PuzzleMaster Has An Opportunity For You

Crazy Lock designed by Christoph Lohe

I was contacted a few months ago by Leon Stein, one of the co-owners of PuzzleMaster, to ask whether I would be interested in looking at their upcoming Kickstarter campaign puzzles and would I show them off to the world? Well, I have some experience of the PuzzleMaster Kickstarter puzzles and have heartily recommended them each time. Of course, I agreed. I would be foolish to pass up the new creations and I thought that you, my readers, would want to see my opinion. The Kickstarter is now up and running with a close date of 31st December so if any of these interest you then get over there and place an order. They have reached the minimum to actually go ahead and so this will definitely be happening, with the aim of shipping puzzles to backers in June/July 2026.

This time there are 3 main puzzles in the campaign plus there are 3 add-on puzzles (ones already on the PuzzleMaster store) which can be added to your pledge to get a bit of a discount.

The first one I tried was the Crazy Lock. It's a burr in the shape of a lock - I can't resist burrs, I have a passing fondness for locks and a burr lock is irresistible to me - in fact I have quite a lot of them now. I wasn't disappointed and neither will you be - it is great.

The box states that it is level 8 on the PM 5 to 10 scale and I actually think it should be rated a bit higher at 9. I significantly struggled to dismantle it. The design was made by the late Christoph Lohe and was originally published as Burlock E. 

I have actually solved Burrlock E many many years ago when I bought it from Eric Fuller (he also adored Christoph's designs and always produced great challenges). Way back then I described it as a serious challenge for mere mortal puzzlers like me and it is still that. With a level of 26.2.3.2.2, this has a really significant difficulty to it. It took me about a week to dismantle it and then I was unable to assemble again without Burrtools. Creating the file was a bit of a challenge but at least I was finally able to put it back together again. For those of you who are burr assembly experts, there is an alternative assembly (level 26.3.3.2.2 which has the key hosizontally in the lock at the end. Double the challenge for one puzzle.

Burrlock E from Cubic Dissection (2017)

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Fortress of Shadows by Christoph Lohe

The next puzzle for me to play with was the Fortress of Shadows burr (also by Christoph) it is quite diminutive (1.75 x 1.25 x 1.25") but beautifully made with gold coloured burr pieces trapped inside a black anodised castle with 4 turrets. These turrets very much limited the movements of the pieces. I spent another 2 weeks working on this one. You can see everything that is going on inside but it is still a hugely difficult challenge with level 30.1.2 as the pieces move back and forth progressively making space to allow the first piece out. It looked familiar to me but I couldn't place it properly. I did go back and check my photo database and realised that Pelikan had produced a different version of the puzzle 5 years ago (called Castle) which I had reviewed here - that one had not been terribly difficult but this version is a significant advance in difficulty. 

I would be very impressed by anyone who could assemble it from scratch but I definitely needed a Burrtools file and this was a fun one to make and follow in reverse to fully assembled.

The original Castle by Christoph - similar but different to the Fortress of Shadows

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Twisted Logic by Yavuz Demirrhan

This rather beautiful 4 piece anodised burr looked very familiar to me and, as with all the other puzzles in my collection, I had a vague memory of owning it and solving it once but the process was a mystery to me. Looking back I realised that the original version was a puzzle I had actually solved twice. Chiasma was a design by the amazing Yavuz Demirrhan that PuzzleMaster had made before in a very limited run that I had reviewed back in 2020 and had compared the metal version with the original wooden one from Pelikan. In fact the handmade metal version is still available on the PuzzleMaster site but is not cheap. The newer one will be mass produced for a fraction of that cost.

I recalled that this one had been incredibly difficult. There are 4 identical board burrs that gradually extend apart and then sequentially line up the exit points to allow removal of pieces. I found it very confusing to work on and this is not made easier by the need to prevent the pieces rotating. I don't think there are any rotational shortcuts but it needs you to keep the pieces aligned to move them around safely. It's quite fun to explore but I would suggest that you use a back and forth approach to make sure that you know what you have done as it's easy to get lost. At one point I had the pieces quite extended apart from each other and in a dead end and struggled to return to the beginning. The rather low solution level of 16.4.6 would sort of imply that it shouldn't be too hard but don't be fooled - it is a huge challenge to move around, control the pieces and keep track. The solution is really not obvious. 

