Pelikan Puzzling Continued

Cabinet - a Pelikan design

Yes, it's time to continue the reviews of the upcoming Pelikan release. I have been playing all week and have just finished them this morning. 

Cabinet

Every now and then Jakub releases a Pelikan in-house design. They are usually boxes with clever mechanisms and you really won't be disappointed by this. At yesterday's MPP, one of the topics of comnsversation that I had was about the Karakuri puzzle boxes and how beautiful they are with simple(ish) short but very elegant solutions. I lamented that I didn't dare get into Karakuri collecting as it would be the death of my marriage and my bank balance but I agreed with the elegance and simplicity. I have to say that the Cabinet puzzle by the Pelikan team is worthy of this same admiration.

It is beautifully made - and wonderfully tactile. There are 2 drawers and one knob. As it arrives, there is a good bit of rattling from inside. The challenge is to open the drawers of the cabinet and find the gold bars and the jewel inside (plus an extra treat). Nothing moves at all at first but it won't take very many of you long to get the first drawer open to find a treat inside. After that a little exploration will reveal the first of the prizes. Aha! Real care and attention in every part. At this point you have what looks like it can be used as a tool...you will have done it countless times before on other puzzles and been able to manipulate the mechanism. I tried this repeatedly and had no luck. I began to think that maybe the mechanism was stuck. I tried variants of my manipulation many many times with alterations in the orientation of the puzzle and got absolutely nowhere. I tried this again and again and again. Nope! Nuffink! I then had another thought and tried that but still no luck. I tried for a whole week. Eventually, I contacted Ivan Danik to ask for a hint. He didn't say much but did manage to tell me that my original thought which I had been trying for a whole week had been wrong. Grrrr! I am not very bright. Having abandoned that completely I had a little feel about and had a wonderful Aha! moment. I had actually used the correct move but needed to do it properly. After another try my treasure was all available. 

The Cabinet is just like a Karakuri - it is beautifully made with perfect tolerances and a simple but very elegant mechanism. All of you collectors out there will need this.

Teapot

Teapot by Lucie Pauwels

Another tray packing puzzle by the incredible Lucie Pauwels! There is no limit to Lucie's skills! I reviewed an interlocking puzzle coming from her and Pelikan last week which was fascinating and here she turns her hand to a rather lovely and clever tray puzzle. This is very ingenious and a good bit harder than it looks. What goes in a teapot ? Tea of course! What goes in tea? Sugar lumps! Here we have a pot and 8 different varieties of tea (T) made from Pink Oak to be placed inside the pot. Two other variants will be on sale: Wenge/Maple and Purpleheart/Ash. There are 4 single voxel holes left after all the teas are inside and these can be filled by sugar made from Maple. Normally you'd put your sugar in your cup but here it gets added to the pot.

This is a deceptive puzzle - it really doesn't look that tough but the lengths of the stems of the T's make it difficult to pack the cavity efficiently leaving only small few gaps. I worked for a long time (hours) to find the solution and it was very gratifying to eventually manage it. I dare say it can be solved by brute force but the best approach is to experiment with how the T crosses and stems can interact with each other and then plan what you need to do to keep the gaps to a minimum. There is only one solution to this and it might take you quite some time to find it. Perfect for all levels of puzzler.

Olympic Rings

Olympic Rings by Lucie Pauwels

Yes, another tray packing puzzle by Lucie. This follows a totally different premise than the Teapot puzzle. Instead of having to fill a cavity with shapes that get in each other's way, the aim is to fill a pathway with relatively simple pieces but a very limited length to the paths. The complexity and the logic comes from the constraint formed by the intersection of the paths. This one has pieces made from Pink Oak but it will also be available in Merbau.

I started placing the larger pieces in the lengths of the paths and then trying to fill the smaller gaps that were left after that.This seemed like a really good idea but it did not lead me even close to a solution. My next approach was to take the  3 more complex pieces and place those at the path intersections and then work from there. This definitely improved the situation but did not get me all the way. I ended up resorting to Burrtools and just peeking at the position of those complex pieces. Once I had them placed properly, I was able to progress quite logically with the rest of the puzzle. If I had not been time constrained then I might have managed this without cheating. It is a very challenging but logical puzzle which should only need a little trial and error. It is very attractive when complete and looks great on display.

