An Epic Eyckmans Extravaganza

Dikkop	Cannonball
Hollow 15	Poolster

It doesn't seem that long since the last Pelikan release - I just don't know how they maintain such a punishing schedule and keep the quality so very high! Despite producing another huge batch of puzzles in just over a month, they are all absolutely stunningly made with a fit and finish that can only be described as perfection. There are 7 new puzzles to be released in this batch and the first four of them to be reviewed are a progressively more complex and very interesting set of 6 piece burrs.

Alfons Eyckmans designs some of the most amazing interlocking puzzles and burrs there are. I have a huge collection of his designs produced by Pelikan, Alfons himself, and also the late Eric Fuller. He designs puzzles that can be very very complex and difficult to solve but also creates easier designs that have something very interesting and fun. Most puzzlers enjoy a nice burr but don't enjoy extremely high level versions. Jakub, Simona and the team always choose puzzles that have something special and fun about them and are not just very difficult high level burrs. The Eyckmans puzzles in this release are perfect examples of this. They are all clever variants of the 6 piece burr which makes them especially interesting to many puzzlers.

Dikkop

I Started with Dikkop (translated from Dutch to mean Fathead (for obvious reasons). I initially thought that this one was a rather complex 3 piece burr. It is beautifully made from Wenge, Padauk and Acacia and I was very glad that I picked this one to start with. It's nice and chunky and easy to manipulate the pieces. As soon as I found the first move I realised that what looked like one giant burr piece in each direction was two sticks lying side by side. The "fat heads" prevent the pieces sliding out too easily and do restrict some of the moves. The disassembly takes 15 moves (9.2.2) and is actually a very pleasant exploration. It is a pleasure to work out which move comes next with very few blind ends. It remains stable right to the very last piece being removed which is very gratifying as it means that a beginner puzzler can keep an eye on where pieces are and understand how they lock together all the way through the disassembly.

It's really quite clever

I then scrambled the pieces and from a combination of my very poor memory and logic, I was able to put it completely back together from scratch. As a result, this is a really nice puzzle for beginners to burrs as well as experts. It will also look very impressive on display.

Cannonball

Made from a very dark and beautifully grained Acacia, this lovely clever 6 piece burr has a captive centre "cannonball" made from a vibrant Purpleheart. This is another puzzle where the sequence is fun to discover and not too difficult to achieve. I found the first move reasonably quickly but struggled for some reason to find the second move. I think it was because of the way that I was holding the puzzle. Once I had found that move the sequence sort of unfolded in front of me and I was able to remove the first piece after 7 moves. The rest came apart quite easily and again was very stable whilst each piece was removed. The cannonball proved to be unexpected shape which did explain why it was held in position so well.

Now, that's an odd cannonball

I am rubbish at burr assembly but was able to put this back together from memory whilst the pieces were arranged in the order that I took them out of the puzzle. Once I had arranged them for the above photo, I had lost track of what went where and how they went together. I was now unable to put it back together (at least there was no time for me to do it before having to write about them) so a BT file was used. I do actually think that anyone who is reasonable at burrs should be able to assemble this from pieces with a bit of thought. I plan to try and do it myself when I have finished working on the rest of the batch.

Hollow 15

Hollow 15 is a really interesting 6 piece board burr which is a huge step in difficulty from the Dikkop and Cannonball. This is probably less good for beginners but is great fun for the more experienced burrista. Entirely made from a really lovely Acacia, the whole point of this is that the centre of the puzzle is empty and after just a few moves, you can see inside at how everything is interlocked. The interesting thing here is that two of the boards are formed as complete rings with no gaps and the others have small gaps in one edge. The trick will be to move the pieces far enough apart from each other to  make space for the gaps to be aligned and unlock them form each other. I found the early moves with very little difficulty but after a few moves, a whole lot more are opened up as possibilities and the puzzle pieces get extended further and further away from each other. This makes it rather hard to keep control of them as some of the seem to want to rotate or sag depending on how you are holding it. I suspect there might be a rotational shortcut somewhere in this puzzle but I was very careful to avoid rotations.