Chiasma - Pelikan version

Chiasma - original PM version

I will return next week with a review of the add-on puzzles from the Kickstarter campaign - this is definitely well worth inverting in. They are great challenges, beautifully made and an amazing price.

What A Mammoth N-ary Effort!

Brass side

Steel side with monkey

The Blind Panic puzzle was Ali's IPP exchange. I received a copy at the MPP

It ooks and feels wonderful and is effectively a Panex (with one difference discussed later).

First of all, a little note to inform you that the OPUP remains packed and the Dovetail bar 2 remains a single piece! maybe I need another hobby?

I am having to work this weekend yet again and so only have a quick update on last week's challenge. I do maintain that I definitely am an eejit! I decided to finally work on the two puzzles that I own that are effectively Panex puzzles. I had thought for a while that the Panex was a "simple" N-ary puzzle and it "just" needed me to work out the pattern and then slog through.

Damn! That wasn't very bright! I should have realised that any so called N-ary puzzle that is more complex than the basic Chinese rings is not necessarily going to be straightforward. The clue should have come from the incredible puzzles sent to me by Aaron Wang over the years. I don't buy everything he has to sell because a. I can't really afford to buy them all and 2. some of them look impossible for human beings to solve! However, I have bought quite a few of his fancy N-ary designs and have solved very very few of them! Even the ones that are "just" N-ary have some very complex sequences that I often seem to get lost in and most of them remain unsolved and in my pile of puzzles reminding me of how rubbish I am at puzzling and, more importantly and dangerously, they are annoying Mrs S and tempting the cats into string swallowing. 😱

Street Lamp

Golden Gate Bridge

Both of these were bought last summer and both have ended up with me completely stuck.Thank heavens for the quick reset that Aaron installed. This should remind the unwary puzzler that many N-ary puzzles have rather a lot more to them than one might expect.

The Bell
Unsolved for several years!

How does that relate to the Panex? Well, I am not certain but I think the Panex is sort of N-ary but with patterns within patterns and the challenge is to find an approach in stages. It is not a simple thing to do and took me a week to complete a level 5 version. The Bell from Siebenstein Spiele is a very similar puzzle but has the advantage that the 3rd column is visible. I decided to solve the two puzzles in stages side by side. I started on the level 3 solve. It is trivial to move 3 disks from one arm to the empty arm like a Tower of Hanoi puzzle and then move the ano0ther one to where they came from:

⅔ of the way

Done it!

This was done fairly trivially on the Bell and then also on the Blind Panic. Success! I think must have taken me about 60 moves. Time to move to level 4 and OMG! it was not trivial. It can no longer be solved by using simple Tower of Hanoi sequences.

The first sequence is Tower of Hanoi and transfers one arm to the gap

It looks as if being able to do the sequence above is possible then all that is required is to do it again with the dark set of disks. But and it's an enormous BUT the way the Bell and Panex is constructed requires to use the top pathway as temporary storage as the disks are slid from one leg to the other. The problem when attempting a level 4 is that having moved the first sequence across to the middle leg the temporary storage that would be used is above that middle leg and it subsequently blocks movement of disks across the top to the other leg. It took me absolutely ages to realise that the Tower of Hanoi approach is impossible with this puzzle. The interesting thing with Ali's Blind Panic is that the path at the top of the puzzle is circular and also that the temporary storage is above the pile of pieces in an arm and not in the top path! 

This end result of this is that the two puzzles are not actually the same. They are almost equivalent but the crucial difference makes the Blind Panic much more approachable and more like a multi-layer  Hanoi puzzle. After a couple of days of play I solved the level 4 on the Bell and convinced myself I had a reasonable approach. A level 4 Panex should take 174 moves - I must have been several times that many:

Level 4 solved - this almost killed me!

