made my lovely new toys the British customs office held them for 3 weeks before releasing them to me! I had seen them at the last MPP and was getting desperate to get my mitts on them! When they did finally arrive, even Mrs S commented on how beautiful they were!

Packing in some beautiful wood

BDSM with interesting box to pack

At least twice this year (here and here) I have waxed lyrical about the fantastic collaboration between extraordinary puzzle designer Laszlo Kmolnar and the amazing craftsman Brian Menold. Laszlo has produced a whole series of cubic packing puzzles which look quite simple yet require some very complex thinking because they are not just about randomly rearranging pieces until they fit in the container. Each design has added something special....either rotational moves to orient some of the pieces once inside the container or some very unusual diagonal sliding moves to get the pieces to interlink. The shapes are just "simple" cubes very like the classic Soma cube but with containers that have very constrained (and sometimes multiple) openings for the pieces to be placed through. So not only do you need to find the correct one of a number of possible cube constructions but then you need to work out how to get the pieces through the window(s) and then how to get them facing the correct way. I absolutely adored the ones I had bought so far and despite not being good at packing puzzles, I had managed to solve them all.

I am not sure why the puzzle was called BDSM - I am not really into that scene despite all the Whack! Ouch!'s that I receive but maybe it's because you need to be masochistic to try it?

Masterful Craftsmanship Leads to Hours of Fun!

Momus on its' stand

I've mentioned Johan Heyns quite a few times on this blog - he had stopped making puzzles for a very long time and focussed on other hobbies for a while but, dare I say it, thanks to encouragement from me as well as unfortunately losing his job, he has begun making puzzles again. Luckily for us in the community, they are available in small numbers for purchase. They are not cheap but they ARE very high quality and so far have always had something interesting about their design or solution. The Alfons Eyckmans' Cocoon puzzle is one of my all time favourites which remains on show in my living room. Today I will be focussing on another one that I couldn't resist as well as another delight that I received as a gift.

When Johan emailed out and posted on Facebook that he was going to make a batch of Momus puzzles designed by the rather prolific Terry Smart, I couldn't resist it. Terry is a Scotsman who spends much of his time working offshore on the oil rigs and hence has quite a bit of time away from his home and family which no doubt helps him hone his design skills. Having trained as a med student and junior doctor in Edinburgh as well as Fife and the Borders, I have a bit of a soft spot for anything that originates from there (yes, including Mrs S! Whack! Ouch! Of course I had to say that, dear) so when a puzzle by a Scotsman comes up - even Mrs S can't talk me out of it!

I have watched Terry begin to play with Burrtools and very rapidly become a real expert. The thing about using BT for puzzle design is that many people seem to get fixated on producing the highest difficulty level possible and the end result is a puzzle that is only solvable by super humans like Goetz (and a few others I know on Facebook). I personally only own a few very high level burr puzzles and expect that I will never be able to solve them - I top out at level 40-50 for the first piece! Terry decided to take a different route entirely in his design - he went for unusual shapes or interesting solution pathways. This interesting approach was so evident that Eric Fuller also couldn't resist producing one or two of his designs. Eric is not interested in super tough puzzles - he wants fun and interesting ones and he obviously agrees with me that Terry does just that.

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.

A Puzzle that Smells as Good as it Looks

...and is a Wonderful Challenge!

Ternary/Quinary Cube

As I write this the IPP is coming to a close and the prizes have been given out. I will leave the winners announcements to the official channels but the winners are well deserved. I try to keep those of us who cannot attend amused with tales of puzzling, failure and eventual success (no violence on my person this time).

The boyz are always keen to investigate any boxes that arrive - who knows, maybe there might be treats inside for them or, failing that, there will still be a box for them to sit in. This week, however, they were particularly interested in this box. It came from South Africa and maybe it had some of my (and their) favourite Biltong inside...Drool! They went crazy sniffing at the box and kept pestering until I eventually got around to opening it. I think they might have been slightly disappointed in the lack of meat inside but I was truly delighted with the puzzle I received. My good friend Johan Heyns has collaborated with the incredibly talented designer Aleksandr Leontev (Александр Леонтьев) to produce a stunning copy of his Ternary/Quinary Cube. I was delighted with my copy of the 136-minute cube and 205-minute cube (variations on the Sequence cube) which I reviewed here. Aleksandr seems to be the current Master of the N-ary puzzle which I am completely addicted to.

When Johan offered this puzzle for sale, I immediately said yes and hoped that it was possible to manufacture it. This type of puzzle can be fraught with unexpected difficulties. The original Sequence cube proved impossible for Aleksandr to produce in a stable fashion and the Ternary/Quinary cubes have not been without significant challenges and a setback. Luckily for me, Johan persevered and I received a wonderful puzzle in the post. Why were the cats so excited? I'm not entirely sure but Many of Johan's puzzles smell absolutely wonderful. This particular puzzle has a lovely cinnamony smell - I had no idea the cats would be attracted to that aroma but they definitely gave the puzzle a good investigation when it was freed from the packing.