After a few moves, I realised how complex this was going to be and I started using my usual to and fro technique to try and keep track of what I had done. Once I was about 6 or 7 moves in, a whole lot of movement suddenly became possible and after wandering up one pathway, I found I couldn't find my way back to the beginning - GULP! No option other than to continue my exploration. Luckily at this point the puzzler can see everything that is going on inside and can try to plan a move or two ahead. I did get stuck for a while when I couldn't find a needed move and realised that it was because the fit of the pieces was so exact that I needed to align them absolutely perfectly to achieve the required move. After I realised this progression was steady and fun until the first pair came out. It did sort of collapse at this point but still well entangled. The separation of the last four pieces was still fun but needed a bit of control.

The pieces look simple but they are not

This is a very impressive puzzle to disassemble and once you see all the pieces, it is very impressive that the Pelikan team have managed to create it with such perfect accuracy. With a construction like this even a tiny error in the angles will result in an impossible to move puzzle but this is simply perfect. The name Hollow 15 comes from the fact that it requires 15 moves to take out the first piece (level 15.2.4.3.3).

I definitely needed Burrtools to reassemble this one and I suspect that the vast majority of you will as well. Luckily making the BT file is great fun.

Poolster

Poolster is the final puzzle by Alfons in the release by Pelikan. Made using Merbau (aka Borneo Teak) and Movingui (aka Nigerian Satinwood), it really confused me when it first arrived. I could not tell what it was as on arrival the pieces with square holes had all slid outwards by one voxel making the puzzle look rather frightening. I then realised what had happened and squeezed them all together to achieve the correct shape that you can see above. I initially thought that the centra sticks were a captive 3 piece burr but quickly realised that each central cube protruding from one face is connected by a complex arrangement to the square on the opposite face.

There is a lot of movement possible from the beginning with this puzzle and it will require a systemic approach to ensure that you try each set of possibilities as far as they can go before backtracking to the beginning and trying another one. I found the reinforcing dowels quite useful in keeping track of which pieces I had moved and in which direction. The puzzle remains remarkably stable through the initial exploration and removal of the first couple of pieces (level 10.10.7.2). After that it becomes easier as you can see everything that is happening inside. Once in pieces the impressive nature of the design and the craftsmanship becomes very apparent.

Perfect alignment to make this one work

I think that very few puzzlers will be able to assemble this from scratch but I would be interested to hear if any of you manage this. I needed to resort to Burrtools again but it's a fun one to put together. Like Hollow 15, this is probably best for more experienced puzzles but if you like to collect variants of the 6 piece burr then this is a good one for you.

Probably The Toughest Pelikans Ever!

Upcoming puzzles from Pelikan

10 days ago, I received the latest batch due to come out from Jakub, Jaroslav, Simona and the team and managed to solve just one of them (Petit Albert) in the time to review it for last Sunday's blog post. Since then, I have been slogging away at them to try and have something to help you decide what to buy when they come out. I suspect it will be later this week. The amazing bunch is from a very talented bunch of designers:

Social Distance Soma Cube by Lucie Pauwels

Antislide 2L by Lucie Pauwels

Smuggler by Lucie Pauwels

Out of Center by Alfons Eyckmans

Minima 2nd Drawer by Frederic Boucher

Apotheca by Dr Volker Latussek

Slider H by Benjamin Heidt

Petit Albert by Dr Volker Latussek (reviewed last week)

Social Distance Soma Cube

Social Distance Soma Cube

I couldn't resist starting with this one - it is simply gorgeous! My version is made from Purpleheart and Maple and I am told that there will also be versions with Bubinga and Maple as well as Wenge and Maple. A very nice playable size at 78mm in each dimension. It arrives assembled in the cube shape but don't fret about the solution being given away. Tip it out of the packaging and it will quickly fall apart into the constituent pieces:

OMG! Not JUST a Soma cube!

Lucie has taken the Soma cube and separated the 27 individual voxels by a bridging piece. Taking it apart reveals that the constituent parts are still the standard Soma shapes but you can see that the bridges appear to be in specific places on each piece. As usual, the challenge is to assemble the puzzle into the standard cube again (I do wonder whether any of the other Soma challenges are possible as well and I may well attempt to put these into Burrtools to see if that is the case. The cube shape of the Soma cube has 240 solutions but the version designed by Lucie has just one.

I am terrible at assembly puzzles and do not expect to solve this any time soon without help from Burrtools. It is still a very compulsive puzzle and I couldn't stop trying as many assemblies as I could find. My problem is keeping track of what I have tried. Given more time I think that the placement of the bridging pieces will allow a more logical approach but I haven't found it yet.

This is well worth buying - it is beautiful, very difficult and compulsively addictive.