Time to strat on the level 5 Bell and simultaneously solve the Blind Panic. It was more of the same but to me did not feel very logical. It took me a lot of back and forth, getting it wrong and starting again. I did the Blind Panic at the same time. My hands were rather sore but the end of another few days of work:

Level 5 solved!

Brass above the monkey

Apparently the level 5 Panex takes 461 moves as a minimum to solve but for me it must have been thousands and thousands as I made mistakes and had to backtrack or got lost and had to start sections again. I was mentally and physically exhausted after doing that and despite being elated, I have absolutely no plan to undo it and go back to the beginning using the same approach - I think it would kill me! The Bell puzzle can be unscrewed and this is exactly what I will be doing! Then there is the thought of completing the entire Bell puzzle (level 6) - OMG! NO! It should take a minimum of 1170 moves but I suspect it would be 10's of thousands for me and most of the rest of my remaining hair and my life! I'm afraid that the final solution to the Bell will never happen.

There has been quite a lot of mathematical analysis on the minimum number of moves that are required to solve the Panex puzzle and I don't really understand any of it. I do know that it is a LOT more moves than you would expect and the logic is really not obvious! Have a look at the papers linked from Nick Baxter's site - I did and it didn't help me much at all! 🤣

What about resetting the Blind Panic puzzle? There is a screw on top which I suspect can be undone and the puzzle pieces removed and replaced back in the start position. BUT, I am fairly convinced that that a simple Tower of Hanoi approach is possible for this puzzle because of the circular top pathway and the extra storage position in the top of each column. I am going to work on that for the next day or so and will report back to you next week!

Wish me luck!

OMG! What Have I Done?

Brass side

Steel side with monkey

I'm an eejit! I've said it many times here and a certain woman within arms length of me tells me it at regular intervals! Why this time? I have just noticed that after my week off, I had put myself down to work 5 weekends in a row! 😱 As a consequence I have been desperately trying to solve something for today and am struggling.

I failed yet again to unpack the OPUP (have I been given the one that doesn't unpack??? and then also been trying to slide the Dovetail bar 2 apart and over a whole week of effort at work I have managed absolutely nothing. 

I then decided to try the Blind Panic puzzle from Ali (it was his exchange puzzle at the IPP). What is it I hear you ask? These voices in my head are getting quite troublesome! You can depend on the Two Brass Monkeys to create something very special - it's a Panex in 3D cylindrical form with a hidden reserve column. It "only" has 10 pieces to swap over so should be "easy"? Oh hell no! I had been at it for days and realised that I needed to do it in tandem with a version that I could see everything. The Bell was a Siebenstein puzzle that I bought from Hendrik many years ago when I found that the original Panex puzzles always sold for an exorbitant sum. I had thought it was an N-ary puzzle on playing with it, I realised that there was far more to it than that. I never solved it!

The Bell - also a Panex puzzle

For some stupid reason, I had forgotten that and set to work on Ali's version which was only level 5. The aim was to move the 5 brass pieces to the column above the monkey (hence achieving a figurative brass monkey and the steel pieces to the other column. I have been working on them level by level for a week.

It has unfortunately gotten too late for me to write much more but I think I have a process worked out. Sigh! I need more time.

So Sly! Frank Has To Tell Me When To S(t)top

Sly Burr 2.6.9.a designed by Frank Potts
Allard's IPP exchange puzzle

Still packed!

I have had a few days off and have had time to discover that getting older is a painful experience! She who frightens the living bejeezus out of me told me in no uncertain terms that the bathroom and shower room silicone seals were needing to be replaced whilst I was off work. This is one of my least favourite jobs in the world and it seems to come around with monotonous regularity. The problem is the old stuff is bloody difficult to get off with a variety of sharp implements that threaten to remove my fingertips if I lose concentration but mostly the issue is that grubbing around on my hands and knees involves a variety of funny noises that I have finally realised were coming from me! I groan when I get down, I groan when my knees hurt, I groan when my shoulders hurt getting into a variety of awkward positions to get bits of silicone off and OMG! I groan when I get back up again! We will NOT be talking about the inadvertent gaseous emission that occurs on standing up! I even bought some rather nice fat knee pads to try and prevent some of the groaning - it only helped a little bit.

