Pelikan's Post IPP Release

Wow! Just Wow!

Soon to be released by Jakub and team!

I seem to have received a delivery at the beginning of last week and the race was on. I had 7 fabulous creations to work on in just under 2 weeks. The upcoming puzzles from Pelikan are expected to be released later this week - probably 31/7.

From Back left we have:

Cabrio by Dr Volker Latussek

Cubi 8 Plus Alpha by Frederic Boucher

Camel by Theo Geerinck

Hitch by Émil Áskerli

Minima Tower by Frederic Boucher

Unlawful Assembly by Pit Khiam Goh

Curly Burr N8 by Frans de Vreugt

This is an amazing set of puzzle designs and beautifully created by the Pelikan team - there will definitely be something for everyone here.

Unlawful Assembly

Unlawful assembly by Pit Khiam Goh

I started with this delightful puzzle by the master of sliding move puzzles. I already own this one made from acrylic but the wooden one looks much more lovely. Pelikan have constructed this one from Garapa, Bubinga and Oak with wonderfully contrasting colours and a stunningly finished tray to pack the pieces into. There are 4 identical stepped pieces and a cross to fit inside the tray with the challenge being made by the fact that there is a considerable lip covering the tray making insertion of more than 3 pieces quite challenging. It is fairly easy to work out several possible square(ish) assemblies that might fit when playing outside the tray but getting them into the tray quickly gets quite confusing. The temptation is to try and squeeze one of the pieces diagonally under the lip of the tray but don't bother - that requires force and is the wrong way to do it.

The first time I worked on it, the solution took me a good hour or so to solve and that was only because I was familiar with the type of challenge. I gave this to a couple of my assistants/ODPs at work and watched them spend a couple of hours failing to solve it. Eventually I came back to the pieces all packed inside and I happily told them they had cheated! The pieces were in the conformation that can only be done by force. At this point they couldn't remove the pieces and a joint broke forcing it out. This is a great puzzle for beginners but don't let them attempt it unsupervised.

This puzzle should be in everyone's collection!

Curly Burr N8

Curly Burr N8 by Frans de Vreugt

This has been beautifully made with Maple and Merbau. Frans is an interesting designer - he is not prolific but everything he designs has something very different from the usual run of the mill burr designs. There are either interesting shapes or, more usually, interesting ways that the pieces interact and move. The Curly Burr N8 is definitely designed along those lines...it looks like a standard 6 piece and, indeed, there are 6 pieces, but they form frames that interlock inside each other along the same axis as well as interlocking along perpendicular axis. The upshot of this is that the pieces need to move apart from each other before any axial movements can occur. This makes it much more fun and much more mind-bending to solve. There are a few blind ends but not along long pathways and then the first piece comes apart after just 8 very odd moves. After this the remainder dismantles sequentially. The moves are so unusual that despite paying proper attention to what I had done, I could not reassemble it without Burrtools.

6 pieces that look like standard burr sticks

I think that even the burr aficionados amongst you will find the reassembly from scratch a real challenge  due to the unusual way the burr pieces move.

Camel

Front side

Back side

Yes!!!! I adore the animal themed puzzles that Jakub and Jaroslav produce. I know they are often very difficult to design and manufacture but they are just so lovely and give me an excuse to keep another one on display in my living room. Mrs S was away when this batch came in and when I showed her the photo of the delivery even she admitted the camel was very cute and really realistic. It has been crafted from American Cherry which gives it a rich brown "camel" colour. This is a collaboration with a master designer and craftsman, Theo Geerinck which means that the solution will be interesting as well as good looking.  

When first playing with it, only 3 pieces move and I comically pushed and pulled them and then tried to rip the legs or head off it. Of course, that doesn't work. I don't think any self-respecting camel will let you tear a leg or head off without complaining vigorously at you. I was stumped at this point for a rather long time. The fun thing with these sorts of layered constructions is that you cannot tell by looking at them which parts are supposed to be mobile and which are glued together. This leaves you pushing and pulling pretty much everything that you can get a grip on. After a whole day of getting nowhere, I tried a new technique and there was a "click". Aha! Then another click and another before I was able to remove a piece of camel anatomy. Before long I had the poor animal in pieces on my table and was able to see the ingenious locking mechanism which included a couple of pieces that are hidden inside. I scrambled the pieces and left it for a couple of hours and attempted the reassembly. Whilst not impossibly difficult, even that was a fun challenge as I had lost my orientation of several pieces.

This is wonderful and perfect to display as part of a puzzle menagerie.