AntiSlide 2L

AntiSlide 2L

Another compulsively beautiful puzzle design from Lucie Pauwels. This one will join the others in her series of tray packing puzzles with anti-slide challenges (Minimal Frame, Open Frame and Trimini Frame).They are all wonderful challenges with effectively 2 levels to the puzzling. First of all take all the pieces and pack them into the tray - the fun thing with this one is that it is now a 3D packing puzzle and you need to form 2 layers on the tray and then second, much MUCH more difficult, the assembly needs to be made in such a way a way that the pieces cannot slide out sideways if turned on its' side.

This is a nice pocketable puzzle with a tray that is 6cm square and has just 2 retaining cubies in opposite corners and the pieces are all made from various attractive woods. This one accompanied me to work for a day or so and kept several people amused. Even finding one assembly is tough. It took me several hours before one was found and of course, it wasn't the anti-slide solution. The presence of an L shaped piece makes that challenge very tough. Placing the pieces into Burrtools reveals that there are 41 assemblies. It took a careful trawl of the 41 solutions before I found the correct solution.

NOT the final solution - just one I found on the way!

Smuggler

Smuggler by Lucie Pauwels
As delivered it doesn't look like much!

This lovely puzzle from Lucie Pauwels looks very straightforward when delivered. Just a tray packing puzzle with some very attractive pieces made from Ovangkol to be packed into a standard Maple tray. It is a lovely size to play with at a table (11.5cm across in a 3 layer deep tray). Only when you look at the pieces closely do you realise that there is something odd about some of them - they are 3 layers high and when they are looked at from a particular direction, there seems to be notches in them each of which is a single vowel in size. There are 8 pieces each having 1 voxel missing and then four 2 voxel bars to be inserted alongside them. Tipping the pieces out of the tray reveals the full extent of Lucie's madness and what is going to be required:

Interesting tray packing pieces with 4 "gold" bars to hide

This was the easy bit

Now we understand the name. Smugglers have often buried their treasure to keep it away from competitors and the authorities so that they can come back to it at a later date. Here we need to place all the pieces in the tray so that they lie flush with the edges. Then we need to find a way to repeat it but with the gold bars inside and hidden. To do this will require solving the packing with the notches in the middle layer to be organised so that they line up with 4 2x1 voxel gaps.

I first of all set to work on just the main pieces and ignored the gold bars. I found quite a few assemblies for this and, after playing with Burrtools, discovered that there are 168 ways to do this. I then worked on adding first one and them progressively more of the bars. Placing just one was relatively trivial once a packing for the main pieces had been found. Placing a second one, at least for me, did not seem much tougher. I have been trying to assemble the packed tray with 3 of the 4 bars now for a day or so and have so far failed. I am sure there is some logic to it but I haven't yet worked it out. Burrtools tells me there are 30 solutions. The final challenge with all 4 bars has just one solution. I expect this to take me the rest of my life! For you tray packers, this might just be an essential purchase.

Out Of Center

Out of Center

I am a sucker for a good burr! I am not good at assembly but that is why Andreas gave us Burrtools! The disassembly, I find a delight of effectively exploring a hidden internal moving 3D maze as you slide pieces about. I have quite a few burrs, both stick and board versions and as the number of pieces go up, they get much much more difficult. My 18 piece burrs are always a huge challenge and this one by Alfons Eyckmans is something very different to everything else I have ever seen - this is the first time I have ever seen an 18 piece board burr! It certainly is not for beginners. Jakub and team have made this beautifully from Wenge, Maple and Bubinga. They have made it a decent size at 10cm across.

This is a huge challenge but also a lot of fun. From the very beginning there are quite a few possible moves but the pathways aren't very long to get lost in. It will be important, as with all board burrs, to ensure everything stays aligned and no rotations happen. I don't think there are any early rotational shortcuts but small rotations will block the required moves. As I got further and further into the puzzle, I realised there was a repetitive locking and unlocking sequence which gradually made space for pieces to be further and further extended out of the puzzle. The burr has a level 22.3.6.1.2.1.1.1.1.1.1.2.2 disassembly which is just perfect for most experienced burr-istas and remains pretty stable right through to the final pieces being removed.

Looks horrific to reassemble?

Having taken it apart, there was no way that it was going back together from memory. Burrtools to the rescue again and despite being a board burr and despite the huge number of pieces, it was a nice easy assembly to follow. It will look lovely on display.

