Zese Are Not For Ze Faint-Hearted

Minima-Ze Series by Frederic Boucher
Produced by Pelikan

Damn! I never thought I would say it, but I wish we hadn't had a sunny day yesterday! The UK has basically had rain almost every day for the whole year so far and it has been thoroughly miserable. But, you all know that us Brits love to discuss and complain about the weather. The garden has been growing wild due to all the rain and the rapid approach of spring. So yesterday, when the forecast was good, I was ousted from the house by "she who frightens even the Gods" and given instructions to tidy up the garden. After 6 hours, I was allowed back in the house and knew that pain was coming. I was not expecting it to be mental as well as physical pain. This morning I awoke with pain - everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. My fingers hurt, my thighs hurt, my shoulders hurt. I hate gardening! The garden looks great but I am in too much pain tp appreciate it! Little did I know that I would add brain pain would be rapidly added to the collection of aches.

I received a nice big box of puzzles from Jakub, Jaroslav and team on Monday and after unpacking, I had to put them away for a few days due to work. The presence of ball bearings bouncing around in an operating theatre is not a good idea so I daren't take them to work. I finally got to investigate on Friday and unfortunately wasn't allowed to play yesterday due to fear of reprisals if I didn't get into the garden. As a result today I have started work on the Minima-Ze series by Frederic Boucher.

These are an interesting variant of his Minima puzzles with a totally different aim.These are not packing puzzles...they should be classified as either Maze puzzles or sequential movement puzzles. The aim is to either remove the/one of the ball bearings that is trapped inside the usual 2x2x3 box or, in the case of Minima-Ze Rally, to run the ball bearing through the maze from entry in one side and and exit on the other.

These diminutive puzzles are perfectly pocket sized and can be carried about without worrying about losing a ball bearing. However once you have started you probably need to be careful because loss is a distinct possibility.

Minima-Ze 1

Minima-Ze (1)

Number one in the series has been made using Leopardwood for the box and Acacia for the pieces. A blue marble is visible in the hole in the top. There is another smaller white marble just visible to the right of it. The aim is to manipulate the pieces to allow the removal of the white ball bearing via the exit hole at the front. Should be easy? Hmm! maybe for you it might be but I struggled. There are two square holes to facilitate movement of the wooden blocks (none of which can be removed) and there is a slot in base which serves no there purpose other than too allow the puzzler to examine the shape of the pieces that are being slid around. After a few minutes of fiddling a couple of oddities can be discerned. It is obviously going to be key to work out what those "oddities" are there for. 

Being a bear of very little brains who was hurting all over, my thought capacity was at a rather low ebb. I am embarrassed to say that it took me well over an hour to realise what was required and actually carry out the required moves. A ball fell out much to the alarming interest of a cat. I retrieved it as quickly as I could before someone swallowed it.

I'm sure it shouldn't have taken me over an hour!

Returning it to the start was another challenge. I was able to place the balls back inside but the once I thought I had them back inside, I either couldn't slide the wooden blocks back inside or the balls were in the wrong order. Another 10 minutes required to get the dexterity to do what was needed. Lovely clever challenge and a nice warm-up for the others in the series.

Minima-Ze 2

Minima-Ze 2

This one is made by Pelikan using Mahogany for the box and Garapa for the blocks. Inside, there is a single ball bearing visible through a hole in the base. The aim here is to manipulate the pieces and navigate that ball bearing through the maze and out through one of the holes in the front. It's not clear at first how this is going to work nor which hole is the exit.

Rocking it back and forth reveals that internal pieces slide around and at one point one of the pieces covering a hole pokes out and has a drilled hole in it. Aha! This would imply that there is a moving path inside the pieces trapped inside and the aim is to work out where the holes are, how they can be manipulated into a pathway and then how to get the ball bearing through it. 

Simple? Ha! Many years ago, I spent months working through the variable mazes inside the Revomaze puzzles and it took me months and months to solve them. I hate to say it but this may happen to me again. So far I have worked out how some parts move but it's very difficult to understand what's happening inside as there is minimal visibility. I have spent a good ½ hour with the ball bearing lost inside somewhere with no idea where it went and absolutely no idea how to return back to the beginning. Shaking it about is no use here! Somehow I have got it back to the start with little idea how. This is a frightening little puzzle and will require a lot of thought in a silent room. I think listening as you go is going to be quite important here.

Minima-Ze 3

Minima-Ze 3

Number 3 in the series has a Limba box and Wenge pieces. It looks rather complex by the presence of a full circumferential belt of holes which are there to help you control the pieces by squeezing fingertips through to prevent parts from moving when you don't want them to. Again, the aim is to remove the silver ball bearing from the puzzle (it is visible through a very small hole in the back wall of the box). 

The clue to the presence of a drilled pathway comes when you manipulate the internal pieces to find that the single piece covering the square hole pokes out with a cavity in it, obviously to deliver the ball bearing to you. There is no other part of the internal maze visible inside and you are expected to build an internal visualisation of the maze by listening to the pieces move and using gravity to control the movement of pieces and ball whilst using your fingers to control which blocks can move.