Hitch

Hitch by Émil Áskerli

Émil is another very interesting designer producing burrs and interlocking puzzles with pieces that have clever ways of interacting. His Puzzlewillbeplayed page is absolutely fascinating. I initially thought that Hitch puzzle (made from Purpleheart and Zebrano) was a straightforward burr but I have ended up reclassifying it in my database as an "Interlocking puzzle". It looks like an 8 piece burr and is indeed made from 8 sticks but the interaction is interesting and requires a series of moves that lead logically one into the next until it is disassembled. Does this sound too easy? Fear not, the moves are very nicely hidden. Initially there are a few pieces that can move and the whole puzzle can form several different shapes at first. I went round and round in circles from shape to shape and looking to see whether it freed anything up. It requires careful inspection of all the pieces that you have in each conformation until you suddenly notice that a new move might be possible. Pelikan have constructed this nice and tight so that nothing moves without a deliberate attempt meaning you need to actually work out what to try rather than random pushing and pulling of the pieces.

Not really classical burr sticks

Only 7 moves are required to remove the first piece and 13 for complete disassembly but the discovery aspect is joyous. Even more fun (and definitely possible because I did it) is to reassemble it from scratch with scrambled pieces. A few of you may be able to do it without memory of the disassembly, but most experienced puzzlers should be able to work out the assembly with a little work. It's brilliant!

Cabrio

Cabrio by Volker Latussek
Doesn't look like much but it is absolutely brilliant!

No Pelikan release is complete without a design from Dr Latussek! When opening the package, it looks very understated. All you can see is a very nicely crafted box made from American Walnut which Pelikan have failed to close properly. Pulling off the lid reveals some rather lovely Zebrano pieces inside forming an apparent 3x3x3 cube. No wonder the lid couldn't close properly - it needs to be slid on from the side and the pieces are in the way.

Looks like a cube

5 pieces to be packed

The upshot of the sliding mechanism of the lid is that this is effectively a 7 piece puzzle with the pieces needing to interact with the base and the lid to get the cube inserted inside and the puzzle closed. It is very reminiscent of the fantastic Slide Packing puzzle by Hajime Katsumoto that won the Puzzlers award in 2016. This time instead of just 4 pieces to insert, there are 5 and 3 of them are non-planar shapes which makes the solution really quite counterintuitive.


I found quite a few 3x3x3 cube shapes that were possible but of course they all blocked the assembly of the lid and needed to start with a completely fresh way of thinking about this. Like many of Volker's puzzles, you need to think about the last piece to be inserted and how you might get access to that and then try and work with the remaining pieces and the lid to make that final assembly possible. There are 2 obvious possibilities for the final piece but then you will realise that you also need a proper plan for the penultimate piece and it is not as straightforward as you might anticipate. I worked on this for several days before I had a glorious Aha! moment and managed to put the lid on properly. This is a work of genius, just like the predecessor.

Are the pieces inside? Take my word for it - after a several day struggle, they are!

Cubi 8 Plus Alpha

Cubi 8 Plus Alpha by Frederic Boucher

This startlingly gorgeous creation by Frederic Boucher is one of the picks of the bunch this release. Not only is it stunning, it is also a very very challenging fun design. Frederic has an amazing and rather warped mind. He has collaborated with several of the very best craftsmen in the world to get his designs to the masses as well as makes some limited runs of his puzzles himself. I am delighted that he was able to find someone willing to make such a complex puzzle available. This beautiful creation has been produced by Pelikan from Wenge, Pink Oak, Purpleheart and acrylic. 

Some very interesting shapes here

There are 8 cubes with sticks of 2 different lengths which, when assembled together, form a 2x2 cube.  I have to admit that just making the cube (albeit with some holes) is a massive undertaking and really quite fun - its a sort of 3D jigsaw that has to slide together in order. However, the real challenge is to pack that cube inside the box so that no holes are visible from outside (unique solution). through a 1 cubie sized hole in the box. Frederic wrote that the pieces interract together like a train on its tracks during solving.

This puzzle is amazing and very very difficult! I might have needed some help with this one! 😱

Minima Tower

Minima Tower by Frederic Boucher

Allard has shown off a whole series of the amazing Minima puzzles created by Frederic and there are a good few more to come. Eric Fuller even converted one into a sequential discovery puzzle. Here we have one of the designs beautifully made by Pelikan from Mahogany and Ash. It doesn't look like much with a 2x2x4 box (upright it will be a tower, hence the name) and 4 simple L-shaped triominoes to be placed inside so that the 5 square holes are each covered by a piece of Ash. There is a single 1x2 voxel entryway. The box has lots and lots of finger holes for you to manipulate the pieces as there will be rotations required. I have only been working on this one for a day and so far not got even close to a solution. These puzzles are a delight and a real challenge but still very approachable by both beginners and advanced puzzlers alike. This will also be an essential purchase for many of you.