Minima 2nd Drawer

Minima 2nd Drawer by Frederic Boucher

It took a while to open the drawer!

This incredible design by Frederic Boucher is the next in the Minima Drawer series. I reviewed the first one here in July. Like the first one, this is a "must have" for any serious puzzler. But be warned...it is MUCH tougher than the first one. 

Pelikan have made this with an Elm box and Wenge pieces. On arrival, only one of the pieces is outside the box and the drawer will not slide to release the others. It takes a bit of experimenting with gravity and rotation to release the drawer enough to release any pieces. Once you have them, the difference from the first puzzle is clear - the dowels are captive inside and actually prevent the drawer sliding completely out. There are 2 L shaped triominoes, 2 dominoes and one single voxel piece. All have holes drilled through in various positions.

I have not yet managed to solve this one despite several hours of attempts. It is clear that an assembly will be needed outside the drawer first and then a sequence of insertion and moves will be needed to get them inside. Make sure that you keep track of the movements that you use during the insertion because it is quite easy to get blocked up and unable to move. At one point I had to shake pieces about inside to release a blockage and nearly had a heart attack! This is an incredibly tough challenge! Let's also just say that Burrtools will NOT help you with this. Good luck!

Apotheca

Apotheca by Dr Volker Latussek

The second puzzle in this release by Volker is another one that reveals that he has a very devious mind!  It has been beautifully made using a lovely grained Limba Frake for the pieces and American Walnut for the box. The box is 7x7x6.5cm and, as always with Volker's puzzles, it arrives in a special delievry configuration. This one looks solved when it arrives but notice that the pieces are protruding from the box. Obviously when packed they will be flush with the surface.

Shallow notches and dowels on each piece and in the box

Taking the pieces out reveals the madness in his head! The pieces are really fairly simple with 3 and 4 voxel L-shapes to which shallow holes and dowels have been added as well as a single dowel on one wall of the box.  This one looks very similar to the Farmacia puzzle from April's release but the are bound to be some special differences.

Having taken my photo of the pieces, not only could I not assemble the cube, I also couldn't put them back in the box into the delivery position! Having worked on so many puzzles this week, my head was broken!

The intention is to create a 3x3x3 cube inside the box. The presence of the dowels means that this has got to be done in a certain order and only one orientation. Again, Burrtools is not useful for this puzzle which really adds to the difficulty. 

Volker was very pleased with how this puzzle design worked out. he said this about it:

"When working with the usual v's and developing FARMACIA, I had to learn that some very nice moves are not possible. However, from my experience with FILLING V, I know how powerful L's are. So what could be more obvious than turning four v's into three L's and filling the 3x3x3 box together with the remaining five v's? And suddenly, the previously impossible moves become possible.

I really hope that you too will see that the price of losing the simple and clean construction principle of the 9 v's of FARMACIA is not too high and that the beauty of the solution in the APOTHECA solution justifies the mixture of eight v's and L's. In fact, the mixture is so powerful that I can offer another puzzle with APTEEK. Perhaps Pelikan will once again show how perfectly crafted ideas in wood enrich the world of mechanical puzzles."

With this description, who can resist? I have still not solved the Farmacia puzzle! I thought it was related to the Logical progression puzzle which ultimately took me a couple of years to solve. Whilst the Farmacia is solvable using Burrtools, the Apotheca has been deliberately designed such that "impossible moves" become possible and I suspect this one will forever be a nemesis. It will be fun to keep trying over many years!

Slider H

Slider H by Benjamin Heidt

Finally, a stunning looking puzzle from Benjamin Heidt. This chunky 7.5x7.5x8cm puzzle has been beautifully made by the Pelikan team from Padauk, Acacia and Peruvian Walnut. It is a good solid heavy puzzle and arrives with one piece outside the box which has an H shaped opening. Benjamin has taken the basic Soma cube pieces, one has been glued inside the box and another pair have been altered and combined into one complex piece.

Pieces outside the box

One is captive inside

The aim is to insert the pieces inside so that only one colour is visible from above when finished. There is a second solution that does not have this restriction and this will be a nice extra challenge for you. I started placing pieces inside the box straight away and failed to pack the cube before I realised that something was amiss. Have a close look at the trapped piece inside and you quickly realise that there is a gap underneath that cannot be reached by sliding pieces in from above. There is something very interesting built into the mechanism of this puzzle which Pelikan have made with extreme precision - it is a marvel to play with and once you have realised what is possible then you are on your way to a solution. It might take you a while! I still haven't solved it!