For 2 hours today I have been playing with this and the ball was lost inside. I had no idea where it was and could not return it back to the beginning. Panic began to set in. Time to put it down and think©. That didn't work for me so I fiddled with it blindly and returned it to the beginning. After the palpitations had settled, I tried again and suddenly the ball was out. 

Solved it - not sure how!

Having taken the photo of it, I now have to return it to the beginning and I am not entirely sure how to go about it. I think I will need to draw a picture of the shapes and where I think the holes/paths might be. 

These are beautiful puzzles and terrific challenges. they are NOT for the faint-hearted! These will keep you challenged for quite some time, require a lot of thought and a very good 3D visuospatial ability to understand and solve.

Minima-Ze Rally

Pelikan version

Nothing yet designs version

I have not yet had time to play with this one. It was also available from Tye Stahly's Nothing Yet Designs store (almost everything seems to be available from him) and maybe if you badger him, it might be available again. I haven't gotten around to it yet but my backlog is out of control just now. I need a long holiday with no gardening to do or even to retire to catch up.

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What else will be available at the next update? I should have reviews ready for next week for you.

The secret of two friends - a design by the Pelikan team - beautifully made from Oak (here) or "sub-fossil" oak

Shrine by Lucie Pauwels - made from Bubinga and Acacia

Diasafe by Lucie Pauwels made from Wenge and Pink Oak

Thyor by Dr Volker Latussekmade from Padua, Maple and Wenge

She Solved It And Now I Have A Dilemma...

This was how your intrepid puzzler and his feline overlord left it last week

At the end of last week's blog, myself and Mazikeen had managed to randomly move everything we could find in every possible position we could think of and luckily, due to the extreme flexibility of the cat, we were able to remove two panels from the Gravity cube by Alex Owens. After this we were both rather badly stuck. Interestingly, i was unable to put the panels that I had removed back on to the cube - I/we literally had managed this by chance with minimal understanding of what we had achieved. My usual to and fro approach really wasn't working here as I achieved things without knowing what I had done. Was I enjoying the puzzle? I don't know. It was interesting and obviously very clever but the lack of understanding was decreasing my enjoyment. Also, the inability to progress any further at all despite a good few hours of play was making the puzzle lose its shine.

After writing things up last week, I was determined to continue and the cat and I continued to swear and fiddle. Actually, I did all the swearing and she seemed to sleep a lot. I took it to work and carried on playing (no, the cat did not accompany me to work - for some reason, surgeons aren't too enamoured with the idea of a cat wandering around the operating theatre!) I was forced to work on it alone. Somehow I made more progress. I have no idea how! Are you getting a theme here? After a further couple of days another 2 panels had been removed and yet again, I could not put them back. Nothing for it other than to try to move onward. With the two panels left, I found a few more possible moves and thought I was making progress. After another 3 days of doing the same thing back and forth multiple times, I was able to do and undo those things consistently and almost understood what I was doing but could go no further. Now what?

After last week's blog post, Goetz contacted me to offer help if I needed it. He had apparently received a copy of this puzzle quite a long time ago and had solved and reassembled it many times. It had been his EPP recommendation as top mass produced puzzle for 2025. I admitted that I had progressed to 2 remaining panels and Goetz offered a hint which included finding and using an L-shaped piece from inside. I didn't have an L-shaped piece and could not make the move that he had used to get it. Apparently Alex had improved the design since Goetz received his version. OMG! Was I doomed to be stuck at this point. After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing we established that I had everything that I needed and I was encouraged to do something that I had toyed with trying for a while but had been too frightened that I would lose the only tool I had. There are lots of horror stories about puzzlers inserting things into holes and not being able to remove them! 😱

I worked with Mazikeen to screw our courage to the sticking point and used the tool. There was a click and suddenly a whole new direction of panel movement was possible. A 5th panel came off - hooray. we were ecstatic. One last panel to go and I now had a new tool that had been released by that panel. The next steps were actually fun - it was almost obvious what I had to do and after another 5 minutes we had the inner cube released to explore:

She looks delighted!

This inner cube seems to have a single sliding lid but it is locked in place. With the tools I had, there was only so much to try and there was a delightful Aha! moment and the lid was open revealing yet another cube inside. Was this it? Mazikken thought there would be more:

A new cube? Hooray!

Still more to be done...

That innermost cube did not seem to be the final step and I was encouraged to play further - luckily the final mechanism was not too troublesome - even fun! Alex has put a rather pretty fidget toy inside for you to play with when you eventually get in. I didn't dare leave the cat to play with that or it might have ended up inside the cat.

All rings can spin

Can I eat it?

I was so delighted to have solved it eventually but now petrified. Almost all of the mechanisms were navigated without really knowing what I was doing and now I am thinking that there is no way I will be able to reassemble this incredibly complex puzzle. There are quite a lot of pieces here (hidden behind a spoiler button:

OMG! Now what?

I am hoping that now that I can see what I am doing, I will be able to backtrack my way through the assembly and then see whether I understand it enough to redo the whole thing without too many random movements in the process.