This is an absolutely amazing batch of puzzles to be released this time. There is definitely something that you will enjoy. My favourites are the Camel, the Cabrio and Minima Tower. 

Taking it Slow but NOT Easy

Matrix by Émil Áskerli

Unfortunately work has interfered with my puzzling and blogging this weekend - the NHS never stops and never sleeps and as the pandemic begins to ease again, the workload to try and catch up with the backlog is going to increase. Unfortunately I am missing a virtual MPP and having to write this review in advance.

My friend Johan Heyns unfortunately decided to abandon making puzzles (except for his own enjoyment) and selling them on his store which is now shut down. I am very pleased that in the few years that he was selling I managed to buy quite a few of his creations (starting with the phenomenal Really Bent Board Burr designed by Derek Bosch). Most of Johan's puzzles had a number of features in common - he made them from sticks which he cut very accurately and then glued together (this is really obvious in the photo above) and also almost all of his creations were supplied with a stand especially designed to hold a particular puzzle. Some of the stands are almost as complex as the puzzle itself and I distinctly recall that one of them needed assembly and it took me ages to actually work out how to put just the stand together!

Stand perfectly designed for the puzzle

Tray of shame! Matrix always present.

Back in 2017 I bought the Matrix puzzle from Johan. It looked interesting as a stick burr that was combined with a complex frame made from interlocking boards. This puzzle does not have a particularly high difficulty level with a solution requiring only 45 moves to remove all pieces (21.3.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.3.2). Despite this so called ease, I have been completely unable to solve it for years. Many puzzles like that get shelved and brought out periodically to be tried again (and again and again) being put away between attempts each time. The Matrix, however, was different...the moves were really quite interesting and I always seemed to be making progress but then getting stuck about 15 or 16 moves into the solution. I couldn't bring myself to put it away and it would always end up returning to my tray of puzzles I am "currently" playing with. It has been on that tray in the living room for 5 years being picked up and fiddled with every few weeks/months. Always always, I would get stuck at exactly the same spot. Maybe I was down a dead end? It seemed unlikely that one would be this long but I could not find an alternate path and have remained fixated on this blasted puzzle for years.

There is something really special about the designs from Émil Áskerli - Eric made the Clamped cubes back in 2017 (if Eric makes something you can always assume that itis a very interesting puzzle)

Clamped cubes

Clamped cubes pieces - looks simple?

I also received a gorgeous version of Émil's Tvan from Johan and it also remains compulsively unsolved but stunningly beautiful on display.

Tvan on stand

This week, I have had to medicate one of our boyz and he is not enjoying the process. In the evening, by the time I get to settle down with a puzzle, he is usually clamped to my lap and I realise that I have forgotten to put out any of my new acquisitions to play with. So this week I have been forced in the evenings to continue playing with Matrix - after all, it has been within reach for 4 years!

Each day I have repeated the same sequence of moves and been unable to get any further until Thursday when I have a fabulous Aha! moment. I've found a move...a REALLY complex move that involves the frame shifting along with several of the sticks. I don't know why I found it this time. I suspect that I must have been holding the puzzle in such a way as to squeeze it and initiate the move. Johan doesn't use a smooth lacquer to finish his creations and this may have created some friction which made it harder to find the hidden move. Having found the new move, I was on my way and I quickly laid a pile of pieces on the purring boy. It soon became obvious that I was never going to get this back together again without Burrtools and have spent a happy few hours creating the solution file.

At long last!!!!

Absolutely brilliant puzzle! I hope that Émil continues to design and that other craftsmen will make his designs. I know that Johan has several other hobbies and a grandchild keeping him busy. I will miss getting puzzles from him as they are very different to those produced by others. I hope that everyone who went to the MPP had a good time? Hopefully we will be able to meet and play in person soon.

Finally, I know that some of you have subscribed to my email list to get these articles emailed to you. Unfortunately, Google has announced that it is withdrawing this service very soon. I apologise for this - I am still looking into making a jump away from the Blogger platform (as Steve C has done with his Boxes and Booze site) which has become increasingly frustrating to use. This is another factor motivating me to jump ship - hopefully I can find the time to do it sometime soon.