Original Sly Burr (2013)

This unfortunate episode of DIY did not completely prevent me puzzling. I continued to try and unpack the OPUP - I did find a single tool but did not find what I could do with it. It remains firmly packed and no amount of flicking of the wrist can release the magnetic hold - I am well and truly packed! After I had run out of ideas and strength, I moved on to another puzzle I had been gifted at the MPP. Allard handed me a copy of his IPP exchange puzzle. I had actually picked ups someone else's copy at the MPP but put it down again on receiving mine. Burrs should be wood if at all possible but this boxed burr looked very interesting and on seeing that it had been designed by the amazing Frank Potts who has designed quite a few rather special burrs in my collection, I was instantly interested. I had never actually written about it for some reason (probably embarrassment) - I had a copy of Frank's original Sly Burr produced by Brian Young. I vaguely remember buying this from Brian very early on in my puzzling career because it looked like a "simple" 6 piece burr and then taking and it took me several weeks to discover the special secret that would allow it to be dismantled. Do remember that I am not very good at puzzles and in those days I was completely rubbish.

I know what level 2.6.9 means but what is the a for?

The new puzzle came with a little card giving the level and a little addendum. Why doesn't Frank know when to stop? Looking at my collection, Mrs S would say the same thing about me.

I set to work during the week and remembered the fancy step on the original and quickly realised that Frank had done something very similar with this puzzle. I was able to remove the first red burr stick quite quickly - cue the smug self satisfied feeling for approximately 10 minutes. ONLY 10 minutes. I was unable to remove anything else from the puzzle for several days. In fact I couldn't actually work out what else moved apart from the original sticks. I was assuming the box would come part...but how?

Sitting with a coffee one morning during the week and watching the cats scratch my leather sofa, I was fiddling without really watching when suddenly I had a quick sequence of moves of the box which then split in half. I looked down into my lap to see 2 pieces separated and no idea how that had happened. I couldn't even tell whether a rotational move had allowed it to happen. Knowing Frank, I decided that it was unlikely to be that. He is far too careful with his designs to allow that to happen inadvertently. It took me a good 30 minutes of reffing and blinding before I found the steps to put it back together again. After that I proudly showed the cats the correct steps to take it apart and then the further steps to completely dismantle the puzzle. Don't look if you don't want any clues but at this point you KNOW that you have finished the puzzle.

2 halves to the box and two burr sticks - finished?

Whilst that was a fun challenge that yet again took me an embarrassingly long time (although not as long as the original had) to dismantle. I still didn't know why I had been told that Frank didn't know when to stop. Shaking the halves of the box revealed something rattling about...but where. Homing in on the source of the noise, I investigated, I saw, I finally conquered! Don't look if you don't want to know:

Time to S(t)TOP?

Definitely!

There is still a rattling noise from inside the 2 halves of the box but Frank has said that I can stop now. I would love to know what the rattling is from but I don't want to snap anything. 

The next step is to reassemble everything and it is really fun. The placement of the pieces is nicely logical and once everything is placed in roughly the correct place it all just snaps into place under the influence of the several magnets that are inside (I assume that is what some of the rattling is from). It's a very rewarding reassembly. Having done it a few times I can put it away on my exchange puzzle/gift shelf. Mrs S really doesn't like chunks of plastic lying around for long.

This is a terrific extension of Frank's original idea and just the right level. I still have no idea why the solution level ends in an a. If anyone can tell me then post a comment below.

Now...seeing as Mrs S doesn't like chunks of plastic lying around, I need to get back to the OPUP puzzle again and see if I can find anything new...before there is another Whack! Ouch! 

