You cannot have too many Turning Interlocking Cubes! Especially made by
Brian Menold or
designed by the "Master of the TIC" - Andrew Crowell. Brian's last update had 4
TICs in it and I picked these 2 because I already had copies of the other two
(SkepTIC previously from Brian and remaining unsolved as well as XiTIC from
Bernhard:
XiTIC pieces
XiTIC assembled
I really need to find my copy of SkepTIC and solve the damn thing - I seem to
remember that I bought it in March last year and could not assemble it and
have put it down somewhere - who knows where!
SkepTIC pieces still to be assembled
When Brian offered these puzzles that I did not have in my collection, I could
not resist. Well, you all know that I struggle to resist many puzzles that are
put on sale and have really annoyed Mrs S by continuously increasing the size
of my collection and failing to put them away. She was distinctly unimpressed
when they arrived. I had been hoping to intercept their arrival without her
noticing whilst I have had a few days of annual leave over the last 2 weeks.
Unfortunately, she had me doing DIY and gardening for much of the time off and
I couldn't get to the door in time to intercept before she got there. I was
wiring in replacement smoke and fire detectors and up a ladder when the
package arrived! I nearly fell off the ladder in my haste to get to the door
first but she's too damn quick!
In the evenings after finishing my enforced chores and (for once) not
electrocuting myself, I set to playing with these fascinating TICs. The fun
thing about both of the new arrivals is that they have only three pieces in
each:
TripTIC made from Paduak, Canarywood and
Angelique
wood
NeuroTIC from mixed woods
I started with the "easy" one, TripTIC, as it only had 2 rotations and 11
moves. and quickly found the end positions for each of the pieces and
individually found the rotations but when trying to put all three pieces
together the pieces interfered with each other's moves. until I found a very
nice little position for one that opened up a hole for the introduction of
the other and after about 15 minutes I had a lovely little cube:
See! I can solve the odd puzzle occasionally!
Time to move onto the harder one...NeuroTIC also has 3 pieces but despite
having only 2 rotations, it has a higher level of 13.3 and as Brian puts it:
"some interesting moves". I definitely struggled on this one. I quickly
determined the final resting positions but putting any third piece into the
mix quickly blocked me. I couldn't seem to work out which piece to use first
and I ended up having to solve this over 2 days. Yes, I forced Mrs S to allow
me a little puzzling time during my time off.
Whack! Ouch! Sorry dear. As Brian said, there
are some really clever moves involved here and the final rotation that allows
the rest of the puzzle to slide together is absolutely delightful.
Absolutely wonderful assembly process
Disassembling the puzzle caused me a little trouble. I got all caught up and
had a piece trapped and unable to release it despite working out the correct
rotation first. This could easily also be a disassembly puzzle.
I really never know how to store these puzzles - should I keep them
disassembled? Or should I keep them as lovely looking cubes to be taken apart
- this would help with storage but decrease the repeatability of the
puzzles.
Of course, I couldn't buy just 2 TICs from Brian. I had to make the postage
worthwhile - I also couldn't resist a third one being released by him from
the amazing
Haym Hirsh, the Green T-Box:
Green T-Box
I had already bought the original T-Box by Haym back in December 2021
and thoroughly enjoyed the sole process of packing 6 T-shaped bars into a
beautifully designed box so how could I possibly resist a reworking of the
original idea with another 6 T's of different dimensions and a different set
of obstructions in the box? Again, it was beautifully embellished.
What is next for Brian and Haym? Will we have Black T-Box? Oolong T-box? Who knows! Whatever it is, I will not be able to resist.
Thank you, Brian for a week of delightful puzzling to take my mind of the DIY and gardening. In fact, I have had quite the roll this last couple of weeks - I look forward to showing the completed puzzles off to you over the next couple of weeks.
I sort of knew that this puzzle creation was being developed but had no idea
when it would be released. Andrew doesn't seem to
market his toys very much
and I heard nothing about it. I guess it will have been mentioned on the Discord
but I just don't have time to visit it any more than once in a blue moon which
probably means that I miss out on a lot of stuff. Luckily for me, at Peter
Hajek's End of Year Puzzle Party, the TIC Vault was mentioned in the list of
people's favourite puzzles of 2022 six times and was the favourite for
Goetz, who has
absolutely impeccable taste that very much overlaps with mine. I contacted him
and was told that some were being made and would be available soon and to keep
an eye out for when they go on sale. I was very lucky to get one and took
delivery at the end of January.
This puzzle is a triumph of 3D printing - it is stunning! The Vault itself is
a deep Navy blue and has the characteristic 3D printing layers on it with a
black central area circumscribed by a red circle inlay. The sides have very
smooth inlaid patterned inserts which break up the layering. It really is
pretty attractive and surprisingly heavy - I suspected there might be quite a
few magnets embedded in it (one can be seen on the picture above). It is
5x5x2.88 inches in size which upset Mrs S as it will take up even more space
that I don't have!