So, the title of the blog post mentions a dilemma... I need to think about whether this is a candidate for my top ten(ish) of 2026. Whilst this is an incredibly ingenious design and the manufacture is unbelievably good, I am currently left feeling that I solved it with a whole lot of random moves and no understanding at all apart form the final moves. I also have the worry that it will be left in pieces forever more. Over the years, quite a few of my puzzles have been solved by random moves and that has not detracted from them as I eventually did understand the pathway through the puzzle solution. I think that if I manage to reassemble it and that process helps me with a proper understanding of the mechanisms involved then not only will it be in my top ten, then it may head towards the top! I'll keep you all informed.

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Overdrive assembled

Thank you to George who recognised the Stewart Coffin puzzle as Overdrive in my recent post about what I brought back from the MPP. I had received this last year from Steve and was aware that it was a six piece coordinate motion puzzle. I had been trying for many hours to get it together in the correct assembly and had given up. George mentioned that there is an easier assembly which involves a minor CoMo move of 3 pieces to create 2 halves which slide together. It was with much relief that I assembled the above (less than attractive) assembly and could put it away finally. Thanks George!

I Keep Doing This To Myself

Mazikeen might be more likely to open it than me!

I keep buying complex puzzles. I can't resist them. Especially when they are recommended by another puzzle friend. I had to wait a while for the Gravity box by Alex Owens to come back into stock but as soon as it did, I quickly hit buy and started playing when it arrived. 

It is beautifully made and turning it over in your hands reveals the enticing sounds of all sorts of things moving around inside. I have been working on several SD puzzles at the same time (Twins box, I need my lunch, Emerald vault and Rune lock) recently. Unfortunately, I bought all these complex puzzles and can't seem to get anywhere with any of them! Partly I seem to be working too many days every week but also because I am rubbish at puzzles. 

The gravity box accompanied me to work for a couple of weeks in the hope that I might get somewhere with it. The instructions don't really give much of a clue. I found the first move rather promptly because it's fairly obvious but after that I couldn't seem to find even a second move. OMG - this was going to make me very sad. The panels of the box look like they should slide but which direction? and which ones? I turned the damn thing over and over and over and pushed, pulled, poked and shook all the panels - NADA!

I tried it in every position and still nada. Then I did it all over again and suddenly it moved. I have no idea why it moved this time. Having moved a panel, I was able to try other panels. Sometimes they moved and sometimes they wouldn't. I put it all back to the beginning because I prefer my to and fro approach to give me a memory of a pathway. But I got stuck again with a closed puzzle. More fiddling about for an embarrassingly long time and I eventually got it moving again - still no idea why. Progress was made over a good few days and a panel came off revealing an inner cube and hints of "stuff" inside. Nothing possible for another day or so apart from undoing what I had done with the panel still off. Lots more turning it over and over whilst trying to slide bits. Nothing worked until suddenly it did. No idea why! Oddly, I couldn't undo what I had done until suddenly I could but then not be able to redo it. I was beginning to worry that if I was ever to solve this I wouldn't stand a hope in hell's chance of putting it all back together! At some point I had been forced to abandon the to and from approach! I was hopelessly lost despite having achieved very little.

Several more days of play without a clue what I was doing when I was able to slide something new and then move other panels. At least I think it was other panels but I couldn't keep track of what I had done. Yesterday, after an operating list of hip and knee replacements, I was feeling lucky. Try again. Have some feline help and anything is possible. Stuff moved again and I had a second panel removed and the logo fell off. I'm on a roll:

This is promising!
Everything in the start position with the two panels removed

Today I have continued working on it. I have no idea how I got to this point and I certainly can't undo it. I have a few things that move (apart from when they don't) and I have managed to slide all the moved panels that remain in place back to their start positions. Nothing new has opened up. I haven't found any of the promised tools yet and I struggle to go back to the position I had when the second panel was removed. I can get there sometimes but not every time. I have gone back and forth many many times and failed to find anything new. I have a few ideas for possible moves I'd like to try but they are all blocked.

This is incredibly frustrating! So many random moves that I cannot keep track of. The complexity of the design is incredible but I have no idea what I am doing. At this moment in time, the cat has just as much chance of opening this as I do! 

A Jigsaw But Not A Jigsaw

Jigsaw Box by No Problem Puzzles

Kumiki Crane

It has been a busy week at PuzzleMad HQ. Despite the catastrophic loss of the orthopaedic cement supply to the National health service, I had a very full week of operating and then lots of meetings to attend. This was then followed yesterday by an MPP (I am sure that Allard will write this up soon) and today by a fun episode of DIY. Someone has decreed that the compact fluorescent tubes used in my under cabinet lights in the kitchen are no longer available in all the sizes I need (one had blown last weekend). Mrs S decided that it was necessary for me to replace the light fittings completely so that she didn't chop any fingers off whilst cooking. Today, I have failed to electrocute myself, which is a bonus, but spent a good 3 hours with LED fittings, wires and junction boxes. Mrs S is now happy (phew) but it does mean that I have actually not managed to solve anything complex this week (apart from a bunch of Karakuri puzzles that I managed to get my mitts on at the MPP). My unsolved puzzle backlog is epic!