So we have an incredible set of puzzles coming from Jakub and team soon. These are significantly tougher than many of the usual puzzles and may keep you going for a very long time. I have yet to solve  all of them with some I have only partially completed.

My favourites are:

Petit Albert - a stunning idea and beautifully produced.

Slider H - an interesting twist on a classic

Minima 2nd drawer - it's just so clever (or it will be if I ever complete it)

Social distance soma cube - so gorgeous on display and a huge increase in difficulty for a classic puzzle.

Pelikan Summer Release 2025

Upcoming Puzzles From Pelikan

Yes, if you have been watching my new stuff page or my FB page then you will have seen that quite a few new toys have arrived at PuzzleMad HQ over the last month or so and Mrs S has become increasingly irritated with me. The camel's back very nearly snapped at the end of last week when I had to admit to her that there might be another delivery from Jakub, Jaroslav and team whilst I was at work last week. My incipient murder was delayed by a plane malfunction in Germany and the promised big box didn't arrive on time. The end result was that it was delayed until last Monday and I was working from home - no there were no knee replacements on the kitchen table! I was doing committee work on the dreaded MS Teams - 😱. The arrival of the box was beautifully timed between meetings and I managed to intercept it and secrete it away before there was an explosion! Phew.

The downside of the delayed flight was that I had much less time to play. I have only managed to solve 4 of the 8 arrivals so far. Hopefully the rest will be ready for next Sunday.

The Bunch 2.2

The Bunch 2.2 by Alfons Eyckmans

This gorgeous cube is another of a long line of amazing interlocking puzzles from the Master, Alfons Eyckmans. I have quite a few of these now, both direct from him, as well as versions from Pelikan and they are always great fun to play with as well as looking fabulous on display. This one is very attractive made from Wenge, Maple and Purpleheart. It is a simpler design than many of the others but this makes for a rather nice exploration and solve. 

My first time dismantling it I found a rather nice rotational shortcut but quickly put the piece that is removed back in the puzzle as I know that Alfons tends not to like rotational solutions. The first piece comes out nice and logically and opens up quite a lot of movement but for a while I was missing the key move that would allow me to progress. It was a nice surprise when I found it and even then the next part was not obvious. The puzzle does reveal the inner locking mechanism and that helps you plan the next few moves. 

It's going to be fun putting this back together

Having disassembled it, then is definitely a fun challenge to scramble the pieces and then reassemble after the memory of the disassembly has faded. Great fun! If you love cuboid interlocking puzzles and Alfons' work interests you then this is a brilliant one for your collection.

Rising Peaks - Everest

Rising Peaks - Everest by Girish Sharma

This is another of Girish Sharma's amazing interlocking cube creations.  Judging from the name Rising Peaks hyphenated with a mountain name, I suspect this is the first in a whole series of these puzzles - I certainly hope so! Beautifully made using Padauk, Wenge, Acacia and Maple, the initial challenge is to separate the pieces from their travel assembly. Maybe I'm not very good at puzzles (it does say that all over my website) but I actually took a good 5 minutes taking it apart. Then obviously you have to assemble them into a 4x4x4 cube using linear moves only. Many puzzlers have moved away from solely linear interlocking puzzles but I still love the standard interlocking puzzles that I first learned about so many years ago from Richard Gain. They provide a wonderful challenge and can be quite tough. This one is absolutely superb. 

From the beginning it is very easy to establish the positions of the 4 pieces but actually assembling them is a tremendous fun challenge. Working out which pieces to use first and which subsequently get inserted is part of the difficulty. There is no obvious order when looking at the shapes and in fact the required order was a bit of a surprise to me. At first it's possible to place any 3 pieces in a promising arrangement but the final one ain't going nowhere! I spent a good 45 minutes trying various arrangements of the first 2/3 pieces before I found a sequence that looked promising - something worthy of Girish' design skills. Once I'd found this start, I thought I was making progress until miraculously a piece fell out unexpectedly - I sort of lost track of what I was doing and ended up back at the beginning. Start again...

Continuing in my search I noticed a possible move that I had missed the first time and that opened up a whole set of dance moves of the pieces in an out around each other. The Pelikan team have made this beautifully tight so the pieces don't flop about and each move has to be made deliberately with the occasional "thwack" as they settle in to place. I had my cube assembled in about an hour. 