It arrived with another of Andrew's colourful cards describing the
challenge:
1. Unlock the vault 2. Find Your Unique ID Number
Rules: No external tools, excessive force, shaking or spinning is
necessary.
Fab, I Thunk! Reach in to the handy gripping sections for the nice quartz
finish TIC in the middle. Grab and pull and nope...that ain't coming out
of there that easy. Maybe the centre rotates and releases it? Nope! Maybe
holding it in different angles or upside down will release it? You guessed
it...Nope! My next attempt would involve spinning but that's not
allowed/needed. I'm not sure that I want to waste a whole bottle of gin
submerging the puzzle and really doubt that Andrew would be that devious.
I am obviously missing something. But what?
And here I got stuck all of my first day of playing with it. I tried the
same things over and over and over again of course but the answer was
still Nope!
Maybe it would work another day? So I left it until the next day and again
tried all the same tricks. Still nope!
I tried something else and got my wonderful Aha! moment and visibility of
a clever mechanism that had been used to lock it inside. I now had yet
another tool. Now what could I do with that? Removing it had revealed some
interesting stuff inside but nothing reachable with the tools I had. I
know it's hard to believe but I got stuck again! Yes, being not terribly
bright is not very helpful when solving complex puzzles.
After another day or so I noticed something slightly odd and tried to use
it in various ways with no luck. But then the earlier clicks suddenly made
sense. I had another tool/piece and then finally the cube pieces were all
removable. Now I obviously had a TIC - lots of pieces. Lots and lots of
pieces which had a very odd feature. Counting the voxels and the fancy
features, I realised that something was missing - it was still in the
vault and required a simple move to remove it. I had this:
Lots of pieces, lots of magnets and some odd slots
It was immediately clear that the TIC pieces needed assembly first. There
were 3 pieces with slots in them and magnets at the end plus 3 pieces that
would obviously engage into those slots and lock at the ends. BUT (a very
big BUT) which went where? I am absolutely terrible at assembly
puzzles and this challenge stumped me for quite a long time. Yes,
embarrassingly it took me a week to work it out and get my TIC pieces
assembled and then the TIC rearranged into another cube. My excuse for the
long challenge is that whilst all the pieces are quite simple, it is quite
tough to arrange them into a cube without interlocking them first and I
struggled to visualise the shape they would make. Don't look if you don't
want to see the assembled cube.
I had a cube and there really are a LOT of magnets!
After that it was clear that the cube would interact with the vault (Nothing
else was possible with the empty vault and moving the cube around the outside
of it or underneath did nothing. I returned the cube to the vault and apart
from a huge number of clicking noises, it did not do anything. I was obviously
going to have to try other orientations. Was I going to have to try each face
down and in 4 different directions? After another little think I had another a
realisation that probably attempting 24 different ways to reinsert the cube
was not what was intended. I thought, I saw, I conquered and another Aha!
moment happened. This was really really clever. I had a coin telling me the
puzzle was a TIC Vault but did not have my unique ID. Looking at what I had, a
"what if I?" question occurred to me. There was a particular feature of the
vault that did not seem to be necessary unless I used it in a certain way.
Aha!
Now that is absolutely wonderful! I had my unique ID and could see how the
puzzle worked. It is a masterpiece and I have a candidate for puzzle of the
year already! It's looking like 2023 might be a really good year!
All solved - I left my coins outside so will have to solve it again
to return them
The reassembly is much easier to complete but still fun. This is an absolutely wonderful puzzle and I will challenge some people at work to play with it if we have any downtime - will go on display with the rest of my ARCPuzzles and be a centrepiece. Thank you Andrew for a wonderful odyssey that took me nearly 2 weeks to complete. Wonderful!
I have been home alone for a week whilst "she who must be flinched from" has
been oop north visiting the outlaws. You might think that this would be fabulous
as I could slob about, eat crap, watch a lot of action movies on the TV and play
with my toys! Unfortunately, I still had to work and I had been left a list of
chores to do and had to look after a disturbed cat. I am far to frightened of
her to leave the place in a filthy state for when she came home so the cleaning
etc still had to be done. I did manage to find a little time for some action
movies (Dune was a little slow) but I always appreciate a film with Milla
Jovovich in it. The puzzling was really rather good as you will read below.