I did come home from Birmingham yesterday with a couple of freebies. The Jigsaw Box designed by Theo Geerinck and the late Symen Hovinga and a Crane puzzle rather reminiscent of the origami flapping birds that I used to make as a kid (I can still remember how to fold it).

Whilst relaxing in front of the TV with Mrs S last night, I took the crane apart and scrambled the pieces. 

Quite lot of small parts to fall down the sofa

Once I had left it for a while I attempted the reassembly. I didn't think it would be terribly tough but Mazikeen was very intrigued by the small green pieces. She would not get off my lap and would not stop pawing at them. At one point she grabbed a wing and ran off with it 😱. I really don't want to have a partially assembled puzzle and even more didn't want a trip to the vet for removal of puzzle piece from cat intestine. So ensued a hilarious romp around our conservatory as I chased the puddy tat behind the sofa and out the other side before retrieving the errant piece. The reassembly took me another 20 minutes due to constantly dropping pieces whilst preventing the minx from running off again. The assembly, once completed was a nice rewarding challenge and requires a little thought to ensure that the key piece actually locks in place. Thanks Allard.

Next up, the Jigsaw box. 3D printed with 4 identical walls to the box and a lid and bottom. the walls can slide onto each other sequentially but this leaves the top and bottom of the box blocked. It seems impossible to place them. Time for a think© and it quickly becomes apparent that this little challenge is not a Jigsaw. It's a coordinate motion puzzle. I was kind of hoping that I might have more luck with this than the last coordinate motion puzzle that I picked up at an MPP!

This six piece puzzle from Stewart Coffin remains in pieces!

Luckily, the jigsaw box is only a little bit fiddly and doesn't require 4 hands and the ability to reverse gravitational fields. After a few minutes, avoiding the cat and jiggling pieces about to the right position and then pushing them all into place simultaneously, I had my Jigsaw box:

Strangely satisfying!

Hopefully this week will give me a bit more puzzling time.

I Don't Understand The Difficulty!

Chiral 2&2 by Koichi Miura

Sigh! I have been working on this puzzle for since I got it in amongst a large batch from Mine way back in February 2021. Yes, that is 5 years! It has been in my work bag for the whole time and I would take it out to play with it at least once every week or two and even let colleagues play if they showed interest and could be trusted not to use force. It never got solved. It's a pretty simple challenge. There are 4 tetrominoes (2 pairs of chiral shapes) to be fitted into a 3x3x2 box through a diagonal opening in the top. There are no other holes or widening to be useful. It really shouldn't be that hard. 

It certainly should be clever because it won a Jury honourable mention at the 2021 IPP design competition. Usually puzzles that are incredibly tough don't do particularly well in the competition. It requires a solution to be beautiful or unusual or really clever. Despite the supposed lack of extreme difficulty, I just couldn't seem to solve it. I had tried what I thought was every possible move and every possible assembly and just failed every time.

Always easy to get 3 of the 4 pieces in!

Usually after a period of several months, I remove failed puzzles from my work bag and transfer them to the desk in my study or one of the various caches of unsolved toys around the house. But I hadn't done it with this one for several reasons. My study desk is now so completely covered in stuff I either haven't solved or haven't gotten around to putting away that I daren't add any more for fear of the whole leaning tower coming crashing down. The other puzzle stashes are starting to annoy the present wife (actually they started that about 3 years ago) and so I am trying not to clutter them up more. So, I kept on trying week in and week out.

Recently I have received some rather amazing complex toys and have been working on them:

Emerald Vault

Rune Lock

Two fabulously beautiful challenges from Dedwood crafts - I haven't managed to solve any of Dee's puzzles for a very long time. I don't know why - maybe I am rubbish at puzzles?

Gravity Box

I need my lunch

These fabulous challenges take a long time for someone as dim as me and so I need a few nice quick and easy puzzles to write about as well. In desperation with nothing to write about after I spent 7 hours writing the on-call rotas for our department, I decided to torture myself with something that I had failed on for 5 years. What could possibly go wrong?

As usual, start outside the box, make some shapes that will fit in and see whether they can be taken out piece by piece. There is a very specific set of requirements for the pieces to be removed. I was able to cut down the solution set quite quickly and found a few positions where 1 piece would easily be removed but a second would be impossible. I also (for the 100th time) found a nice arrangement where 2 pieces were removable. Now I needed to work out how I could get the remaining 2 into/out of the box. It was going to need rotations and they were going to be hard to find. There really isn't much room for manoeuvring once one piece is inside. Nothing seemed to work! I found a few nice possible rotational moves but either they wouldn't work when another piece was inside or they took me in the wrong direction. Aargh! I vaguely remember Derek (remember, he's the genius) mentioning to me that one of these puzzles from Mine required a coordinate motion. So I tried that and also got nowhere.