Fantino

Fatino by Dr Volker Latussek

Another masterpiece from the master of the packing puzzle! Dr Latussek has been challenging us with restricted entry packing puzzles for years now and every time a new one is released, I think that he cannot have found something new but he has. This one has been beautifully made with a Mahogany box and Wenge pieces.

This time it looks like the puzzle should be possible without rotations because the limited entry hole is still a whole number of voxels in each dimension. BUT don't let that fool you. The pieces are all pentominoes and hence quite long. Any of them that have to go sideways perpendicular to the hole will need rotating into place once inside or tilting slightly through the gap. The hole to be filled is a 4x4x2 space and we have a total of 30 leaving 2 gaps to be hidden somewhere inside. This is going to be fun and VERY difficult!

Volker said this about the development of the puzzle:

In the past, I’ve combined some of the 12 flat pentacubes with other polycubes to design packing problems. In addition to the well-known pieces of the SOMA CUBE, I’ve also used spatial pentacubes - which are described by a 3x2x2 envelope - in a rather unobtrusive way. There are 15 different shapes of these, based on a rather casual remark by George Miller I’ll call them Fats. The Fats possess a harmony that is indescribable to me when they are combined. I will present my special discoveries to you at Pelikan. 

I’ll start with FATINO, six Fats in the box so familiar to me with a centered slit opening. In fact, I already had this CASINO-like box and, with FATINO, the name of the puzzle for the first time before I began finding the six matching Fats that describe a unique solution. The Fats are really bulky, as if they didn’t want to fit into the box. Ultimately, however, six of them took pity on me and gave me a truly beautiful solution. I really hope you enjoy the game of the Fats so much that you look forward to the discoveries to come.

I had to use Burrtools to find me some assemblies and then experiment with them to try and get one of them inside the box. Even using BT this way, isn't a panacea as each shape that is found (there are 6 of them) will have 8 possible orientations to try and of course, then you will need to see whether the disassembly is possible through the slot in the top of the box. Once I found a possible assembly it was a lovely dexterity and sliding problem to get the solution.

Damn! That is tough!

This is a stupendously good challenge. It is definitely possible by normal human beings (many of you might need BT to systematically find the possible assemblies and try them) but after that the puzzling is wonderful.

Yasya-Flop

Yasya-Flop by Dr Volker Latussek

Another puzzle in the "Flop" series is one that is not to be missed. There have been quite a few so far and this one is by far the most difficult. Jakub and team have made this from a wonderful Saman wood (aka Monkeypod) and Purpleheart. It arrives with all but one of the pieces packed in the box and took me quite a bit of fiddling to actually remove the pieces. This bodes for a very difficult solution to get all of them back inside.

The box has a 3x3x3 cavity and a 1½ voxel wide slot in the top through which all the pieces of a standard Soma cube need to be placed. I have mentioned many times that I am terrible at assembly puzzles. My appreciation of this occurred many years ago when I bought my first Soma cube. So here, I need to find one particular assembly of the Soma cube and then work out which orientation to try and then how to get the damn thing into a box through a small hole using rotational moves! Does this sound like fun to you? Yes, it does to me too.

Volker wrote this about it:

Fritz Pingl (FRITZ-FLOP) and Dick Fosbury (DICK-FLOP) are the namesakes of my FLOP SERIES. The rotation of individual pieces in these unique packing puzzles is reminiscent of their high jump techniques.

While I was recently playing with my STEFKA-FLOP, named after Stefka Kostadinova, I unexpectedly found a new solution. This is, of course, terrible, since every FLOP is supposed to have exactly one solution. But this new solution is so beautiful - not least because, just like with the FRITZ-FLOP, the opening can be compressed to exactly half of one of the square sides - that I don’t want to keep this experience from you. A production by Pelikan was a must. 

While searching for a suitable name, I learned that Stefka Kostadinova’s long-standing world record in the high jump from 1987 was surpassed in 2024 by Yaroslava Mahuchikh with a jump of 2.10 meters. So I dedicate my YASYA-FLOP to this exceptional Ukrainian athlete, who is affectionately called Yasya by her friends.  While solving the YASYA-FLOP won’t let you set a new world record, I hope you understand why this solution has remained undiscovered until now.