Two weeks ago
I wrote
about
Andrew Crowell's Burr Bot and I absolutely loved it! Unfortunately it is not available
any more as Andrew has shifted his attention to the next puzzle in the
sequence, the Burr Bank. As far as I can tell, it is not yet available for
general sale and my copy is an advance one prior to him making them more
widely available. I do not know how many of them will be made because this
is a tour de force - Many people seem to think that 3D printed puzzles are
easy to make, you just set the machine to go and the puzzle comes out the
other end. I know for certain that this is not the case - the design has to
be perfected which may necessitate multiple reprinting, the machine settings
need to be just right, the finish and infill need to be perfect and, in the
case of these, lots of magnets need to be glued in place. The thought and
work that has gone into this creation is staggering.
There are no real spoilers here but I have hidden several of the other photos behind spoiler buttons - don't click if you don't want to see.
Just like with Burr Bot, the aim is to open it up and find the hidden treasure
inside - in this case it will be gold. Comparing it to the prior creation,
this one is obviously significantly more complex. There is the usual four
horizontal burr sticks (which I assumed were different form the predecessor)
and also the vertical one that interacts with them. Except this time, the
vertical one is trapped by a lid with a hole in it. Interesting to see but
nothing moves apart from the horizontal sticks so off I go to see what is
possible. Just like before, there are quite a few movement possibilities and I
was worried that I would get lost (this is always my perpetual fear when
playing with complex burr puzzles - I have one of Alfon's puzzles trapped in a
halfway position which I cannot get out of).
I needn't have worried, the movements are not so many that I could not keep
track. I made a particularly interesting discovery and was able to do it
repeatedly and was happy to proceed with the next step. I was able to remove
the top panel:
Looking good so far
At this point I got a bit overconfident - remembering what had been done with
Burr Bot, I attempted to do the same thing...again and again and again!
Of course, I was too stupid to realise that Mr Crowell was not going to make
it easy for me. I got stuck at this point for a couple of days - what I wanted
to do just wasn't going to happen and I was too thick to stop and try
something else. Eventually, I got fed up with failing and looked properly at
what I had and what I could do. There was something obvious to try that I
hadn't thought of (did I say already that I am not terribly bright?) and once
I thunk it then I had something else to try as a result.
Suddenly I felt I had made some really big progress - the bottom section came
off:
This is fantastic! I really felt like I had achieved something and still
had a long way to go. Looking at the lid and base was no help. There was
obviously stuff to be done with them but I couldn't see how it was
possible.
Maybe if I went back to what I had been trying and failing at before? Well
that was clever - now my impossible aim seemed to be achievable.
Having done the puzzle multiple times now, I have come to realise that
Andre has done something rather unexpected with the puzzle sequence. I
can't tell you what it is but if you get a copy for yourself and play a
few times then you will notice something special about the sequences that
are needed. It is an added bonus that made me grin for quite some time.
What an incredible puzzle! There are multiple facets to it with tools to
discover and work out how to use. Some parts have wonderful moments of
realisation to them only after doing them a few times. Every single corner,
plane, flange and magnet has been carefully designed into the puzzling
process. Andrew has taken what he learned from Burr Bot and taken every aspect
a step or two further. I adore my wooden puzzles but this is something I will
treasure for a very long time - despite being plastic, it is still beautiful
and is one of the best puzzles that I own. It will be a major contender for
puzzle of the year 2022. Thank you, my friend!
Wil Tricks Me!
Aus dem Effeff
Recently I made a rather special purchase from Wil Strijbos and was delighted when there was a little extra gift in the very well taped box. The Aus den EffEff puzzle is a "simple" packing puzzle. A complex shaped hole in the frame in which there are a bunch of Eff's (10 of them). They are dual sided being white on one side and a really vibrant red (presumably Padauk) on the reverse. The instructions are to take all of them out and place all the pieces in place red side up. As you all know, I am terrible at this sort of puzzle but there is something compulsive about it - the pieces fit together nicely and it is strangely therapeutic placing them in the frame so that they lock together. At least it is for the first week!!!
😱😱😱
I have spent quite a few hours idly trying to put this together and was beginning to wonder whether this was one of those impossible puzzles that I have been a victim of before. I always would get extremely close and yet there was always one voxel in the wrong place:
Before I start today, I have to inform you (if you hadn't noticed already) that
the puzzles I reviewed last week have been released for sale on the
Pelikan puzzles store. Almost all of them are still available as I type this.
I have known Andrew for a rather long time and have had a LOT of fun with his
puzzles over the years. Originally he was known for his gorgeous wooden
creations - mostly interlocking puzzles of his own design as well as remakes
of a few of his favourite Stewart Coffin puzzles.
Diagonal cube
Locked cube III
I
was amazed
by the quality and finish from a relative newcomer to the puzzling world at
the time. and then it went a little quiet before he burst back onto the
world having taken the rarified arena of Turning Interlocking Cubes (TICs) so
beloved by me and one of my mentors,
Bernhard Schweitzer, totally by storm and designed some of the most amazing puzzles any of us
had ever seen. Whilst he still produced a few of his own designs in wood he
has moved into 3D printing in a big way and sells them via his store
here or through
Etsy.