I spent yesterday evening muttering to myself and still failing. Aargh! This morning, I had a nice lie in and came downstairs nice and refreshed - ready to crush it and write up a wonderful review. Mrs S and I have got on board with this intermittent fasting thing and don't eat anything until about 1pm. She duly came into the kitchen for breakfast to find me with my head in my hands and muttering to dark oaths to myself and wishing I had some hair to tear out. As any good wife would, she laughed at me and said I was useless at puzzles and should give it all up. This made me sit up and drop a piece into the box where it sort of fell onto its side in a way that I hadn't thought would be possible.

OMG! By taunting me, she had forced me to find a new move! 

AHA!

Don't look if you don't want to see a spoiler - otherwise click on the button for a solved view.

Why had I failed for so long?

 

I had suddenly found a wonderful move that should have been perfectly obvious from the very beginning. It wasn't even that difficult a move but I had not been able to see it for all those years until a combination of desperation and ridicule made it possible. Maybe I need to get Mrs S to make fun of me more often? Maybe not!

Burrtools tells me that there are 10 possible assemblies of the pieces into the 3x3x2 shape but only 2 (mirror images) are possible solutions. I didn't use BT until after I had solved it.

I can see why it won the honourable mention. It is not actually that tough but is very clever and well hidden. I just love almost everything that Koichi-san designs. He's a genius too!

These come up for sale periodically on Puzzle Paradise and it's definitely worth getting hold of a copy.

Can I Add Up?

I Can With The Help Of Gorgeous Wood!

Cubic Fusion by Juno

I just cannot resist 2 things - beautiful wood and recreational mathematics. Oh ok, make that 4 things - I need to add puzzles (almost all of them) and cats as well. It would also appear that cats appreciate wood and puzzles as well:

Amenadiel and Mazikeen love wooden puzzles too!

A week or so ago, Juno announced the availability of his latest creation and I ordered it straight away. It flew all the way around the world faster than post usually goes from one length of the UK to the other! I received it and admired the fabulous woods that I asked for - just look at the grain on the box and on the Zebrano block:

My goodness it is so beautiful!
Camphor Laurel box with Zebrano, Silky Oak, and New Guinea Walnut blocks

The box has a 6x6x6 cavity, the small block is 3x3x3 and the larger blocks can be simultaneously assembled into a 4x4x4 and a 5x5x5 cube.

It will be a nice practical geometric proof that

3x3x3 + 4x4x4 + 5x5x5 = 6x6x6

if you can assemble all the shapes inside the box.

It's not terribly hard to do but it is very satisfying. Having solved it in about 20 minutes, I put the shapes into Burrtools which told me that there were only 2 solutions (both having 2 pieces that could be switched). It is very satisfying to see the arithmetical result displayed geometrically like that. Juno seems to think that most puzzlers might take about an hour to assemble the big cube. This would make it the perfect puzzle for newbies as well as us old hands. I will be taking this to work for a week or so to see what my colleagues think of it. It will then look glorious on display. Thank you Juno.

It is still available from Pluredro just now. You even get to choose which type of grain you would like for the box.

Update:

Having written my blog post and published it, I decided to solve it again so that I could pack it up to take to work. OMG! I retract the statement that it's not terribly hard! I cannot seem to solve it a second time. I must have gotten lucky the first time - this will be fun to show colleagues.

Pelikan Begin 2026 With An Extravaganza

There are a LOT of fabulous puzzles here

On Monday, February 2nd, 2:00pm CET, Jakub and team will be releasing the first set of wonderful toys for 2026. This release has some truly incredible puzzles to keep you busy for a while. As always, they have been made from glorious woods with incredible precision. The choices of challenge are all superb,

Grid by Lucie Pauwels

Prison by Lucie Pauwels

Donjon by Lucie Pauwels

Yoga I by Benjamin Heidt

Conundrum by Benjamin Heidt

Minima-Flop by Dr. Volker Latussek

Minima XIII by Frederic Boucher

CUBI series by Frederic Boucher

I have had these puzzles for a couple of weeks and have been hard at work solving them so I can review them in time and help you make a choice. Whatever you choose, you cannot really go wrong here. 

Conundrum

Conundrum by Benjamin Heidt

Here we have another fascinating burr by Benjamin Heidt. The box from Pelikan says "mixed woods" but the pre-release gave more information - it has a beautiful set of dark woods (Bubinga, American Walnut, Purpleheart, Wenge and Padauk) arranged into a caged burr containing 4 sticks held vertically alongside each other in a frame. Initially it looks like the frame can split into several more pieces. As usual, Benjamin has created a fun logical sequence of moves that follow each other very nicely without leading you too far into long dark pathways. as you explore, these pieces dance around each other in a circle and go back and forth. After a decent sequence the dance stops dead and there seems to be no way forward and it looks like you need to go back and explore the side paths further. This won't get you anywhere so after a little while of returning all the way back to the beginning and trying alternative starts you realise that there must have been a hidden move at the end of that dance. There is a lovely Aha! moment when you find the cleverly hidden move and then suddenly the dance can continue to the removal of the first piece. The removal of the remaining pieces is now a nice logical sequence that you can work out by looking inside the space left after the initial removal. At level 21.3.3.2 this is a fabulous fun challenge with a lovely Aha! moment to keep any burr solver happy.

