Wow! What a pressured week! Not only did I have an enormous set of puzzles from
Jakub and Jaroslav, but I also worked about 80 hours this week as well doing
some rather stressful stuff. Luckily for me, I find that puzzling is quite a
nice way to relax. It doesn't matter to me if I am failing to solve the puzzles
- the process of admiring them, the beautiful wood and playing with them to
admire the genius of the designers. I just find the whole process rather
soothing. It made a difficult week much more palatable.
Today I need to finish my reviews of the remaining puzzles - some of them have
already sold out but there might be a possibility that if people contact them
about these then a further batch might be made.
The Horns of Booth
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Interesting delivery arrangement
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5 pieces to fit in the box
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Who can resist a new packing puzzle from
Dr Latussek? This gorgeous creation using highly grained Acacia and Purpleheart has a
box with 5 very interesting pieces to be fitted inside. The opening in the box
is not big enough to have a piece enter sideways - there will have to be
rotations at some point during the solution - why doesn't this surprise me?
Volker is the master of restricted rotations. Looking at the pieces it looks
like there should be lots of room with maybe a number of large gaps between
pieces but despite this, the L shapes of the pieces interfere with each other
and the required rotations don't seem to be possible. This should be fun.
First, I had to read the thought processes that the good Dr went through
during the design process. He said:
"When I experimented with the tricube v some time ago to find a suitable
box for a certain number of v’s, I stumbled across some surprises. I was
thrilled with the new ideas that I hope to publish one day with
Pelikan.
I will start with a particularly nice experiment: I wanted to put six
broken v’s into the FRITZ-FLOP box, into which six v’s fit without much
challenge. When a v is broken in the middle two identical parts are
created, which I wanted to put back together in a staggered way. The
result should be six parts that look as if the two ends of the Tetra
cube L have been cut off. As so often happens, I was unable to solve the
task I had set myself. I couldn’t find a move that would convince me and
would have given you a headache in the search for it. But when I left
out a piece and experimented with only five pieces, THE HORNS OF BOOTH
was quickly found.
I found the movement convincing, especially because this puzzle has a
feature that I appreciate: the box and the pieces have to be turned and
tilted to fit. This is the only way to ensure that the pieces move
harmoniously around the box without getting stuck. I really like that.
THE HORNS OF BOOTH is not suitable for a solution video with a rigid
focus on the opening in the box. Discover and enjoy the interplay of the
five pieces and the box with me. Then you won’t need a solution video
either."
As usual, I started with searching for a 3x3x2 assembly and found a couple
quite quickly. Obviously, the shape created can be rotated 90º 4 times as
well as inverted giving a lot of possibilities to search through. With most
of these types of puzzles, working in reverse from the assembled shape is
helpful for me - several of the starting positions are obviously impossible
with no piece even remotely removable if it began in that state. After an
hour or so, I had honed my search down to 2 possible assemblies (I have to
say that the insertion and removal of the last piece to go in the box is
rather lovely. Having done that, finding a way to insert them through the
reasonably large but not quite large enough hole is a fun challenge. I did
bear in mind the Fritz Flop puzzle and some of the moves required for that
which did help. If you have done a few other packing puzzles with angles of
45º then you will have a head start but there is quite a lot to do. When I
found the required move, all I could do was sit back and gasp at the beauty
of the sequence. This is a stunning puzzle - unfortunately sold out just now
but hopefully another batch will be made. Dr Latussek is a genius!
PSI
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PSI by Girish Sharma
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This beautiful
burr
designed by
Girish Sharma is still in stock as I write. It is a classical 6 piece burr shape made
from absolutely stunning Bubinga that Girish has altered to make a whole lot
more interesting. He has taken the standard 2x2x6 burr sticks and added an
extra voxel or two along one of the short axes to make a few of the pieces
2x3x6 and yet still assemble into the standard shape. You can see that there
is something rather different from the outside by the presence of odd extra
cubies visible where you wouldn't expect them. The upshot of Girish's
alteration is that it makes the burr much more interesting to explore. Parts
get blocked when you think that you are making progress and also the level
increases enormously.
I managed after a couple of evenings of play to get to a fairly widely
separated bunch of pieces but nowhere further to go. I went back and forth
(creating a muscle memory for later reassembly) and really struggled to find
the next move. Finally, after a lot of work changing the orientation of the
puzzle in my hands and searching inside the shape I had, I found a lovely
clever move that effectively split the puzzle in half. After that, I was able
to fully dismantle it and take a photo:
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Not "just" a six piece burr!
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Only the very best of you will be able to assemble this from scratch (you know
who you are). I had to resort to Burrtools to tell me the placement of the
pieces but was able to reassemble it from there by muscle memory. This was a
wonderful little challenge.
It would appear that there is a second challenge"
"By the way, another side goal of the puzzle is to figure out the full form
of PSI"
I'm afraid I have no idea what this means - to me PSI means pounds per
square inch but that's not really helpful. 😱
Sym Duo
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Sym Duo by Frederic Boucher
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This
delight
from
Frederic Boucher is also still available for sale. It was originally sent out to me in the
assembled state but I have convinced Jakub that it should be sent out with a
false assembly to give you all an extra challenge. It is very nicely made from
Limba, Ovangkol and Cherry woods. I originally thought that the primary aim is a
packing puzzle to place all the pieces in the box so that the entry is filled.