I am always looking for more beautiful wood but I still love the puzzling
experience in plastic but tend not to put many of these on display. The
advantage of the plastic is that I can box them up and store them in my
garage and then play with them again at a later date without having to worry
that they might degrade in storage. Today's puzzle will definitely not be
going into storage now that I have solved it - it will go on display in one
of my cabinets - it is a stunning puzzle in looks as well as play
experience. The Burr Bot came to my attention when it appeared in the
IPP design competition last year. Unfortunately due to this pesky virus thing, we couldn't
all get together and play with them and the viewing and voting was done
on-line. I was very intrigued - it was a sequential discovery puzzle as well
as a burr. It also won a Jury Honourable mention
prize. I was determined to get a copy.
At this time work caught up with me - the virus was running riot through the
UK and hospitals were chock-a-block. My workload went through the roof and I
had very little time for puzzling, let alone purchasing. I completely forgot
about it until my friend Steve reviewed it (along with a rather wonderful
looking cocktail) on his
blog. If Steve professes to loving a burr then there must be something very
special and/or very clever about it...he will be the first to admit that
burrs are not his thing. As you all know, they really are my thing. So I
wrote an email to Andrew asking if one might still be available. To my
shame, I wasn't paying proper attention to my email app and sent the email
to Andrew Coles (owner of the
puzzle lock company) who delightfully was obviously used to this mistake happening and
forwarded it on to the correct Andrew. Phew!
Before you head off to ask Andrew for your own copy of Burr Bot, I have to
sadly inform you that they have sold out and Andrew has moved on to the next
in his puzzle series. I was just in time because he had a few parts still
lying around and was happy to print the pieces that he needed to complete
the remainder of the puzzle. Lucky me! In fact he also offered (whilst he
was posting to the UK) to make and send me the puzzle he has switched his
attention to - Burr Bank which is supposed to be more complex and the next
step in the evolution of this puzzle sequence. Well it would be rude to turn
him down so I risked the wrath of Mrs S and both puzzles were being made and
arrived a couple of weeks ago.
That week was quite a busy week for Mrs S and the various postal services as
I also received the latest delivery from Jakub with the Pelikan puzzles to
review, a gorgeous pair of puzzles from
Stephan Baumegger
as well as a lovely heavy metal delivery from Mr Strijbos. I won't say what
she said when my delivery from Mr Fuller arrived this week. Let's leave it
at Whack! Ouch! Sorry dear. Let it be known
that whilst I apologised for so many arrivals, I did NOT promise not to buy
any more.
My work has become quite chaotic over the last few weeks and months. There
is a lot of staff sickness in hospitals just now due to Covid and this is
placing a lot of strain on services. I spend my time trying very hard to get
the work done and help my colleagues clear the enormous backlog of cases
that have built up and often finish work late. I also am the fool who
volunteered to write the on-call rotas for our department and am having to
scrabble around on a weekly (if not daily) basis to fill suddenly opened
gaps caused by sickness. Al of this does not leave me much time for puzzling
and when I do have time, leaves me with a brain that doesn't seem work
right. It was with considerable trepidation that I picked up Burr Bot and
read the instructions.
The cute cubic bot had swallowed something and it was definitely audible
when gently shaken. There was no other information so I assumed that it was
just a burr that I needed to dismantle. Looking at it I could see 4
horizontal sticks in the frame which would interact with what looked like a
vertical central burrstick. Time to investigate and see how they interact.
Whilst I love this sort of puzzle and have a MASSIVE
collection
of these interlocking cubes from
Alfons Eyckmans, I do often really struggle to solve them due to getting terribly
lost.
There certainly is an interesting mechanism inside - I got a clue to this
when I picked it up from my armchair and the key to the Popplock T13 was
hanging from the bottom! There appear to be magnets inside!
Within a few moves!
I quickly became engrossed and realised that there was more to this than met
the eye. The central piece rises up but the bottom piece is not attached to
it. Whilst that was distracting, I did not know what else I could do and just
carried on exploring. One evening in front of the TV left me going round and
round in circles with the pieces quite well trapped amongst each other. I had
to be careful not to be too noisy - 3D printed puzzles do make a certain
scratchy noise when the pieces are moved and I did not want to upset "she who
must be flinched from". I was also making lots of my usual muttering noises
which she also finds very annoying ("Do you have to breathe like that?" I
often hear). I got stuck that first evening but had a breakthrough the
following one:
I had a key piece - now what? I got sidetracked trying to remove the cross
pieces for an evening before abandoning that as fruitless. There are clearly
magnets in it (both the interior of the Bot as well as the key) and it was
going to be important to work out how they should be used.