A Good End To A Bad Week! Sort Of...

MPP puzzle haul

It has been a rather bad week. Some very very big very looong operations which were not expected to be so big or so long which turned a couple of normal days into some very stressful big days. There is an old adage in anaesthesia that "many a good anaesthetic is spoiled by a surgeon having a fuck up" and this was very much the case. Nothing incompetent I hasten to add but just unexpected, unprepared for occurrences on the surgical side made my life very tough. It did mean that I had managed no puzzling at all during the week and was hoping that I might manage something to write about at or after the MPP. I was really quite pleased when the weekend hit and it was one of those days to get in the car and drive a couple of hours to Birmingham for an MPP with an unrecognisable roman numeral on it. I always buy a gigantic pile of car sweeties (I always lie to Mrs S about exactly how many bags I consume) to keep me going during the journey there and back - the constant dipping into the bag(s) prevents a knackered sleep deprived puzzler from dozing off in the car. It also has the added advantage of leaving me completely wired with a sugar high for a day of puzzling and banter. You will find out later when Allard writes his review of the day that I was particularly wired at one point and the tongue was loose! 😱🤣

One piece "unpacking" puzzle - OPUP

OPUP starting position

After getting home on Saturday night I picked up a couple of toys to play with and my misery continued. I had watched several people play with Dan's exchange puzzle the One Piece Unpacking Puzzle. A play on the original One Piece Packing Puzzle from the late Eric Fuller. Dan was kind enough to give me a copy and said that it really wasn't that difficult. Bastard!

I was hoping that I would have more luck with it than Eric's original which took me the best part of a year to solve!

Only took me a year! With some help

I duly removed the wire loop and took out the cube - There are 24 possible ways to insert the cube into the box and Sod's law actually made me get it right on the 20th try! This didn't bode well!

Now unpack the bloody thing!

AT the MPP, quite a few people played with it and I caught cries of delight at their success. I was very careful not to watch what they had done and this was the first one that I picked up when I got home. How hard could it be? Oh you stupid boy!

I have now spent about 4 hours playing with it and found a tool which has no apparent use and that is it. I have used a light source and a magnifier and found nothing useful at all. I'd like to put it down to fatigue from the week but nope, it's purely that I am rubbish at puzzles! There is only one cube to remove from a box! The temptation is to try and stuff a shim down the edge but it would need to be very thin and that would be cheating. Dan may be helping me out sometime! 😭

Next up when I got too frustrated with the OPUP, I had to play with something else to prevent me throwing it across the room. I picked up the Hamstersaurus puzzle which, with that name can only have come from big Steve!

Just from the name, you know who's puzzle it is

It was a burr and I really thought it was a variant on the tetrahedral burr that I had had fun with from my last MPP. A standard 6 piece burr but with extensions on it which interfered with movement and really messes with my feeble brain:

It's rather beautiful and has very sharp points!

It took me about 10 minutes of pushing and pulling everything in every direction to find the first move. The new shape still messes with your head. I then got a bit of a shock! It's not a standard 6 piece burr. As soon as the first slide has happened, it becomes clear that Burrtools is not going to help me later. There are diagonal faces inside! Oh Lord! Is this like the NOS burrs from Gregory Benedetti? Was I going to have 6 bright colourful pieces in a pile forever more? The rest of the disassembly took only a few minutes and I carefully took photos of the pieces as they came out. I then scrambled it to take my photos and then give me the reassembly challenge:

Hell! That is going to be a challenge to reassemble!

Luckily, Steve has designed this in such a way that the reassembly is possible using logic and a knowledge of burrs (a little bit of my too and fro memory probably also helped) - this one is possible for a simpleton like me in an hour or so. Phew! Some success at last!

Now I need to start shaking the OPUP vigorously to try and dislodge the cube! 😱🤣

Rich Has Me Beat......TWICE!

SV burr by Richard Williams

This will be a very short post because I am rubbish at puzzles! I don't really go anywhere for puzzling and hence no fabulous IPP stories and I work rather more than is good for me. Puzzles are supposed to be a way to relax but I haven't found that to be the case recently! Sigh!

