Good Puzzling Comes in Three's?

Three Pieces? Or Three Puzzles?

TripTIC

NeuroTIC

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.

After spending a few minutes trying to rearrange the pieces in vertical positions from the placements they arrive in, I quickly realised that vertical placement was definitely not going to cut it! This one is damned fiddly - the tolerances of the woodwork is astonishing! Even a tiny amount of tilt to a piece will get it wedged in amongst the other pieces and require a frenzied shaking and tapping of the box on your palm to free them up. After ½ an hour of repeated attempts in the box, I had to start to think© outside the box and realised that it was not quite a case of simply shoving the pieces inside in the correct order and orientation. The pieces needed to be placed and some of them slid into position inside. It's a very satisfying feeling when the final piece drops in and the lid fits on top snugly.

Trust me, all the T's are inside

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.

Girish's Wooden Entanglement Puzzles

Twisted Rabbit by Girsh Sharma made by Brian Menold

Last week I reviewed a fabulous assembly puzzle designed by Girish Sharma (Shiba Inu) from Pelikan (2 still in stock) and marvelled at the amazing way he is able to create burrs as assembly puzzles that are accessible to the average puzzler (although still very difficult) and very interesting in their challenge and design. Shortly before the Pelikan puzzles arrived, I received a lovely little batch of beauties from Brian Menold's Wood Wonders store. When they were announced, I had to force myself to decide on just a few to add to the collection because I can no longer see even a hint of my desk and the piles of puzzles to be solved are starting to get embarrassingly large in several other rooms of the house much to the disgust and anger of "someone else" who lives here. She has just said that I remind her of those hoarders that we see on TV occasionally living in filth. I did have to protest that they are all very clean which earned me a stare and an implied threat.

Not only does Girish design burrs but he also designs Turning Interlocking Cubes (TICs) which have gotten more and more complex over the last few years. Some of them are quite fearsome in their complexity. There were 3 in Brian's recent release and I got them all.

First up was Snake Eyes - I had thought that having only 2 pieces, it might be a nice starter, slightly easier puzzle to begin with having not done any TICs for a while. The copy I received was made from Cerejeira and Movingui which made a beautiful contrast. The international postal service had broken a joint on mine and I was delayed in my play by having to glue it back together again. Interestingly, there is only one way the 2 pieces can be interlocked into each other which is always helpful at first and then I  realised that there were lots of possible rotations that can be done. I started moving them about and getting increasingly worried that I will never get them apart again when I found that I had gone in a full circle and they fell apart on me. That was unexpected! Try again and yet again they rotated around each other in a full circle before finding myself at the beginning. I was obviously missing a move (or 2 or 3 or ...). In fact, this reminded me very much of quite a few of the wire disentanglement puzzles I have played with over the years. Lots of moves that I struggle to remember before ending up at the start. Frustrating but fun. Having done Einstein proud by repeating the same thing over and over again, I finally had enough memory of my moves to be able to recognise my path and also explore ways to get off that path. Several of them ended up nowhere but finally after about 2 days of fiddling, I got my Aha! moment. It is lovely - just 2 pieces and yet so very clever:

Two Twisted rabbits intertwined...at last

Next up was the 3 piece TIC released at the same time (also by Girish) - Snake Eyes

Snake Eyes by Girish and Brian

This version is made using Cerejeira, Wenge and Sipo. I expected this to be a significant step up in challenge and was not disappointed. Brian wrote this:

"Lots of moves and rotations. I think I lost track of the rotations at 9 and the moves at 30! A really fun challenge always has lots of rotations. This puzzle holds up its end in that regard."

3 pieces means that you need to make a choice where to start and I chose wrongly at first because I'm an eejit. I should have picked the 2 pieces that had a restricted way of being introduced. Luckily I realised my error quickly. The two critical pieces can be entangled in 2 ways but just thinking about the end position (of which there are 2 possibilities) narrows it down. Yes, I used thought© not random trial and error to choose my starting positions and then started rotating. Oh boy! There are a LOT of rotations! I lost count well before the 9 that Brian did. Thinking that I might have gone too far, I backtracked to the beginning a few times until, at one point, I found that I couldn't get back to the start. I was fully committed to this puzzle now. It needed another 2 days to find my way through - and that was just those two starting pieces! Yet again, Girish has designed a wooden entanglement puzzle here with more constraints than a wire one has. It is marvellous! