I Need To Learn To Count!

Also I Properly Prove Primacy!

Freeze 14 from Yuu Asaka

At the end of last week's blog post the intrepid puzzler had tracked through a puzzle lock and opened it and closed it. He then boasted about it and posted photos of said lock on his website and some social media. Needless to say he felt very smug! That is until the creator of the challenge pointed out that he had not seen a picture of the ant that had to be hunted. Ah! Maybe the puzzler is less bright than he thought he was? He should have realised he wasn't very bright - if he had read his own website, it would have told him in no uncertain terms how dense he really is. Doh! 

I actually thought that one of the tiny metal pieces that had been retrieved during the solution was the ant. I showed Boaz the photo of all the pieces and what I thought was the ant and was disabused of the idea very quickly! Time to go back to the drawing board and solve it again and search for the ant. Oddly doing it this time showed me that I hadn't fully understood the opening mechanism because despite having opened it 5 or 6 times before writing about it, I couldn't repeat it. after another 3 or 4 hours, I opened it and noticed something new and realised I had manipulated it entirely by accident the first time and then not reset it properly. This meant that my subsequent solves were accidental. I went on my extended ant hunt and found the sneaky creature that Boaz had left for me to find. Phew! Finally completed.

Next I had to work out exactly how to fully reset the puzzle every time. I had managed it once by accident and also failed several times. This time I had it properly done. OMG! There is a lot more to this puzzle than I had initially thought - go and buy it - you won't regret it:

PuzzleMaster Link or PuzzLocks direct link.

Having finally completed that puzzle, I needed another quick success because I knew that I had a busy week coming up and the MPP (yesterday). So what did I do? I went back yet again to another masterpiece from the great Yuu Asaka. I had bought the Freeze 14 from Mine along with a bunch of his own creations back in January (most of which I have failed to solve) but it is available from many other stores (PuzzleMaster has them here, Brits can get them here or here, Europeans from here or here and from Yuu-san himself here.

Freeze 14 by Yuu Asaka

There are 3  each of a small square piece and a circle as well as 8 wedges that have cutouts for the squares and circles (one of which is oddly combined as well as 2 semicircles o=attached to the wedges. All of these pieces need to be packed inside of the octagonal shaped tray. Should be simple? Yeah! Right! It might be simple for you lot but for me I have spent 5 months proving that either it's not simple or I'm thick! Mrs S frequently tells me one of those and she tends towards the "thick" decision!

I have spent quite a long time trying to put the wedges together approximating the two halves of the cutout holes to make space for the 6 shapes to be inserted. With the positions of the cutouts, there really aren't very many options for positioning the wedges. I confidently placed them and also ensured that the semicircles were also contained in a hole only to find that there was alsways one (or more pieces that I was unable to place).

Close? Definitely not close enough!

I tried multiple variants of this over the months. I did it in the evenings, I did it at work and always failed much to the amusement of my colleagues. They used to think I was a genius but I have definitely proved to them that "thick" is a better word to describe me. 😱

At one point (or even several points, to my shame) I even attempted a higgledy piggledy assembly of the wedges in the hope that alternating the orientation of them might make more spaces to place the small pieces. It didn't take me long to give up on that idea - I am think but not that thick! I put it away for a while.

A couple of weeks ago, I was watching a surgeon close a wound and listening to the scrub nurse count the needles, blades and instruments and checking against the list from the start. This made me think©... maybe I needed to count as well? Not because I might have lost anything, but because it suddenly occurred to me that I didn't have enough holes for the number of pieces and semicircles I had.

This momentary lapse into genius proved a turning point to me. I counted the halves, I counted the holes (or wholes) and counted the pieces and semicircles and got hopelessly lost making it to 6 or 7. Scrub nurses only count to 5 and occasionally 10 (rarely they go higher if they take their shoes and socks off) but it's almost always a nice round number. Counting in halves to 7 is very confusing but no matter how many times I tried, the number wasn't right. Aargh! Time to think© - yet again! After a little think©ing got me nowhere, I slept on it and had an epiphany. I need to make more holes. But how? This time I had something to try and went for it.

I will not be showing you the solution but that Yuu-san is a very very devious man! I really should have seen the answer much earlier - in fact the box states that the puzzle should take just 40 minutes and has a difficulty level of 3½ out of 5 (PuzzleMaster make it a Level 8 on their 5-10 scale). It certainly took me a LOT longer than that but Mrs S has stated the truth - I am thick - so 40 minutes for a normal puzzler equals 4 months for me! OMG Blush! Such shame!

At the MPP yesterday I received/purchaased a few new toys and expect that they will take me several years.