At the last MPP that I managed to get to (way back at the beginning of September) I watched everyone try and succeed in solving the SV Burr by the genius that is Richard Williams. I think SV stands for sequential voxel? People seemed to really enjoy it and even Allard who is even worse at puzzles than me (especially burrs) managed to solve it. I couldn't allow myself to pass on the chance and slipped Rich some PayPal and brought this one and one other (see below) home in the hope that I would have a nice solve and something positive to write about on the blog (as well as have a bit of fun). Oh boy! I was very wrong! I am not sure I have had any fun yet. and can only write about failure!

This puzzle has been 3D printed by Rich and includes at least one metal piece (so far that I have found inside) and the aim is to dismantle it and presumably understand why it has been so named. I couldn't resist starting work on this pretty much as soon as I thought Mrs S might have forgotten that I might have acquired a few new toys. It's a good tactile size and heavier than you would expect for a plastic puzzle. It was available in several colour arrangements and I picked this black and blue version in the vague hope that the colour scheme might help with reassembly. As with all burrs, I started with pushing and pulling all the sticks in all the directions and got nowhere. This is going to be a theme for me this week. After a good hour or so of failure it was put down and I had to start cooking. Time to start again later and I had a little breakthrough. Something moved and I had a tool. There was no obvious place it should go until I had a little think© and use the tool in a counterintuitive way. All of a sudden I had some burr movement - yes, something slid and I got my hopes up.....Stupid boy!

Having slid part of the burr open, I was suddenly presented with a hole. It looked like a perfect place to put the tool that I had used to get that far. Maybe putting it inside and sliding it shut would allow me to manoeuvre it and use it inside as a tool as well. I placed the tool and slid it shut. Yay! Progress! Except, I now couldn't open the burr anymore. OMG! What had I done? After a few hours of failure I checked in with Rich and he confirmed that I was an eejit! There should be no reason that I shouldn't be able to get it back out again using gravity but despite that reassurance, I spent 7 days shaking the thing whilst getting chest pain and swearing at this bloody crazy hobby of mine. Mrs S had further evidence that I had lost my mind. Eventually, a whole week later, I managed to get it open again and the tool out. Phew! I then found that I couldn't return it to the beginning. I have a funny feeling I have stripped part of the plastic during my too and fro. Hopefully, I can show it to Rich at the next MPP and he can confirm whether or not I have buggered it up.

Since then, I have spent some time for the last 7 weeks not even finding the next step! Sigh! I am rubbish at puzzles. During that time I have tried other puzzles:

Dovetail Bar 2 also by Richard Williams

I have written about the first Dovetail Bar and loved it. The solve was very logical and fun with a really nice hidden mechanism. When Rich showed off the next one in the series, I couldn't resist sending more PayPal and having another wonderful puzzle to play with and write about. Maybe this lulled me into a false sense of security? 

This version now has 2 dovetails. One of them is very similar to the previous puzzle being the length of the bar and a second one on the opposite edge at 90º. There is a single screw in one side which unscrews easily. The lengthwise dovetail can slide about a centimetre depending on the orientation of the puzzle. Different positions allows it to slide in different directions. Having the screw in or out makes no apparent difference and no matter what I have tried screwing it back in doesn't appear to catch anything as it does in the first version.

There is a huge temptation to tap it, bang it, spin it and submerge it in gin (the instructions don't warn not to do that). I have been carrying this with me for the best part of 2 months and fiddling at every opportunity.The trouble is, I look ridiculous playing with a small piece of plastic that appears to never change and also after a few hours of play, I have realised that doing the same thing hundreds and hundreds of times is not very helpful. I actually can't think of anything else to try if I am not allowed to tap or spin! I have failed on both of Rich's puzzles where almost everyone else has succeeded. I will take them back to the next MPP to check that I haven't actually damaged them.

Maybe it is time for me to stop this puzzle hobby? Sigh!