There is NO spoiler here - the relative positions of the pieces are really obvious

Having taken my photos, I then struggled to dismantle the puzzle and put it back into the storage/travel position. It's a disassembly challenge as well as an assembly one. I redid it a few hours later and even though I remembered the vague order of the pieces, it still took me quite a while to repeat the process. 

This is another masterpiece of design and manufacture by Girish and Pelikan. If you like interlocking puzzles then this should be high on your shopping list.

Minima Magnetik

Minima Magnetik by Frederic Boucher

My goodness! Is there no end to Frederic's design skills and ideas?? Here we have yet another wonderful puzzle in the now enormous Minima series. I have written extensive reviews of Minima puzzles over the last couple of years and have to admit that this series is one of the single most compelling series I have ever played with. I had thought that Frederic might run out of ideas but there seems to be no sign of it so far. The Pelikan team have made this version using Jatoba and Acacia woods with a bunch of magnets. This amazing design looks so simple until you casually have a play. The usual 2x2x3 box has two entry holes to it and what looks like some finger-holes as well. Anyone looking at these shapes (1x1x2 sticks) with a hole in one end and another at the front will be able to think of quite a few ways to get the pieces inside and think this is simplicity itself. I sort of thought so too until I received the instructions.

"First place the box on a flat surface.

Pack the pieces inside su that no magnets are visible through any holes in the box.

Once a piece has been placed in the box, you can not touch or move the pieces with your fingers or move the box"

Ah! Now we have an entirely new challenge! It is a simple packing but made challenging by the constraints. The magnets are obviously the key to manipulating the pieces. To add to the challenge the embedded magnets have their polarity arranged such that 4 of the pieces have one orientation, another the opposite way around and one piece has no magnet. First challenge is to decide which way around the box needs to be placed and then it will be necessary to use both repulsion and attraction to move the pieces around. If the pieces are placed through one hole and another piece placed through the other, then it is quite possible for a diagonal repulsion to occur and another piece placed to prevent this. There is a whole lot of challenge to this one.

I worked out an approach after about half an hour of fiddling out of the box and attempted to do it inside. This taught me that I needed to be very careful with the exact order that pieces need to be placed. I thought I had my solution and took this photo:

No magnets visible but....

Having been unaware that this design was being made by Jakub, I had ordered the same puzzle from Tye Stahly's Nothing Yet Designs store and had actually received his copy a few days earlier (thanks Allard, for forwarding it on to me). 

Minima Magnetik from Tye

I set about doing the same thing with the 3D printed version and, to my horror, it would not work! The repulsion of the magnets was not quite strong enough to achieve one of the crucial moves. This could only mean that my initial solution was not the intended one. It also means that you have two solutions to find if you buy the Pelikan version of this puzzle. I went back to the drawing board and have to shamefully admit that it took me another 2 days to find a solution that would work with both versions. The actual sequence of moves is really quite involved requiring multiple steps. This is a must have puzzle!

Minima Drawer

Minima Drawer by Frederic Boucher

This gorgeous creation is yet another Minima design by Frederic. It is also another of those must have puzzles. This version has been created using a very beautiful Leopard wood and Maple and is stunning. It arrives with the box completely closed and one L shaped piece outside. The drawer of the box can slide in either direction, although on arrival it can will only go one way and reveals a number of pieces inside. It's not straightforward removing all the pieces and requires the drawer to be moved in both directions to progressively release the pieces. Be careful! It's easy to get stuck!

Dowels galore!

Once you have all the pieces, the extent of the challenge becomes clear! There drawer is prevented from coming out by a one voxel dowel attached to the roof of the puzzle inside. There is also another one voxel dowel pointing horizontally inside the drawer. The pieces and extra dowels need to be placed inside the 2x2x3 cavity as usual. Having experienced the minor challenge of removing the pieces from the transport position, I knew that multiple moves would be required and sliding the drawer back and forth. Gravity was going to be a key consideration here. There are a few arrangements that will fit the space given but it is clear that most are not physically possible. The approach here has to be to find an assembly and then work backwards to see whether it can be removed from the box. 

No spoiler - it is solved!

I think I got somewhat lucky and found the solution after only a whole day of trying but on the way I nearly had a heart attack several times. The limited opening means that some of the pieces need to be rotated into the box and if they are not right or in the right order, they must be removed using the same rotation. Sometimes this can be very hard to achieve and leave you with a huge challenge and worry that you have trapped them inside permanently.