I didn't recall what this STC puzzle is called but I don't have enough hands to assemble it:

I don't remember what it is

This won't go in without coordinate motion

Mrs S has made several useful suggestions but not actually offered any hands in assistance!

Is It A Broken Record?

Record 6 by Yuu Asaka

This is a real quickie - I have been working my proverbial arse off this week (including Saturday) and had very little time for puzzling. 

I did put this puzzle from Yuu Asaka in my work bag and played with it at work. It comes in his usual flat white box and arrives in the above configuration with one piece clearly unable to fit.

The instructions on the back of the box say to fit all pieces in the frame and informs the puzzler that this is a level 1 out of 5 and should only take 10 minutes.

There must be something wrong with me because it took me a LOT longer than 10 minutes and left me effing and blinding quite a lot.

It consists of 3 notched and tabbed rings which fit inside each other with the notches and tabs interlocking and also having a tab in the outer part of the frame and a single notch in the centre part of the frame. The confounding feature is that the notches and tabs are a varying angle around the ring for each of them and to make it MUCH harder the third largest ring has 2 tabs to insert in another two tabs in the fourth ring.

Details of the rings and frame can be seen

As always, I started by randomly inserting pieces into the frame - I chose to start with the outer ring but I don't think it makes any difference whether you start from the inner ring or outer. At each insertion there are two choices for the orientation of the ring as it can be flipped over and changing the position of the inside tab. Every single time I made choices, I ended with the final ring impossible to place. I tried again and again and again!

The problem with this one was I tried over several sessions whilst at work and had absolutely no way to recall what I had done previously. I may have actually attempted the same assembly 4 or 5 times - who knows? Eventually, I started to get bored and had a think© and a count. Each The outer 2 rings each have 2 choices for placement and the next 2 have 4 choices as there are two notches and tabs (the ring can be rotated as well as flipped to fit. Finally the inner two rings have 2 choices each for positioning.

With my rather ancient maths skills, I reckon the number of choices is 2x2x4x4x2x2 = 256 possibilities.

AAARGH!

I couldn't see any other way of solving this other than to do it systematically and use pen and paper to keep track of the orientations I had tried and ensure that each piece was always put down in a way that I knew how it had been used before. I couldn't do this at work because I cannot concentrate on a puzzle for extended periods and take notes during an operation.

In the end I had time at home to do it systematically and managed to get it assembled flat in the tray in about a ½ hour!

Whilst it was satisfying to get it assembled, I was left a little empty - it was very much a brute force approach and did not really rely on thought other than to work out the systematic approach. I dare say that the mathematicians amongst you could use the angles of the respective tabs and notches to calculate the solution but that is way beyond my skills.

This puzzle is available direct from Yuu himself or can be bought from PuzzleMaster here.

So, I ask the question to you all - is there a better way to solve this than systematically going through all the options? Please let me know in the comments below. 

He Risks A Whack! Ouch!

But He "Creeps" Past It! Phew!

This required wine...LOTS of wine

When Mine offers puzzles, most of us say yes and we wait for a bit for hime to manufacture said puzzles and postage occurs when you least expect it. My package went into my tracking app and for some reason went from Japan to China and then on to India. I have no idea why - my knowledge of shipping lanes and flight paths is sketchy to say the least but even I know that is an odd path to take to the UK. The tracking stopped in India for a week or so and I resigned myself to waiting for a long time. The app and the Yamato website had no further updates. In the meantime...

Tye Stahly also manufactures some new toys and puts them up for sale. The UK puzzlers have a good thing going as he combines them all together into what I imagine is a shipping container which heads towards Allard's house and very forgiving wife (Gill is an angel!) I knew the shipping container had set off but I didn't know more. It must have been a very fast ship or maybe even one of those airyplane things because after just a few days from going on sale to somehow being forwarded on by the PuzzleMan himself to arriving at PuzzleMad HQ was incredibly fast. 

Both boxes arrived on the same day and due to work commitments, I didn't get to open them straight away. I have worked yet another 6 day week and "she who must be feared" got fed up having two medium sized boxes sitting in the porch cluttering up the place. She obviously hadn't thought it through properly because boxes in the porch don't really count as clutter. It's only when you open said boxes to find a total of 16 new puzzling toys on the kitchen work surface that you realise what clutter is! Whack! Ouch!

Yes, she actually opened the boxes for me and laid out the pile o' puzzles on the kitchen granite for me. When I got home from work on Saturday, she stood there glaring at me and menacingly tapped her foot whilst I made excuses. In the end I couldn't really think of any decent excuses and offered her wine to make up for it. This mollified her a little bit so I tried more wine but it didn't help much and I suspect I'm going to suffer in the near future. To try and improve the situation, I have taken my photos and have endeavoured to stash them somewhere not cluttered until I have had a chance to play. Phew! I might have got away with it. Whack! Ouch! Maybe not...