It is made from Angolan Kiaat (corner blocks and smaller sliders), South African Kiaat (large sliders) with the maze plates made of Wenge separated by Pau Marfim. There are also brass side brackets and steel screws. It is a decent 9cm cube with a few protuberant screw-heads - very tactile and pleasant to play with. Also in the box was a small Allen key (only Johan and Eric have ever provided a tool with their puzzles before) and a leaflet with a little information on it as well as instructions on how to change between the two setups. The puzzle arrived setup for the Ternary challenge which is a nice easy level 170.2.2.2 challenge.

The evening that it arrived I set to work. The very beginning of the Ternary cube was immediately unusual because it had an entry sequence before the N-ary component began - I don't think I have ever come across that before. After about a ½ hour, I had come to the end:

At the end of the Ternary solution sequence

Interestingly, the maze pathways are completely hidden for almost the entire process with only the very early segments visible at the very end. I removed the four sliders and balanced them on the sleeping lap-cat to examine how the puzzle was constructed.

Incredible design and construction

I had not paid any attention to the sliders that came out and where they had originated. I assumed that they were identical...STUPID BOY! At this point, a small expletive might have left me as I realised that I could not put the sliders back in and reverse the process to the beginning. The next 10 minutes required a fun and very close examination of the pieces and the pathway and how they may interact at the very end of the solution. Another Aha! moment arrived when I understood how it had been constructed and I was finally able to embark upon the reverse process. That evening I was happy with my progress and went to bed reassured that I was able to finally solve something. The following day I went to the end of the solution, took the sliders out again and then read the first step of the instructions to set up the next (Quinary) challenge. I was a little alarmed at the instructions

DO NOT DISASSEMBLE THE COMPLETE PUZZLE! You have been warned!

I disassembled the parts that I was supposed to and marvelled at the tremendous skill in the design and construction:

Two halves separated releasing the maze plates

Details of the maze pathways (Quinary)

It is possible at this point to see how clever they have been in creating this masterpiece...the maze plates are held tightly onto the separation plate by small (but strong) magnets. Without paying much attention I pulled the plates off and set them back on the separation plate with the Quinary mazes pointing outwards. I quickly put it back together only to realise that I had absolutely no idea how it had all been oriented when I took it apart and, you guessed it, I could not put it back together again! I repeat...STUPID BOY!

I disassembled it again and rotated a plate and...nope! I tried again and rotated the other plate and...nope! OMG! I was in trouble! I reset it back to the Ternary setup and...nope! Aaaargh! I really should have paid attention to how it came apart. I spent the whole evening trying to assemble the puzzle and was rewarded after an hour or so with finally getting it back to the puzzle that I had already solved...PHEW!

The following evening I tried again - unscrewed all the nice screws that the instructions told me to and then removed the maze plates but left the sliders in place. The maze plates can be rotated either horizontally or vertically so I picked one and put it back together. Yes, you guessed it! That's a nope! Aaaargh! At one point I did manage to get to a conformation that would allow the screws to be screwed tight and with some relief, I went to work on the Quinary challenge (level 1251.2.2.2) only to find that after 4 moves, I was blocked from doing anything else - NOOOOOOOO!

So I took it apart yet again! Looking at the maze plates, I realised what I had done wrong (it took me another 20 minutes) and rectified the situation. That was the end of that day's puzzling. Yesterday I was finally able to have a play at the quinary solution. It is interesting that I found the longer challenge much more confusing than I was expecting. I have solved the Kugellager 7 (septenary) and 8 (Quinary) puzzles and apart from getting lost due to not paying attention, I solved them without difficulty. The Quinary cube took me by surprise with the confusing sequences in the solution. The fact that it is a blind solve makes it really difficult to predict the moves and it requires constant exploration. I was watching a film with the current wife, Whack! Ouch! and did find myself getting lost on several occasions and only realised it when I reached a position that was very obviously not a progression. The Quinary solve was VERY enjoyable and took me the best part of 2 hours (probably 2500 moves).

At the end of the Quinary solution

I am truly delighted with my purchase - Aleksandr continues to prove that he is a master of N-ary design and Johan is an incredibly talented craftsman. The fruits of the collaboration are revealed properly when the puzzle is solved and disassembled:

Inscription on one side of the separation plate

Johan's stamp
Intellectual Craft

I recommend a regular visit to Johan's store to see whether there is anything of interest to you. His workmanship is wonderful and puzzles are always a bonus when they smell nice and let's not forget that many come with a nice stand too. I still have my copy of Matrix next to my armchair taunting me - one day I WILL solve it!

Doesn't look like much - I have failed at it for 2 years!