At this point, I noticed something (no I can't tell you what it is) and
this led very nicely to another discovery and then some experimentation
produced a whole new challenge. I was off again.
Not a spoiler - it was always obvious this was going to happen
It would appear that Burr Bot has swallowed a shark. No wonder he was feeling a
little under the weather! At this point, I did think I had finished but there
was still some unused parts of the puzzle and something was still gently
rattling. After the next step (which I did wonder whether he would survive) I
also had the coin that keeps his heart beating:
So much fun!
Time to take the photos and then reassemble it all before trying again to make sure that I properly understood it. A mark of a thoughtful design here, is that the reset of this wonderful puzzle is not just a reversal of every step that has been done so far. It can be reset very easily and then just needs a reinsertion of the key into the top. Fabulous!
I am very grateful to Andrew for finding the spare parts lying around to make me a copy. I can see why he won a prize in the design competition - it is a wonderful odyssey with personality and fun as well as a really nice sequence of discoveries, experimentation and thought. I am looking forward to working on Burr Bank which is supposed to be even tougher and more fun.
The recent collaboration between Chris Lohe and Andrew Crowell
Last week's post showed off the recent releases from Jakub and Jaroslav at the
New Pelikan Workshop and I am pleased to see that many of you did read my drivel and have
bought the wonderful new toys when they went up for sale. In fact two items are sold out already (if you did miss out on anything then I am sure that they will eventually be stocked by PuzzleMaster). I received all 7 of the puzzles and I am always very aware that Jakub is waiting for my reviews before he puts them up for sale so the pressure to solve and write is very high. Luckily for me this time there were two of the batch that were sent to the Zen puzzler himself, Ken Irvine, for review and I did not have to be too fast with these. Ken is a master of the design and solution of interlocking puzzles and is very uniquely placed to give an opinion of the two beautiful lumps of wood and if you read the blurb on the Pelikan site on them, then you already know that Ken was extremely enthusiastic. I did, however, really want to try them and give an opinion for you all (even if I am not sure why you even read my stuff let alone pay attention to what I think).
First of all, let me say that these puzzles are absolutely amazing and you should buy them straight away - unfortunately the Cyburr has sold out already but in my opinion the Chamburr is the best of the two and certainly MUCH more difficult. Stop reading this right now and rush over and buy - you will not regret it.
I have waxed lyrical about Christoph Lohe and his designs many many times over the years - he has a very unique talent for designing puzzles that are just the right difficulty level and really interesting to solve with some very long and difficult to find sequences but always fun to work through - he is almost a savant. Then we are all aware of the incredible effect that Andrew Crowell has had on the puzzle world. He has taken the rather small rarified area of Turning Interlocking Cubes (TICs) into the stratosphere in terms of interest and difficulty. So...when these two incredible puzzle designers team up I just have to sit up and pay attention! This is should definitely prove to be something simply spectacular and YES it is incredible - it is almost like they have developed a whole new category where the interlocking puzzle is combined with the TIC without making something that is impossible for humans.
The reassembly is a serious challenge! This puzzle cannot be solved by Burrtools but the process of disassembly should take you back and forth enough to lay down a decent muscle memory to allow you to scramble the pieces and still be able to put it back together again. If I can do it then all of you (who are considerably cleverer than me should manage it). I do agree with Ken that this puzzle is probably too difficult to be sent out as pieces to be assembled from scratch - only a very few of us could manage that. The Cyburr has a sequence 38 moves to remove the first piece which is a prodigiously high number especially as 36 are linear before the first rotation is required. If you see this up for sale again then buy it!
Chamburr
Next up is the Chamburr (I am not sure why it is named this but for me this is the "Champagne of the interlocking cubes" - it is stunningly fun and really quite a tough challenge. I did not know at the time that this was the harder of the two and this was the one that I started with. Again it is beautiful with the frame made from Merbau and the three burr sticks made from a lovely warm Pink Oak. It is slightly less aesthetically pleasing than Cyburr purely because it doesn't have the completely filled face that the other does. But it is stunning. The movements of the pieces are smooth and again there is just the right number and depth of dead ends to explore. The Chamburr is slightly easier at the beginning than the Cyburr but gets MUCH more difficult about ⅔ of the way through. With both of these puzzles, Pelikan has made all of the internal edges of the burr sticks and the frames very sharp which I suspect is to prevent any illegal rotations being found but the adverse effect of this is that finding some of the linear moves can be quite hard as the pieces need to be held just right and everything lined up perfectly for them to slide on each other. This can be a little infuriating at first but it does mean that finding the linear moves is more than just pushing and pulling the pieces randomly. It is more that the moves need to be thought out and planned. After 10 or 15 minutes of play with each of these puzzles I came to appreciate the precision and sharpness of these edges and used them to my advantage.