This one is a minima for true puzzle professionals - it is fabulous!

I will be working on the remaining 4 puzzles over the upcoming week and will finish the reviews next Sunday.

Pelikan Summer Bonanza Part 2

Upcoming release from Pelikan puzzles

Yes, it's time for my reviews of the remaining part of the upcoming Pelikan puzzle release. Having an extra week was just what I needed to solve 3 rather challenging puzzles. 

Lapsus 2

Lapsus 2 by Alfons Eyckmans

No release from Pelikan is really complete without an amazing design by Alfons. He is incredibly prolific and designs burrs with something special about them. Of course, he can (and does) design straightforward 18 piece (and other size) simple burrs but he also spends a lot of time working on designs with different shapes, numbers of pieces and even hidden pieces. Lapsus 2 is unusual in being a 12 piece burr with the burr sticks being formed as board allowing a very different conformation to the standard type of burr. 

Despite this, it functions as a typical burr but allows a wider range of moves to standard sticks. Pelikan have created this with beautifully contrasting woods (I think it is Mahogany and Maple) and arranged into a 3D checkerboard shape. It is a really very attractive puzzle.

Initial exploration revealed that there are several possible starting moves but only one really goes any further and once the second and third moves have been tried then there are suddenly a whole lot of possibilities. It requires a bit of concentration to keep track of what you have been trying, especially as I always try to keep going to and fro so as not to get lost and unable to return to the beginning. Some of the moves are quite large and give hope that the piece involved is very near to release but don't get your hopes up to quickly. This puzzle has a nice level of 37 (22.4.1.2.1.1.1.2) and it requires a fair bit of back and forth with the moving pieces to find the critical position that will allow the removal of the first piece. Having got the first piece out, I actually couldn't immediately work out how to remove the next. I thought that it would be a simple progression of the position I was in but in reality it took me a few hours of think©ing and looking to find the next piece to come out. Having taken the first two pieces out, the remainder is a nice logical sequence. It remains very stable right through to the end which is very impressive for a burr of the type.

Looks like simple burr sticks but they are not.

Putting this back together will require me to use Burrtools but I dare say that a few of you geniuses out there will be able to do this from scratch or memory. This is a lovely burr with an unusual conformation and moves which has just the right difficulty level for most puzzlers.

Petit Sucrier

Petit Sucrier by Dr Volker Latussek
The far end of the box has a full height hole

This is an absolutely cracking design from the twisted mind of Volker Latussek! I just don't know how he consistently comes up with such incredible puzzles. It has been beautifully made by Pelikan from Wenge and Beech. As with all of Volker's puzzles it is shipped in a specific conformation to both hide the intended solution and to give an idea from the beginning that the puzzler is in for a rather huge challenge.

The first thing I noticed here is that one of the holes was in an odd position - it was not in line with the 3x3x2 grid that the puzzle pieces would be aligned in. Usually sometime before a release Volker emails me with a little explanation of his rationale which I invariably pass on to you. This time the explanation was quite enlightening:

"A great challenge for any puzzle designer is to investigate the originality of his own ideas. It hurts when that research shows significant similarities to an existing puzzle. In my research, I have often stumbled across the name Frederic Boucher. I have also stumbled because I found I had to discard some ideas from the outset. When I discovered his perforated boxes, I was initially disappointed because I thought that whenever Frederic needed an opening in his packaging puzzles, he simply allowed it. But the euphoric reviews of these puzzles made me curious and I treated myself to his BONBON from Eric Fuller's workshop. This is very unusual for me because I very rarely play with others' designs. While playing with BONBON, I understood the enthusiasm for this type of packaging puzzle and set out to try and imitate Frederic myself. 

I had two ideas: I wanted to develop KAMELLE, a packing puzzle that would play with the BONBON box and the same pieces and, at first glance, look like another edition of this very educational puzzle, this time from Pelikan's art workshop. I asked Frederic to select the types of wood. 

A second idea PETIT SUCRIER follows my work on FRITZ-FLOP. A completely filled 3x3x2 box should have as many openings as possible in the style of BONBON.

The result is a somewhat dubious KAMELLE, but PETIT SUCRIER has become an inconspicuous little puzzle that fascinates me very much. I have solved it many times and have always been pleased that Frederic has given me this puzzle. Thank you very much for that!"