The reassembly would be impossible from scratch for all but the best burr solvers but having gone back and forth multiple times, I was able to put it back together straight away from memory with only a bit of experimentation. Fabulous!

Prison

Prison by Lucie Pauwels

There is something compulsive about the packing puzzle designs from Lucie Pauwels! This wonderful little challenge has been beautifully created by Pelikan with a wonderfully contrasting Bubinga frame (prison) and white Maple pieces. The prison consists of a simple 3x3x3 cube but is made much more complex by the addition of a single voxel hole in the floor and ceiling which also have to be filled - on top of that the openings to be fed through are partially obscured on all sides leaving a 2x3 gap on each face. The pieces are a variety of small simple shapes - there are 7 pieces in all to be placed in the prison. I thought initially that this should not be terribly difficult but the slightly limited entry and the need to fill ceiling and floor holes turns this into a proper challenge. Burrtools tells me that there are 151 possible assemblies and I struggled to find even one of them! I think it must have taken me a good 30-45 minutes to get my first one. Working outside the box as is traditional was not helpful as it is really hard to hold the pieces in place as you progressively add more of them. I was forced to work in the prison to use the prison bars to hold the pieces as I added extras. I frequently seemed to be making progress only to either have a final shape impossible to add into the puzzle due to blocking walls or the final gaps were split into several shapes. I had to use a bit of thought to work out an initial approach and then a lot of trial and error to get the first assembly. There is plenty of repeatability here to look for different assemblies.

Late update!!!!

Having posted this article, I was contacted by Lucie this morning to tell me that I had completely misunderstood the nature of the puzzle! Jakub and Simona don't give me the instructions. I had assumed that this was a packing puzzle but I can now tell you that the packing element is a secondary challenge (and not even the toughest challenge). It would appear that the top surface of the prison is held on with rather strong magnets and it can be lifted off to give very good access to the cavity of the prison. The true aim is to place all the inmates inside the prison and then replace the roof. This sounds easy and it really is BUT the pieces need to be placed in such a way that once the roof is back on, the pieces cannot slide out. Yes this is an anti-slide puzzle and looks like a very difficult one. I will need to go back to it soon.

Donjon

Donjon (delivery positions) by Lucie Pauwels

Donjon (or dungeon) is yet another very VERY difficult puzzle from the warped mind (we have one prison and one dungeon in this release!) of Lucie Pauwels.  Made from beautifully contrasting Ash and Wenge, the first challenge is to remove all the pieces from the transport positioning. This in itself was a major feat due to the very limited access! The aim is to place all the "prisoners" through the entry down below the surface into the dungeon and lock them in. The dungeon itself is just a 3x3x3 cube but the entry is ferociously blocked by a complex crowning door leaving only a 1x3 entry gap on each side. It is made even tougher by the fact that the entry gap is very narrow (smaller than a finger) - controlling the orientation of the pieces is going to require considerable dexterity. Having eventually taken all the pieces out, I was seriously worried about my ability to get enough back in even for storage, let alone solving it. I started assembling my 3x3x3 cube and quickly realised that could not be the sole aim - the presence of a 1x1x5 piece made me realise that the aim was to create a 3x3x3 shape filling the box and then lock them in with a crosspiece. The use of gravity to move pieces around inside adds to the fun - The Pelikan team have made the pieces with such precision that everything slides beautifully by tilting the box in whatever direction that you need.

There are 213 ways to use the pieces to make a cube so the use of the limited entry to narrow it down is crucial. There are 3 pieces with 90º corners in their shapes which very much constrain the orientation and movement once placed through the very limited entry hole. Finding the orientation of these and an order that they can be inserted without blocking each other is key to the solution here. This puzzle took me many hours and a little help from Burrtools as well. The end result is very satisfying - once the locking piece has been placed, the pieces are all locked inside. Inverting the puzzle will not let anything drop out. This is a huge challenge for any puzzler!

Grid

Grid by Lucie Pauwels

Grid is the third design by Lucie Pauwels in this release by Pelikan. It has complex pieces made from Wenge to be fitted into 5x5 grid constructed from an acrylic plate which has been beautifully frosted. We are accustomed to amazing wood from the Pelikan team but even their plastic work is perfect.

My initial approach was the usual random placement of pieces onto the grid which always progressed very nicely until I realised that I had isolated one small section of the grid and could not place a piece to fill it. Maybe starting with the more complex pieces would help? It did up to a point but then I always got trapped with a couple of pieces unplaceable. This was going to need planning - not only are there 3 complex pieces but there are also a couple of simpler pieces that have missing side voxels. My head was starting to hurt and I was on a deadline. I decided to use Burrtools to give me the position of just one piece and this was miraculous. After finding the position of just one of the complex pieces, the remainder of the assembly was wonderfully logical with literally only a few possible piece placements making the final assembly a lovely exploration. Maybe you talented puzzlers out there can solve it without help? If you can't, then making the BT file is fun and just makes the puzzle all the more satisfying.