The first one I have tried was one by the amazing Yuu Asaka. I couldn't resist the Creep 2 puzzle which looked so different from his usual packing puzzles:

Creep 2 pieces

The stated aim on the box (the puzzles from Yuu-san are always beautifully presented) is to insert the two sliders completely inside the tray.

It is only a level 2 out of 5 and the expected puzzling time should be about 20 minutes according to the designer. Well we will see about that! I am famous/infamous for taking days or weeks instead of minutes.

This puzzle reminded me very much of a wonderful puzzle by Robrecht Louage, the Cerradura Doble.

Off we go...

The gaps in the frame at each edge are different sizes which should give a clue to which pieces go where and indeed, I was able to quite quickly determine then final position of the two sliders. There's nothing else to do other than to slide them each inside in turn and look at how they will interact as you move the pieces back and forth. At this point, I realised that Yuu-san is what is known in the trade as a "sneaky bugger"! I spent the full amount of time (20 minutes) trying the same thing over and over again but it just wouldn't work. Did I have the wrong pieces? I actually checked the pieces against on-line photos and there was no mistake - silly me ( or...I'm an eejit).

Time to think© and it hurt a bit. Eventually, I had an aha! moment when I realised my initial supposition had been incorrect. Once I had made my discovery, I had my solved puzzle and it's really quite satisfying. The whole puzzle seems to be about misdirection. The design makes you think the wrong thing and if you are anything like me, you will be stuck on that wrong thought for a while before eventually forcing yourself to look further. It is really very clever and almost perfect for newbies or visitors to the house who you would like to bamboozle. I think I will take it to work to torture people for a while. Hopefully Mrs S will not murder me when she sobers up/regains consciousness from the barrel of wine I have had to ply her with!

If you are wanting to buy a copy then PuzzleMaster has it for sale here and you could even buy the rest of Yuu-san's puzzles at the same time. In the UK you could try JPGames or Crux puzzles.

May the Success Continue!

Ice 9 by Yuu Asaka

I may have said once or twice on this very website that I am rubbish at packing puzzles and I stick by that assertion whole-heartedly. I have accumulated quite a few packing puzzles over the years and they give me a huge headache. I have gotten much better at the 3D interlocking type puzzles from Osanori-san and Alexander-san but any puzzles that involve placing lots of pieces (especially very similar blocks in a cavity) stump me. I have only managed to solve the Euklid for Kids and still not managed the other 2 Euclid puzzles and the Fermat, with only 3 pieces but a non rectilinear geometry, have me beaten. I just don't have the skills to work them through and am reduced to trying hours and hours of random attempts which I cannot keep track of. If there is a logical approach to them I just don't know it. I am in awe of Nick Baxter who not only solves them with little difficulty but seems to be able to find extra solutions. One day I will saw the top of his head off and examine his brain! Don't tell him though or I suspect he might avoid me. To my eternal shame, I cannot even solve a one piece packing puzzle - bought from Eric back in mid 2020 - it's "just" a big block to be placed in a box...it shouldn't be that tough! Tray packing puzzles with complex shapes are also a huge problem for me - is there a technique for them? I just don't know. I have a bunch of Alexander-san's puzzles which I dip into quite frequently and so far I have only managed to solve a few of the very easiest of them:

Very pretty and very difficult!

Last week, I extolled the virtues of Yuu Asaka's tray puzzles - they tend to have low numbers of pieces and a very nice logic to them that you solve with an initial splurge of trial and error before you are forced into a period of Think©ing and actually end up working the blasted thing out properly. Every time I manage one, I am amazed at how he made me think© inside the box/tray! Yes, these are puzzles where thinking outside the box doesn't seem to work (at least not for me) and it requires you to notice something odd about the pieces before you can work it out. I love the Aha! moment with these - it is not just down to random trial and error.

The Ice 9 was included in my hoard from Mine but it really frightened me...NINE pieces to place - Aaargh! After I published last week, I took it out and began to fiddle. As always, I started with trial and error. This has a bunch of odd shaped pieces which all have various odd shaped notches or protrusions which must obviously interlink. The squarer notches can be filled by either square protrusions or rounded ones. Is this going to fit together perfectly with no gaps? In doesn't say on the box. All it says is to fit the parts in the tray and that it is level 5/5 (PuzzleMaster rate it as a 10) with the estimate that it will take about 3 hours. Last Sunday evening did not see any success and I took it to work in the hope that I might find time. We had a big educational meeting via MS Teams on Tuesday morning and this was my chance to listen to the talks AND play with my toy at the same time. I promise sincerely that I was paying attention. Initially, it was just random placement of pieces which never works for these with so many pieces to place. Time to Think© and it was hard. There always seems to be a piece left over that cannot fit in.