This part of the challenge is fun and not terribly tough for those of you who
are used to TICs or doing the amazing packing puzzles by Osanori-san and
Alexander-san. There is a rather clever little move to get the pieces in
correctly which is rather satisfying.
The real challenge from Frederic is to use the two shapes to make a series of
symmetrical shapes. I have found 1 rotational symmetry and 5 mirror symmetries
- I am not particularly good at these types of challenges but with these
shapes they are remarkably fun and tactile to play with. It will keep you
going for a good couple of hours.
Yes U Can
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Yes U Can by Frederic Boucher
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My goodness! Frederic Boucher is having a good time these days! This is yet
another puzzle
designed by him in this release. Made from a particularly beautiful
combination of Wenge, Padauk & Mahogany, this will be delightful to fiddle
with. Unfortunately it is now sold out but maybe it will be recreated if
enough people ask jakub. Like the Sym Duo, this is a two-fer - there were two
challenges in one puzzle.
The obvious challenge is to place all the pieces in the box. It is made
significantly more difficult by the present of 2 glued cubies inside the box.
Rotations are required and add to the challenge. I found two assemblies that
would fit in the box but I think the aim is to place them all inside with the
single tetromino hidden by the pentominos. Make sure that you look for and
find both.
The next, and to my mind, much more difficult challenge is to take the 6
pieces and arrange them in such a way that the red tetromino is completely
surrounded by the U-shaped pentominos. This is possible in several ways and is
a fun thing to try but much more difficult is the challenge to completely
surround it so that the red piece cannot be seen through from any angle
through any of the drilled holes. I have never tried puzzles like this and
find that I do not have the skills to do it. Embarrassingly, this took me a
good hour of trial and error. I do not know if there is a good method for this
sort of thing -
let me know
if you have any techniques.
5 Balls
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5 Balls by Frederic Boucher
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Don't you love a puzzle that has an instruction sheet?
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OMG! Yes,
another incredible design
by Frederic! This wonderful series of challenges is made from Wenge and Maple
with 5 nice large chromed steel ball bearings - it has it's own case to store
the pieces and will keep you occupied for quite a long time.
The first challenge is to use the 4 L shapes to hide all 5 balls with a mirror
symmetric shape. Yet again, I am terrible at these puzzles. he first thing
that occurred to me was that the hollows in the wooden pieces should be placed
next to each other to enclose a ball bearing but there are only 8 hollows to
enclose 5 balls. That requires some thought© which is a weakness of mine. I
spent a good hour searching and did manage to hide ask 5 balls but there was
absolutely no way I could do it with a mirror symmetrical shape. There are
only so many ways to put the pieces together into an effective ring shape but
none of them were symmetrical. After more than a week of trying I have gotten
nowhere near solving that part of it.
Challenge two is to create a symmetrical shape using the 4 L's on their sides
with the balls sitting in the cavities. To make this particularly hard, the
shape created by the L's should be mirror symmetrical but also the position of
the balls should be symmetrical too. I do not know whether the whole thing
should be a single symmetry or the wood and the balls are different
symmetries. Yet again, I have been at it for a week and haven't got even close
to a solution. My brain just doesn't work this way - I remember that the 2
piece
Symmetrick puzzle
from Tomas Linden took me many many months to solve. I just don't stand a
chance but it is fun to try.
The final challenge which I did have more success with is to take the pieces
from challenge 2 and to created a 3x4 rectangle with the balls assembled into
all of the 11 shapes in the diagram above. Some of them are relatively simple
but a few are a huge challenge and I think some might be impossible! At least
I have completely failed at a few of them so far. There is a lot of puzzling
for you money with this one and who can resist a puzzle with a storage box?
Serial Squares NTC
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Serial Squares NTC by Lucie Pauwels
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This gorgeous tray packing puzzle by Lucie has been made from Ash, Wenge,
Acacia and a vibrant Padauk. It also remains
in stock. When I first took it out of the box, I wondered whether it was a sliding
piece puzzle but in the configuration it arrived in that was impossible and
after that I thought it might be a packing puzzle. A little thought told me
that would be trivial. There must be something more to it. I then decided that
the aim was to pack the pieces in the tray in such a way that no single colour
shared an edge in common. This was a fun challenge but did only take me about
10 minutes:
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No edges of the same colour touch
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I have played with many of Lucie's puzzles and none of them are as trivial as that! It was time to read the instructions! Oh boy! She wanted the pieces to be packed in with no adjacent pieces matching colours on either edges OR corners! That was going to be a massive challenge - there are apparently 2 solutions but I have completely failed to find them myself. I do not have any idea how you go about doing this sort of thing. If you do put by trial and error then how do you keep track of what you have attempted after a few failed tries? I also have to ask, how do we know that there are only 2 solutions?
This is a beautiful and frustrating challenge that will keep you all busy for hours if not months!
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