Yoga 1

Yoga 1 by Benjamin Heidt

4 possible tetrominoes

This unbelievably complex design by Benjamin Heidt has been made by Pelikan to look incredibly beautiful using stunningly marked Leopardwood for the panels of the box and Garapa for the pieces as well as the corners of the box. Benjamin has picked 4 of the possible tetrominoes to be placed in the box which already has 4 voxels stuck in place inside and then deliberately not told us which tetrominoes he has chosen - he (and Pelikan) have obfuscated the puzzle even further by creating a hinge across each pair of dominoes and allowing the poor challenged puzzler to rotate the pieces into any of the 4 possible shapes. My goodness! This is hard enough if we were given all the correct pieces in the correct shapes to be inserted. By adding the hinges the puzzle has been made MUCH tougher! This is not for the faint-hearted.

Creating a Burrtools file for this puzzle is a challenge in itself - it will require you to know about how to use variable numbers of pieces (it is actually a great way to educate yourself into the more complex aspects of the program). Once this has been done it can be seen that there are 268 ways to insert these different combinations of these tetrominoes inside the box but only 1 is actually possible to create as a true solution. Amazingly it requires at least 1 of every type of tetromino (I'm not telling you how many of which ones). I have been working on this for many hours and have so far not managed to get anywhere at all. I suspect that I will need to go back to BT and find out how many of each piece type is required and try with that knowledge.

Minima 13

Minima XIII by Frederic Boucher

I have reviewed many Minima puzzles over the last few years. The original idea by Frederic Boucher was to fit various pieces into a 2x2x3 space through a limited opening and requiring various rotational moves which are facilitated by odd holes in the sides of the box. The series has been continued by him and also taken up by many of the best puzzle designers in the world - I have lots of them and love the variety of challenges. I now have several versions of the Minima 13 and reviewed it in June 2025 having taken 4 years to solve it. When I finally managed to review it last year, I said that this 13th challenge in the Minima series was the utter pinnacle of the series - it is quite literally the very best of them all. It takes the original premise to pack the pieces inside and adds extra stuff:

1. It is trivial to place all the pieces in the box without rotations but this is clearly not the solution because...
2. There is a single coloured voxel which must not be visible from the outside
3. Several of the pieces have been cut at odd angles to allow some rather fancy rotations.

This is a seriously tough challenge and the Aha! moments are multiple and difficult to find. I had almost no recollection of the last solve and it took me quite some time to get it again this time. The crucial moves are very well hidden.

If you own the rest of the Pelikan wooden Minima series then this is a MUST BUY. If you don't have a copy of the 13th challenge at all then this is a MUST BUY! The Minima 13 was one reason the whole series made it to my Top ten(ish) for 2025.

Minima Flop

Minima Flop by Dr Volker Latussek

Yes, we cannot have a Pelikan release without an incredible challenge from Dr Volker Latussek! This one takes the amazing Minima designs from Frederic Boucher and adds a certain Latussek flair to it. The Minima Flop has been gorgeously created using Purpleheart and Saman (also known as Monkeypod). It is simply stunning. The puzzle arrives in a specific transport configuration that Volker always designs and the initial challenge is to take the pieces out - this will give you at least an idea of the types of moves that are possible with this box and pieces. There are 4 cornered triominoes to fit into the usual 2x2x3 space. It looks like it should be a simple challenge - Volker has even given us 4 really quite large holes in 4 of the faces. One of those holes is huge but not big enough to place a piece inside on its side. Volker said this about the puzzle:

"Frederic Boucher said to me in the summer of 2024, asking if I would like to contribute a puzzle to his MINIMA SERIES. At the time, I was deeply immersed in working on my FLOP SERIES, so I suggested a MINIMA FLOP. I was confident that I would come up with something suitable despite the strict requirement of a 2x2x3 box. It quickly became clear to me that it had to be a four-piece puzzle consisting of identical pieces. The pieces could only be V-shaped. Now, the task remained of finding the right openings. And, to suit a FLOP, as many openings as possible with dimensions of 1.5x1. To my surprise, there were five of these openings, two of which I had to combine. This was the only way I could meet the requirements. MINIMA-FLOP is a nice experiment within MINIMA and FLOP. Frederic wrote to me that he had a lot of fun with it. I wish the same for you."

The name gives us a clue about part of the challenge - Minima Flop will have rotational moves like the other Flop puzzles multiple times during the solution. This gives the puzzler a few obvious things to try having some memory of what has been done before but there really isn't much space inside and as soon as one other piece has been placed, the flop move that you really want to try gets blocked almost immediately. This is time to think© and work out what is needed. The name and the simplicity of the pieces leads you astray and you need to discard your preconceptions and start from scratch. I spent a long time trying to do what I had learned in previous releases and failed before I was forced to think again. Unlike Frederic, Volker doesn't give you any useful bevels or angles on the pieces. There are no small holes in the box panels. It requires multiple rotational moves to get the pieces inside and the solution is just beautiful. 