First I counted the notches and the protrusions and they don't equal each other - bugger! Then I looked at how many notches I could make by placing pieces side by side - it still wouldn't match. Maybe there was going to be a huge gap but estimating the surface area of the tray and the total area of the pieces told me that there was a pretty close match and no big gaps. Time to be systematic and look at the lengths of pieces and estimate where they could fit when placed in pairs. It wasn't really successful in a way that I was expecting but I did manage to fill large parts of the tray with almost no gaps at all - the unequal pairing of notches and protuberances seemed to be less of an issue this way. I seemed to be filling the tray quite well. Until the last piece would not fit. At this point, rather than tip it out and start again, I did try moving tiles around and swapping a few without mucking up the really nice tray filling that I had achieved. Gradually, the tray filled better and better until I was left with one awkward piece which looked odd.

What if I can??? Oh, you sneaky man! That is very clever and really quite tough. The Ice 9 has a very lovely Aha! moment which cannot be found randomly. It will start random, move to a definite thought process which won't work and then noticing something special.

I think I did take about the requisite 3 hours making this rather good value for money. You should definitely consider getting one or two of these challenges! Maybe it is time for me to pick up Alexander's puzzles again?

Like Plastic Sudoku

Bird 11 box

I have survived my week off without electrocution! Luckily for me, the spare parts to the toaster remain unavailable and hence my bathtub electrocution has been avoided narrowly. Instead, Mrs S has forced me to work in the garden (something I absolutely hate) in the hope that I will either be struck by lightning or the exertion will kill me off. However I am extremely proud that, according to one of the post-Covid studies I am participating in, my "fitness age" is down to 39! Yes, I have managed to shave 15 years off my age by working out regularly on our rower. This has dashed Mrs S' plans to cash in on an insurance policy. Phew! It's a shame that it usually feels like I am going to die when I get up after the bloody exercise! 

Back to the puzzling:

When I placed my order from Mine, he also had a couple of Yuu Azaka puzzles available at the same time. One I had bought from PuzzleMaster already (I reviewed it here) and the other I ordered from Mine. This one is Bird 11 and is a sort of packing puzzle...except really it's not. I bought it because I had really enjoyed all of his previous creations - they have been packing puzzles with a twist...something that makes you think differently. They are not about randomly placing shapes in a tray or box until something happens; they require an Aha! moment which often catches you by surprise. Who can resist?

  

11 very odd birds to fit in 11 very odd nests

This puzzle is much less colourful than Yuu-san's previous creations. It has been very nicely made from good quality plastic and acrylic. We have a grey tray with 11 nests/cut out holes in it and 11 very deformed chickens that need to be placed in the nests. It looks pretty simple!

I set to straight away and started placing the birds. At this point it becomes clear that the shapes have been very precisely thought out by the creator. Certain pieces will only fit in certain nests and usually will only fit if flipped right side up. Quite frequently, it looks like a piece will go but her wings/legs are a couple of mm out of alignment and it ain't going to go. The only thing to do is start placing pieces and work your way through. This has been rated by Mr Asaka as only 2 out of 5 so it is not that surprising that you race through placing more and more pieces before suddenly hitting a wall and one won't fit in any of the remaining spots. In fact having placed 5 or 6, none of the rest would fit anywhere. That's interesting! Tip them out and start again. Obviously with shapes like these there is no way to remember what you have tried before so starting from scratch gets you nowhere...again. This time, instead of starting from the beginning again, I take a blocked piece and attempt to find where it will go and remove the offending blocking piece. This leads to a cat and mouse race around the board often looking great but ending up with pieces blocked. After an hour or so I manage to reach a point where I have one piece left to fit into its nest:

So near and yet so far!

I put it away for a while and try to think© for a bit (ouch). I come to a conclusion and one evening whilst chatting to Derek we realise together that this puzzle is going to require pen and paper or a spreadsheet and being systematic. I ma not great at being systematic so I put it aside for a couple of weeks. Yesterday after finishing my stint in the garden I decide this puzzle needs to be put to  rest and being too stiff to lounge on a sofa with a puzzle, I sit at a desk with the Bird 11 and take notes. 