This explains the similar look to the boxes in the next two puzzles and also explains why they are simply joyous puzzles to play with and solve with absolutely delightful Aha! moments. I have a bunch of Frederic's puzzles and there is just something special about the designs - he certainly never just produces shapes from Burrtools (just like Volker) and they require a good amount of thinking both inside and outside of the box(es).

My first hint that that this was going to be fun came when I tried to remove the pieces from the transport positions first. A 3 of the pieces come out after a little manipulation to create space in the right positions. I then had two pieces left inside in portions that required rotations to get them out and I realised quite quickly that I had a bit of a wooden disentanglement puzzle on my hands! It took me over an hour to work out how to rotate the pieces into an appropriate position. OMG! If this is what it took to remove the pieces, I have no idea how hard it will be to pack them all inside! Having taken my photo, I tried to put them back into the box to carry them to work with me. I quickly realised that was not going to happen! I had no recollection of the start position and also couldn't repeat those rotations.

As with a lot of this type of puzzle, the critical thing is to start outside the box and work out possible assemblies that will allow free placement of the last 1 or 2 pieces inside with only minimal linear movement. There are 9 possible assemblies of these pieces into a 3x3x2 grid and only one of these will be possible. I found quite a few quite quickly and was able to dismiss almost all because there was no way to get any of them out of a box with the openings provided. After about a day I found one that looked quite promising as it allowed easy removal of 2 pieces with simple linear moves and then a third could come out after a little sliding sequence. This left me to try and find a way to get those remaining 2 pieces inside and oriented properly. Oh boy! What a challenge. I was able to get one in and oriented but then the other would not go. Trying them in a different order taught me how critical the positioning of this holes were (including the one that was in the wrong place on the grid). At one point I had 2 pieces in the box in an odd conformation (not the right one) and couldn't remove either of them from the box! Aargh! slight panic ensues fro a while until I managed to take them out. I spent a god 3 or 4 hours trying to get them in the correct place and did finally manage it but then could not for the life of me insert the third piece. What was I doing wrong? The rotations that you can do inside the box require very perfect positioning and are all only possible in one direction - this is ingenious.

It took another hour before I realised that this could be solved with the layers in either order and I had spent the best part of two days focussing on the wrong one! Silly me - another example of being not terribly bright! Time to do it again - Aha!

OMG! That was difficult...but huge fun!

This puzzle is nothing short of brilliant - it's the work of a mastermind! Buy it!

Kamelle

Kamelle - also by Dr Latussek

You can see the similarity to the design from Frederic.

I have to sheepishly admit that BonBon remains on my pile of puzzles to be caught up with - this release from Pelikan will force me to go back and start to play with it again.

The Kamelle looks very similar to the Petit Sucrier but has only tetrominoes and with the box being 4x3x2 having 24 voxels of space, there will be empty spaces inside. Burrtools retrospectively has told me that there are 584 ways to place the pieces in a 4x3x2 space and no way to get them in the box linearly. This was also going to take a good bit of think©ing! My head was hurting from the previous puzzle - I was going to struggle.

As before there is a 1x2 hole in the box which can be the only entry for all but one of the pieces. I initially tried randomly trying assemblies and quickly realised that its possible to get 3 in easily and a 4th with a bit of fiddling but the 5th was proving impossible. There are quite a few rotations possible early on with just one or two pieces in there but none of them seemed to require that oddly placed hole in the box top. Rather than waste my time on my random assemblies, I moved to looking at what the fancy hole allowed me to do that was special. For a while I couldn't seem to find anything until my "what if I try this?" moment and suddenly I had a rather a big grin on my face and was muttering about him being rather evil!

Having found a very special possible move it was time to work out how it could be used. I found a few assemblies that required the piece to be in the orientation that was now possible and worked on linear moves after that. Almost but not quite. Another couple of days of work and my Aha! moment was complete:

Upside down so as not to give anything away.

This is another absolutely amazing puzzle! I suspect that my solving it was partly luck but nevertheless, the special move is incredible and unique. Again, if you like packing puzzles then this is something really special! 

What should you buy from this summer release? Probably all of them! There are some very different puzzles to usual in this batch. All are challenging and fun. My favourites have to be Petit Sucrier (essential!!!), Kamelle and Commotion.

I am told that the release from Pelikan will be set to go live on Thursday 20th June at 14:00 CET (Central European Time). I am sure that they will go quite quickly.