The Cubi Series

Four amazing Cubi challenges by Frederic Boucher

There seems to be no end to Frederic Boucher's talents! Not only do we have the incredible Minima series, the Jammed series (two of which I still haven't managed to solve) as well as numerous tray packing puzzles, he also has created a series of cubic packing puzzles here that have an enormous challenge to them due to very irregularly shaped pieces, blocks attached to the inside of the boxes, as well as rotational moves. Effectively, these seem to be the combination of a Turning Interlocking Cube (TIC) at the same time as a packing puzzle. This series has been fabulously recreated by Pelikan using beautifully contrasting woods.

We have:

CUBI 12 - Ash and Wenge

CUBI 18 - Limba and American Walnut

CUBI 24 - Limba, American Walnut and Acacia

CUBI 25 - Mahogany and Zebrano

Cubi 12

Cubi 12 by Frederic Boucher

This initial slightly easier "taster" puzzle for the series consists of a box with a rotational symmetry to the interior. and four identical Wenge pieces made from 3 offset cubies. They need to be placed inside without anything protruding above the top surface (it will obviously not be completely filled when solved). I started with the 4 pieces and worked to create a cubic shape that would interlock enough to be reduced to a 3x3x3 cube. This part of the challenge was actually not that difficult. There are 58 ways to create a shape that fits in a 3x3x3 box but most of them are not symmetrical or pleasing to the eye. Searching through them to find something that would fit amongst the pieces stuck to the walls of the box was a fun exercise and quickly revealed a rather beautiful shape. Now time to place it inside the box. At this point I realised I had a problem. Burrtools will not solve this one - rotations are required. However, once I had realised this I quickly saw what was needed and managed my assembly. This is really very clever and definitely possible by any decent puzzler. I suspect the rest will be MUCH more difficult!

Cubi 18

Cubi 18 by Frederic Boucher

The second level of the Cubi series consists of 4 rather complex shapes created from cubes offset from each other. Two of them form rather fun looking staircase shapes around corners. I started initially looking at making a cube outside of the box but they were quite awkward to hold in place and I swapped quickly to trying to place the pieces into the box past the various obstructions attached to the walls. This was definitely the right approach as insertion of these large pieces takes a bit of thought and rotational ingenuity. Getting one in is easy but the second always seems to be blocked. I tried the second shape first and then the other was blocked. I was fixated on this for quite a while before exploring further. There is an alternative way to place one of them and it only got me even more confused until I went back to my initial thought. Trying the same thing again did not get me anywhere until I looked at the pieces properly. Whilst one is identical no matter which way it is inserted, the other can be reversed and whilst it looks similar now there is no blockage. My advice to you of to look at the pieces properly and experiment with everything that you can do. After inserting those, it only took a little further exploration to work out how to place the other two. The Aha! moment with this one is fabulous!

Cubi 25

Cubi 25 by Frederic Boucher

Whilst this is the 4th in the series if you take them in ascending numerical order, it probably should be the third that you try. Jakub and team have made this absolutely gorgeous from Zebrano with a Mahogany box. Again there are a number of pieces to place inside the box which has a couple of half-voxel pieces stuck to the walls. These half voxel interfere with your ability to place the in the box and also will form part of the eventual cube shape. To make it even more difficult this time, several of the pieces are made with half voxel lengths on one or more places. This will make it seriously tough to assemble the cube shape. After I failed for a while, I counted the total number of voxels on the pieces and there are 25 in all plus the 2 halves stuck on the walls (not much room to manoeuvre). I decide to try and make a cube shape outside the box with half voxel gaps in the crucial positions. I'm not very good at Soma cube puzzles and this is similar but much harder. It took me over an hour to find a cube shape - remember, the half voxel shapes make all the difference to your search. Having made my cube it was a lovely, much smaller, challenge to reassemble it in the box. Rotational moves and sliding is required. This is great fun and a wonderful next step up in difficulty!

Cubi 24

Cubi 24 by Frederic Boucher

The fourth (and final?) puzzle in this wonderful Cubi series is a really tough challenge! There are 3 beautiful grained woods. The box has a slightly limited entry due to the attachment of a 1x2x½ voxel piece across one corner. The pieces are rather complex with 2 ½ voxel pieces attached to each one. There is also a disk with smiley face on it to be added inside. This is another one where it would be best to assemble a cube outside the box and the work out how to get it inside. Burrtools won't help you as a rotation is required but it can help you search for cube assemblies. I needed this help and found 57 possible cube shapes but as soon as you adjust it to leave the 1x2x½ voxel gap, it is reduced to a single possible solution. In the interest of time, I used this to find the position of a single piece and then worked from there. It still took me quite long time to find a solution outside the box. Assembling it inside was a lovely sequence! I am sure that all you fabulous puzzlers will manage this without resorting to Burrtools.

This is an incredible release of brilliant puzzles to start off the year. There are challenges for all levels of puzzler. To me the absolute essentials are:

Minima XIII - if you have the others then this is a must buy - it's the best of the series.

Minima Flop - it's a Minima with the Latussek extra

The Cubi series - any will do but the set is incredible!