It takes about 30 minutes to get all the information tabulated and I start placing the birds in their correct nests. Once you can see the pattern on paper then it is quite satisfying. This puzzle is rather like a Sudoku but made of plastic. In the end I found it quite satisfying despite my initial disappointed reaction when I realised what was going to be needed. 

You are certainly not likely to solve this one by randomly placing the pieces in the holes. You need to think and plan and unless you have an incredible memory you will almost certainly need to take some notes. I agree with Yuu-san's rating of 2/5 but don't let that low difficulty put you off - it is actually a nice diversion.

A Packing Aha! Moment

Oleo 10

I have heard on FB that a whole lot of you are having lots of Hex courtesy of Ali and Big Steve and whilst a few of you are having trouble getting it up or keeping it up and a few more are struggling to put it in the correct hole, you all seem to be having a lot of fun. Luckily the risk of unwanted pregnancy is very low and accidentally catching a hexually transmitted disease is unheard of. My experience at home is that it is also very good for decreasing viral transmission as it improves social distancing (Mrs S is not interested in going anywhere near me and my extra demands for Hex). I have heard that the lovely Gil has helped Allard have some very dramatic complex Hex and formed a threesome with Derek - I am very very envious.

I am working again this weekend unfortunately so a short review for you today. Lucky for me PuzzleMaster has helped provide something special to show you.

I am very aware that almost all of my blog posts tend to be about very expensive and often hard to get puzzles and this does make me feel slightly guilty as not everyone can afford those puzzles or can get there in time before they are sold out (I saw that Eric's latest production that I was interested in sold out in less than 3 minutes whilst I was at work). Luckily for me, PuzzleMaster contacted me with an offer to let me have a copy of the latest design by Yuu Asaka to review. I have previously reviewed the incredible Jigsaw 29 by Yuu-san and absolutely loved it after overcoming a few mind-boggling struggles. I also bought and solved the Jigsaw 19 direct from him and loved that as well. I am not a huge fan of plastic and acrylic puzzles in general because they lack the soul and beauty that I normally go for but there is something very special about these puzzles that really attracts me. I have been meaning to try and get hold of copies of his other packing puzzles for over a year now but not yet gotten around to it. I saw this first on Facebook when Mine was showing it off and hoping to make it available for a bunch of puzzlers and a day or so later it appeared on the PuzzleMaster site. 

The Oleo 10 is one of Yuu-san's classic tray packing puzzles - this one consists of 10 pieces to fit in the 12 x 10 cm tray. There are long thin 4 black rectangles which fill the tray perfectly and 6 bright red (happy) circles to fit into the cutouts in the rectangles. Usually packing puzzles with lots of pieces are extremely difficult but this design actually looks simple at first sight. Simple??? Silly boy! I thought so initially...just line up the rectangles in the correct order to get enough holes to fill with all 6 circles. Yes, well erm...maybe not quite that simple.

There never seems to be 6 complete holes!

I fiddled with this when it arrived before having to cook dinner and even managed to get Mrs S ever so slightly interested (I think that she was just relieved that I wasn't pestering her for Hex again) and after a minute of play she gave up in disgust. After dinner we sat down for some TV and I worked on it with some help from one of the cats (not actually very helpful as he wouldn't lie still and kept knocking pieces out of my hands). 

After about an hour I came to the conclusion that I was doing it wrong (just like when I have Hex!) and I had to have a little think© - normally a painful thing for me. This time I had a sudden realisation that there was a very clever little trick I could try and this might produce something interesting. Another 5 minutes and it was solved - very clever! This is not a hugely tough puzzle - PuzzleMaster rate it as an 8 on their 5 to 10 scale and I might be tempted to say 7½. Despite the low difficulty level this is a wonderful little challenge and well worth adding to any puzzler's collection. After you have solved it, you really need to hand this to the non-puzzlers in your lives as it will keep them occupied for a little while but not be impossible for them to solve with a little thought. Just right as a belated Xmas present maybe? 

I really need to get the rest of Yuu-san's puzzles quite soon - there is just something so compulsive about them.

I hope that you all have a lovely Christmas - try to stay safe out there. Whilst it is not nice to avoid seeing your family and friends at this time of year (or any time), you really do not want to spread this awful virus around and possibly be responsible for the deaths of your nearest and dearest. Please try to stay at home and not mix with others outside your households. We can see that things have taken a turn for the worst throughout Europe - things are getting really tough in my own hospital now and I hate to think how bad it will be whilst at work when this post publishes on the Sunday afternoon. The US catastrophe continues on its' horrific path. Hospitals everywhere are filling up and quite soon we will be forced to turn people away at the doors despite being very ill and elective admissions will need to stop making cancer and cardiovascular outcomes worse. Just stay home and look after yourselves...please!