The Chamburr has a couple of very interesting rotations that are possible at about the ¾-way mark and apart from a bit of a panic when I thought I couldn't undo them, I realised that this made for a fun dead end and quite a bit more exploration without risking getting lost. After realising my misstep, I continued. The linear part of the path for this one is VERY complex and several times I got to a point where I could not backtrack without a huge re-exploration of that part of the path. I must have gone back and forth over that section of the solution 10 or 15 times before I understood the dance path of the pieces and could repeat them easily. After 43 moves (amazingly, all of which are linear) the first piece can be removed. This is a stunning odyssey before the remaining pieces can be taken out of the frame with a rotation:
43 moves to take the first piece out!
Despite the fact that the initial part of the solution is linear, this is by far the toughest of the two. It is incredibly difficult to find your winding path through the moves - these pieces dance about in and out of each other and the frame but the pathway is really well hidden. The requirement for the rotations is the icing on the cake - it makes the puzzle constructable and also means that if you get stuck you cannot just go to Burrtools and make yourself a solution file. You HAVE to persevere with it and work it out. It is worth it - just keep trying and you will understand it eventually.
Reassembly is just as challenging - the rotations are easy to find but then you have to backtrack through that very well hidden pathway. It took me several hours over 2 evenings to get there. This is a candidate for one of the puzzles of the year for 2021 - AMAZING!
At the moment the Chamburr is still available here - buy it straight away and if you find Cyburr up for sale again then don't hesitate.
I am going to start today's blog post all sentimental and maudlin. If
Allard
can do it then certainly I can too - I am MUCH more of a sentimental fool than
him. Yesterday was the 10th anniversary of my
very first post
on this blog. It was really just an announcement of an intention to write about
puzzles and then the following day (14th March 2011) was my very first
puzzle related article
and I started with something special - the original Revomaze series. It was
these gorgeous lumps of heavy metal that got me hooked. I needed to find a way
to take my mind off an unexpected near death experience and these were it. Of
course, any true bloke who gets interested in a new toy will take to the forums
and those bastards lovely ladies and gentlemen got me hooked on
more and more puzzles. Within a few months they had forced me into taking the huge leap to my first really "expensive" puzzle (Tom Lensch's version of the
Mazeburr). Yes, I was hooked! I wanted to publish at least once a week until I either
ran out of puzzles, ran out of steam or Mrs S murdered me and I have actually
managed that for 10 whole years (Mrs S really has come close to ending the blog
though). Initially I was publishing 2 or even 3 times a week but that gradually
settled down to my usual weekly schedule. I had been advised by a blogging guru
to set a schedule and stick to it - apparently your readers have certain
expectations and you should try not to disappoint them. Indeed on a few
occasions if I dared to be late then I would get an email asking if everything
was Ok and where was their weekend reading? I settled into a routine and have
managed to write something every week apart from on 2 occasions - I think I can
be forgiven for missing the day after my mother died and also last year when I
was really ill with Covid having caught it at work.
In this 10 years, bloggers have come and gone but the people/puzzlers behind
them all remain - this is just a hobby and people have to live their
lives. I am very proud to stand alongside Allard in completing 10 years of
entertainment for the community. In that time there have been 619 posts on my
main site plus 138 on the associated
New additions page (this was the only way Blogger would let me set up a separate page) and
my pageviews ramped up quite quickly. As of
publication today I have received 1.9 million pageviews and now that so many have
occured after my mother died I can now convince myself it wasn't just all her.
My most viewed posts are on the Hanayama Cast Quartet at 23,300 views followed
by my post about twisty puzzle parity at 22,800 views.
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I was achieving 10-15,000 views per month but the last 15 months have seen a sudden increase to 30,000! Unbelievable that so many crazy people out there want to read my drivel! My readership is truly global which boggles my tiny mind.
What happened at the end of 2019?
It has been the community out there who has kept me going. The trouble with
blogging is that it is a huge effort to do this week in and week out and it
often feels that you are shouting out into the void. Over the years many of
you have
contacted me or left comments on my posts as well as been in touch via my personal
Facebook page. It is those moments of contact and feedback that make it all worthwhile. I
do not try to monetise this hobby - I gratefully receive a few $CAD each month from
PuzzleMaster if you buy from them via a link on my site but that is the only income
I get. To be honest, I am not really interested in the idea of earning money from my
hobby. I am lucky enough to work in a position where my income is secure and I
want this to remain a hobby. I have turned down offers of sponsored posts,
advertising and SEO posts. For me, this should be all MY work. Except
(and it's a very BIG exception) for the
guest posts
provided for me by my wonderful friend and foreign correspondent,
Mike Desilets. He has come up with the goods for me when I was either too busy
or had nothing prepared. I also like to think that he provides a great view of
an alternative side to this hobby. He certainly collects, solves and writes
about modern puzzles but primarily he has shown off the more vintage side that
I have very little knowledge of. I am exceptionally grateful to him for all
his efforts on my/our behalf.
