A Minima(l) Duo?

Minima Duo from Tye Stahly

I have had this in my collection for a while but have been under embargo until after the IPP in Japan. Tye Stahly makes puzzles and sells them on his fabulous store. I have been buying various Minima puzzles designed by the incredible Frederic Boucher from Tye for quite some time and have indeed written about a few over the last year or so. They are wonderful! So wonderful that other designers have started designing Minima puzzles as well.

It would appear that Tye was wanting to participate in the exchange at the IPP and he collaborated with Frederic on a design just for him. The Minima Duo was the result. I received my copy just before the IPP as I was unable to attend and I was told to keep it under wraps until afterwards. I put it away for a month and forgot about it until this week when I began to look for something to work on for today's post. I picked it up and started work despite having suspicions that I would not be able to solve it in time.  It arrived in a tin with very specific instructions on it. 

Looking at the pieces you have, it is clear that they cannot all fit in the box as they are. Time to look for tools and separate the pieces. Once this has been done there are (damn him!) quite a lot of pieces and they all need to be placed in such a way that no parts can move.

First of all, I worked on placing the smileys inside with the pentomino. this is impossible without using a specific feature of the smileys and it's really quite a clever idea. I did eventually work out how to manipulate gravity to allow it to happen and, much to the amusement of Mrs S at the breakfast table, I kept dropping pieces on the floor which then got batted at by a cat. I really didn't want any small parts inside a cat as we have had enough expensive vet bills recently.

Having gotten the big parts inside the box, I found they still were able to move quite a bit. Time to think© and see whether I could use the other parts I had found to prevent their movement. This bit also proved a huge challenge. I dropped pieces many more times in the process but think I have found the solution. I have put my final configuration behind a spoiler button below. Hopefully Tye can let me know whether I have it right.

Nothing moves but part of it isn't very elegant

 

 Tye has currently sold out of this puzzle but, as usual, if you badger him enough he might make some more copies for you. It is well worth a play.

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As a quick follow up from last week - the Pelikan puzzles that I reviewed are due to go on sale from Jakub's site on Tuesday October 21st at 2pm Central European Time.

I continued to work on the Slider H and having discovered the secret to how to get all 27 voxels inside the box when one is badly blocked, I spent a further 3 days trying to get the rest of the pieces inside. It is a work of genius! Slider H is a MUST HAVE!