There's A Loach In The Upcoming Release!

New Releases Coming From Jakub and Jaroslav's Pelikan Puzzles

I have had a little annual leave recently and had to use a lot of it for stuff around the house but was very delighted to receive a new big box o' puzzles from Jakub containing 6 new beauties. I even had some time to start proper work on them. 

We have:

Loach Bed by Osanori Yamamoto (Top 10 Vote getter in the 2026 IPP design competition)

Mirror Tetra X2 by Oasnori Yamamoto

Window 444 by Lucie Pauwels 

Family Puzzle by Lucie Pauwels

Albert by Dr Volker Latussek

Frau L by Dr Volker Latussek

This week I have solved the first 4 and will be writing about them.

Loach Bed

Loach Bed by Osanori Yamamoto

This wonderful diminutive puzzle was a Top Ten Vote getter in the IPP design competition for a very very good reason. In fact, it was one of the puzzles I voted for myself. A supposedly simple packing puzzle with a limited entry (single voxel) made from leopard wood and 3 bright yellow pieces made from Movingui (it will also be available made from Acacia and Walnut). There are 2 simple rods and an S-shaped piece to be fitted inside the 2x2x3 box so that the entry is left filled.

I remember playing with this in Italy. I remember the beauty, the perfect logic and the marvellous Aha! moment. I then also remember the Oh $3*t moment when I realised that it needed to be solved outside the box in your head first and then the sequence produced from memory completely blind. This makes this puzzle ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT! The first challenge outside the box is to work out how the S-shaped piece can be inserted and then where the two rods can be placed alongside it and still allow some movement. Then work out a sequence that can allow removal of the pieces. Great! You know what is needed. That took me about 10-15 minutes (I am not terribly bright - I am sure that you will be quicker than that). Then once you know this then insert the pieces inside in the correct order and within a single move of inserting the third piece nothing more can be seen and the rest is done from memory and blind. At this point the careful sequence that you have worked out becomes less obvious and finally you will realise that you need to use gravity for the moves. So rotating the whole puzzle up and down backwards and forwards suddenly makes you question whether you a. can remember where everything is and b. what direction things need to move when the orientation is different to the one that you worked out the sequence.

This picture is not helpful!

The feeling of success is fabulous. Enjoy it...then leave the puzzle for about an hour or so and then with what you know in your head and no real muscle memory left, try and take the pieces out. This again needs to be done blind and can lead to some heart-stopping moments when you have turned it over and about and hoped the required moves have happened but find that a crucial move now won't happen. At this point you need to backtrack without knowing the state of the pieces inside. At one point I got rather badly lost and had to put it down for a bit in a panic. The disassembly is just as challenging as the assembly - there's a reason it won a prize - BRILLIANT!

I would suggest that you do not give this to newbie puzzlers without keeping a close eye on what they do. You could end up with a locked puzzle because you can't see what's going on inside.

Mirror Tetra X2

Mirror Tetra X2 by Osanori-san

This delightful challenge made from Acacia and Padauk arrives as a loosely assembled brick. The aim is to assemble all the attractively symmetrical pieces into a solid 4x4x4 cube with the extra constraint that the cube is formed from 2 mirror coloured halves. 

The puzzle is not hugely difficult but is very compelling to play with. The pieces mostly have tongues or grooves in them (or both) as well as a single 1x2x4 plate and a 2x2x2 cube. Making space for these is both helpful and a hindrance. The most confusing part is the inclusion of two pieces that have a side length of 3 voxels which, for me, made them quite hard to place. Burrtools tells me that there is only one assembly and knowing this, the colour requirement is actually a nice clue as to what you can and cannot do.

It's definitely not a trivial puzzle and actually took me the best part of an hour to assemble it. This is perfect for all levels of puzzler.

Window 444

Window 444 by Lucie Pauwels

Lucie Pauwels always comes up with very interesting challenges and this is no exception. It's a sort of framed jigsaw/packing puzzle made from a whole bunch of gorgeous woods. It arrived like this with all but 2 long pieces in the tray. Once you have tipped all the pieces out you realise that there are 3 different size groups to be inserted - 4 long ones at 5x1 units in size, 4 medium ones at 3x1 units in size and then also four 1x1 pieces. In terms of voxels, with the protrusions and cavities the pieces are considerably more complex and if you were going to put this into Burrtools then you would need a 18x18 voxel grid to do it. But I would advise you - DON'T use Burrtools! There is absolutely no need to do so. This puzzle is wonderfully logical and needs only a little exploration to notice a few critical features which will make you think©. Once you have thunk then the solution needs only a little trial and error and progression happens very quickly. It is very satisfying when you find where pieces need to go. If you make a mistake, it takes a bit of doing to remove the incorrect pieces as they fit together so perfectly (as you'd expect from the Pelikan team) - a small suction cup tool would be very helpful.

This lovely puzzle is another that is perfect for all levels of puzzler - It encourages thought and planning rather than too much trial and error.

Family Puzzle 

Family Puzzle by Lucie Pauwels

Here we have a rather beautiful and very very challenging tray packing puzzle by Lucie Pauwels. It looks much easier than the Window 444 but is a much more difficult puzzle. We have a nice small tray with a cavity measuring 8 voxels high and 15 across. There are 8 rectangular pieces of varying sizes to be placed in the tray and each of them has a single voxel notch punched out of one edge. All the pieces are made from a different rather lovely wood making this a very attractive puzzle to play with. So far so easy - place all these pieces in the tray. There should be plenty of space. 

However, the puzzle is not going to be that easy - Lucie would never let you be that easily successful! On top of the larger pieces there are four 1x2 voxel pieces (mine are a rather lovely Zebrano) which also need to be inserted into the space alongside the bigger pieces. Once all the pieces are in, there will be no holes left. It seemed to me that the obvious thing to do was to insert the bigger pieces and pair up the notches is 4 of them to make space for the small rods. easier said than done. After an hour or so of attempting that, I gave up and just fell back to trying to insert all of the large pieces and ignoring the rods. Even doing that is a challenge as they always seem to fit easily up to the last one:

Not even close on the simple challenge!

After a lot of trial and error I had a crucial Aha! moment which I am sure would occur to you much earlier. After that I was able to get all the large pieces inside but I was a very long way off from getting all the notches lined up. I found quite a lot of possible simpler packings but none allowed me to place all of the rods. I did make a BT file and found that there are 96,608 possible ways to place the large pieces. Time for more thought and more trial and error. I have so far been unable to solve this one so far. BT tells me that there is just a single solution and I have no idea how to go about finding it. 

I think that the better puzzlers out there amongst you will be able to logically approach this and find the solution. Good luck - it's a massive challenge.

Also Coming Very Soon...

Safe 2 by Pelikan Design

Jakub has informed me that he will also be releasing the Safe 2 puzzle soon - I reviewed the Safe 1 here and adored it. This new version is also a sequential discovery puzzle designed by Jakub and team. It is apparently very difficult - Ivan has been working on it for a while and the "Master of puzzle boxes", Peter Hajek, has rated the puzzle box as "good" which is very high praise from him.

There will be 2 versions. The standard version will be €420 and a special version made from Fossil oak (5 copies only) will be €600. If you wish to pre-order then this can be done right now by emailing Jakub and paying a deposit. 

Contact him at https://www.pelikanpuzzles.eu/contact/ or email info@pelikanpuzzles.eu