There is an immediate way to cut down the possible assemblies as the final pieces to be placed have to be able to drop straight in through the opening as there will be no room for rotations at that stage. This helps considerably but if I was you, I'd have a BT set of Soma solutions available to search through.

Not for the faint-hearted!

In the end, due to time constraints, I had to get the solution from Pelikan to give me the intended assembly and orientation and then work out how to get it inside the box. The movements are very complex and require considerable dexterity as well as judicious use of gravity to place pieces. Make sure that you know what you have done as taking the pieces out will be almost impossible. This is an amazing challenge but definitely only for the most expert of puzzlers.

Less is More

Less is more by Dr Volker Latussek

This gorgeous puzzle from Volker has been beautifully made from Wenge and American Cherry. It is stunning to look at and beautifully made. I thought that it had been sent out in the solved position but reviewing the instructions revealed that there is much more to this puzzle than meets the eye. Yes, it is a tray packing puzzle with a 7x7 tray and there are quite a few assemblies in the tray.

Having taken the pieces out for the photo, I found even packing them back in the tray very difficult. Finding the one that left me that nice square gap was almost impossible for me. But, for all of you who want something more interesting than a simple square tray packer, there is a LOT more to do - this is also an anti-slide puzzle. In fact, it is a multi level anti-slide puzzle. This will keep you challenged for a VERY long time.

Volker said this about it:

Nine pentominoes in a square grid (7x7). So what. The idea behind this particular anti-slide puzzle - simple in concept - kept me occupied for several years, and its implementation proved too challenging for me. I had to seek advice from Andreas Roever and Peter Müller, an algebra professor at my university in Würzburg. In the end, Peter Müller calculated the solution sequences. Unfortunately, my knowledge of Fortran wasn’t sufficient. But now, after an initial prototype with 6 pentominoes instead of nine for the Nob-Yoshigahara Design Competition 2025, Pelikan can release a small series for enthusiasts of such puzzles, and I’ve met a mathematics professor whom I can now call Peter. Peter, thank you so much for your great support, which allowed LESS IS MORE to come to life. 

LESS IS MORE contains various challenges, but in particular sequences of stable arrangements: Pack the nine pentominoes into the frame so that they do not slide. Remove one piece - the remaining eight pieces still cannot slide. Repeat this step until there are only three pieces left that cannot slide. 

When I play LESS IS MORE today, I am still amazed by the interplay of the pentominoes in the sequence from nine to three pieces, which still surprises me with its length.

Another goal of LESS IS MORE: Select three or more pieces so that they do not slip, and no further piece can be added without slipping, and no piece can be removed without the remaining pieces slipping.

I preferred to do the puzzle in the reverse order to the suggested one by Volker. Take 3 pieces and create an anti-slide placement with them (that isn't terribly difficult to do). Then add another piece from the unpaved ones and just add it to the shape already made in such a way that the new shape also cannot slide (this took me a little while). You will probably need to experiment with a whole bunch of 3-piece placements before you find one that works when adding a fourth piece. It was quite gratifying to find a four piece anti-slide assembly. Next, try to add another piece in and still have it not slide. keep doing this until all 9 pieces are placed. This will be a huge challenge! I am not entirely sure that a human can achieve this. I did manage to create a 5 piece non-sliding assembly but that is as far as I got. The computer programmers amongst you might manage to create a program to do this. If anyone is actually able to do it all without computer assistance then I would love for you to tell me.

If you manage the primary puzzle then there is a secondary challenge: Find 3 pieces to create an anti-slide assembly but in such a way that it is not possible to add any more pieces that are anti-slide. This is not terribly tough but having done that, do it again with 4 pieces - none of the 4 can slide but it's impossible to add a 5th piece that doesn't slide. Keep doing this up to 9. So many challenges in one beautiful tray puzzle.

All of these are amazing puzzles! They should hopefully be going on sale later this week. My picks from them are Cabinet (who can resist a Pelikan design puzzle and this has a very ingenious mechanism), Swan cube (it's just beautiful logic) and Fantino for the elegance. But you cannot go wrong with any of them.