The desk is out of control! She says I MUST tidy up!
I hope to continue this wonderful hobby of puzzling and blogging for another
10 years at least as long as you will keep reading and as long as Mrs S will
let me. I have a serious space problem - and have rearranged my collection
many times and expanded from one small study into another room. When I mention
taking over another room, the laser burning stare moves to between my eyes and
I can smell/feel burning coming from my forehead. The conversation closes
abruptly at that point!
Now on to today's puzzle reviews. For my tenth anniversary post, I am so
pleased to have received early copies of the upcoming releases from Jakub and
Jaroslav at
Pelikan puzzles. This particular batch is absolutely stunning and has some really special
and unusual puzzles in it.
Pepper Castor
Top view
Bottom - the pepper casting view
This beautiful puzzle screamed at me to be tried first. It's a design by
Alexander Magyarics, it's beautiful in Zebrano and Padauk and most importantly
it's based on a triangular grid. Very few puzzle designs (other than 2D packing
puzzles are very made using a triangular grid. I suspect that this is primarily
because it is harder to design them with it being very hard to tell during the
design process whether there will be unwanted rotational shortcuts. Also there
are very few craftsmen willing to put in the time and effort to make the
required jigs to these accurately. Here we have the perfect combination of a
talented designer who has obviously done his homework and ensured there are no
shortcuts as well as some of the best craftsmen in the world!
This puzzle is named after the pepper shaker/castor because of the pattern of
holes on one end and it quickly becomes apparent that they are there for a
reason. My first reaction during my early moves was that this was seriously
fiddly. Then I realised that changing the orientation of the puzzle made
certain moves easier to control and then I discovered that after 3 or 4 moves,
my ability to backtrack was gone! I was stuck with a piece packing out and
unable to visualise the internals to reset it. Oh well! Better carry on then.
After about a ½ hour of progressively more anxious swearing, I removed the
first piece and then the other two. There was no Aha! Moment as I had no idea
how I had achieved it. I took my photo and realised that I had scrambled the
pieces! At this point, it became quite apparent that this puzzle is a very
special variant on the usual Magyarics theme... he had created a fancy low
piece number interlocking packing puzzle. Very similar to many of his others
but with the twist of a triangular grid and holes top and bottom.
Incredible pieces!
Repacking was a serious challenge, first reproducing the shape to fill all the
gaps in the box and then working out the sequence. Finally actually having the
dexterity to do it was a nice added bonus. This is a terrific puzzle as well as
a gorgeous one!
Rattlesnake
Rattlesnake - you can see why
No release from Pelikan these days is complete without another wonderful packing
puzzle from Alexander Magyarics. This beauty is stunning with a Wenge box
complete with fairly large but quite restricted opening and 3 pieces to be
placed inside made from Zebrano. As usual, the question I always ask myself is:
"there are only 3 pieces...how hard can this be?"
Well, either I am stupid (probable) or this one has a serious challenge to it
(quite likely). Several times I tried to get 2 pieces inside the box only to
have one rotate inside and then block all other movements. Nearly gave me a
heart attack at one point when I couldn't take the pieces out that I had
placed in the wrong positions!
I'm sure by now you all know that I adore the 3x3 cube based packing puzzles
with unusual piece shapes and restricted entry into the container. I have lots
of them from Osanori and Alexander and am always in the lookout for new
variants. Imagine, if you will, yet another one, beautifully made by the guys at
Pelikan but making things much more interesting the box has captive pieces which
hook over two of the sides which can slide into any of the three positions on
each of them. This means we have a similar type of packing puzzles but where the
box can effectively change shape before and during the solution process. It also
means that we have seven challenges where the "sliders" have to end up at
different positions (the eighth potential configuration has no solutions). This
is a puzzler's dream - beauty and multiple puzzles in one. It has been superbly
constructed with a gorgeous Pink Oak box, Wenge captive sliding pieces and
vibrant Purpleheart pieces.
These seven challenges are definitely not trivial, in fact I've only managed
to solve 3 of them so far. I don't think that I have found the "best/longest"
solution to them so I will have to keep looking. This one definitely needs to
be solved outside first before attempting to fit it inside - but the captive
sliding pieces make the thought processes much more difficult. This puzzle is
absolutely fabulous and great value for money - go buy it now!
First challenge solved - YAY!
Akku
Akku - looks formidable straight away!