I did, however, manage to finally solve the Sliding Doors puzzle from last week. It did take me almost a week to get it but at least I solved something. I had even more fun putting it into Burrtools - it was quite a challenge to model.

Freebies Can Be Fun (And Hard)

Boon

First of all, I have learned a significant lesson after last week's post:

If it looks too good to be true then it probably is!

Also:

If you find something interesting inside then it is probably significant 

I thought I might have solved Tye Stahly's IPP exchange puzzle. I was sort of suspicious that I hadn't because there was a little wiggling possible once all the pieces were inside and the hex key was just sort of balancing in a hole attempting half-heartedly to prevent a smiley from moving.  I was contacted by Tye to laugh at me that I hadn't solved his wonderful puzzle. Also by George Bell who commented on the post and did not seem to understand the puzzle (if he didn't then I certainly was going to fail!) and finally by Frederic himself to explain where I had gone wrong.

During my fiddling, I had worked out a couple of ways I could place the two pins but then couldn't place the hex key. I assumed the hex key would stay protruding through a hole in the box. Whilst playing I had noticed something odd about places I could stash the pins. Sometimes a pin would seem to get stuck until I shook it about and it would come out again. I had ascribed this to a magnet but I was wrong. I was never able to achieve that effect with 2 pins. It would appear that I should have persevered. There is something very special about that pentomino - had I explored it further, I would have had a wonderful Aha! moment. If you have this puzzle, focus on the pentomino first and then concentrate on the rest of the packing!

Having finally solved the Minima Duo and enjoyed several Aha! moments I can put it away. Time to move onto something else. I had brought home a few freebies from the last MPP and they had been sitting around for a while. Time to pick them up so I can hopefully put them away. I sort of assumed that  being free, they might be a nice quick little challenge. Ahem...maybe not!

I started with Boon, a sort of burr, sort of packing puzzle from Theo Geerinck and the late Symen Hovinga. It appears to be a trio of polyominoes packed inside a frame. The frame is made from just 2 simple pieces. How hard could this be? I picked it up and explored the initial moves and it quickly got interesting. There was a bit more to it than I thought. I started with my usual too and fro approach and returned to the beginning before starting again and going a bit further. After a few moves I was distracted by a cat and before I knew what was going on a piece tumbled into my lap...OMG and then I shifted my grip and another piece also fell into my lap! Aargh:

That was an unexpected disassemblyly

Now I had my 5 pieces and absolutely no idea how they came apart or went back together. The disassembly was fun but not too hard. Putting it back together was a significant challenge for me. I am rubbish at assembly puzzles (especially when I have no idea of the orientation of the parts in the end position). It was a very fun exploration and after a good 2 or 3 hours, I got it back together! I told you I was rubbish!

Sliding Doors

Now this one, is even tougher. As I picked it up at the MPP, it arrived in the assembled position. It also consists of 3 pieces but this time, in a box with restricted opening. The interesting thing here is that the two opposite sides of the puzzle has (as the name implies) sliding doors/walls when there are no pieces in the way. It took me about 10 minutes to take the pieces out and I noticed something odd when I did:

Pieces out and doors/walls slid down

Now the odd thing that I noticed when I took the pieces out was that the first one would only come out with a tiny little rotational move due to the way the doors slide a half voxel down. So, having removed the three pieces and scrambled them. I couldn't remember how they came out, how they were oriented inside and I assume that Burrtools will not help me.

I am stuck here. I can reassemble it if I dismantle the doors but I don't think that is the intended mechanism. I do sort of wonder whether the position it arrived in was just a "transport" position and there really is a non-rotational solution. I am struggling with Burrtools just now because constructing the captive sliding doors is proving difficult for me. I am still having fun as BT programming is a considerable part of the challenge for me with many packing and interlocking puzzles. I do hope there is another solution - I will report back when I know.

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Thank you to all of you who read my rubbish! I have passed 5 million page views this week. I cannot believe anyone reads my thoughts once and then comes back for more!

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!