Dr Volker Latussek has been providing some fabulous puzzles to Pelikan for a few
years now. They are all extremely clever and challenging - some so clever and
challenging that they are beyond my abilities (blush,
Euklid for Nick
remains unsolved). In this release we have Akku (I am not sure why the German
word for battery is the name of this puzzle - maybe Dr Latussek will comment
below). This consist of a wonderful Acacia box and some very precisely crafted
Maple pieces to be packed inside. There are 9 L shaped pieces to be fitted into
the interior of the box. The cavity is 4x4x3 units in size and each L is 3x3x1
unit meaning that there will be just 3 holes in the packed puzzle but with such
a large awkward shape the assembly will need some rotations to get the pieces
into the restricted opening.
This is how it arrived - I cannot put it back this way!
The puzzle is shipped in a special shape that Dr Latussek instructed and I took
the pieces out of the box for the photo only to find that I could not get them
back into that shape again! This was going to be a foreboding of what was to
come. I spent quite a while trying to find how to assemble a 4x4x3 cuboid from
these pieces and even this was a struggle. In the end I resorted to Burrtools to
try and find the possible arrangements - there are 6 ways to assemble the shape.
Time to pick one and get it into the box. Easier said than done! This is a
serious puzzling challenge. After 2 evenings of attempts, I finally worked it
out - wonderful idea. Think of how best to rotate an L shaped piece and then see
what you can do with it. My solved picture is behind a spoiler button - it
doesn't give a lot away but there is some info in the picture that might give
more of a hint than you want - you have been warned! Don't click the button!
Not too much of a clue but I hid it anyway
Fake Cube
Fake Cube - this is beautiful and looks impossible
This glorious work of art has been made from Acacia and Padauk. The aim is to
assemble the complex pieces into a cube shape which can be stood on its' corner
in the stand - these 10 identical and oddly shaped pieces need to assemble into
a 6x6x6 cube. Just doing the simple maths tells me that this doesn't add up -
each piece is 18 voxels in volume with 10 of them making 180 voxels in
total and the 6x6x6 cube will be 216 voxels - quite a large discrepancy. Hence
the name...the Fake cube needs to be assembled so that just the exterior looks
like it is complete and hides the holes inside and on the walls adjacent to the
case. This reminds me of a stunningly beautiful and much more complex
version of the Half-cube puzzles from Vinco. Yet again, I removed all the pieces
for my photo and couldn't put them back into the packing position (I love how
all of his puzzles have a specific arrangement for transport). I have not had
long enough to play with this puzzle - I have managed (by pure luck) to make a
shape that will fit into the case but clearly not correct as there are lots of
holes visible on all sides:
I have not yet had time to play with this one and will review it properly as
soon as I have. When the "TIC master", Andrew Crowell gets together with the
master of interesting interlocking shapes, Christoph Lohe then I have to pay
attention! These puzzles are very reminiscent of several of the best
interlocking puzzles of all time (Lucida and
Identical twins
by Osanori) but almost certainly are going to be significantly tougher to solve.
Chamburr is made from Merbau and Pink Oak and looks fabulous with Pelikan's
usual perfect accuracy.
Cyburr
Cyburr
Another that I haven't yet played with. Like Chamburr, it is a collaboration by
Andrew Crowell and Christoph Lohe but this time made from Mahogany and Maple.
The aim is to separate the pieces from the complex frame and I have no doubt
that it will involve some complex rotations in the process.
On loan from Shane
Just a quick (and not terribly happy) sidenote. Not everyone in this
community is great - I am incredibly proud to have in my collection the
complete set of
Hales puzzles and
they form a centrepiece in my collection. I am very aware that these are
effectively just on loan as the agreement with all of Shane's puzzles is
that they should never be sold and should be returned to the creator when no
longer required. It would appear that there is one deceptive person who has
been skirting the edge of the community for a few years and due to his
terrible behaviour has been shunned by pretty much everyone. If you want to
learn some new interesting swearwords then ask Eric Fuller about Niko. Niko
uses a number of aliases and has duped puzzlers and craftsmen into giving or
selling cheap and has even tried to hack Eric's site. He has a blog which is
pretty rubbish and uses it to deceive quite a few naïve puzzle creators into
giving him copies of their creations which he has then flogged at huge
profit. He has now managed to con a holder of Shane's Viper puzzle out of
someone when they were at a low point in their life and has put it up for
sale at an exorbitant price.
Please do NOT buy this puzzle from him
- he is an untrustworthy conman and does not own that puzzle to sell - Shane
wants it back. If you are contacted by him then just refuse to continue to
speak to him. He has several names that he uses including first names of
Niko, Nick or Nicholas and surnames of Azerty, Nicolas or Demarquez. He is
not worth your time - all of us puzzle bloggers have ceased contact, he has
been banned from all the auction sites and most craftsmen including Eric and
Wil Strijbos are refusing to deal with him. This says it all!
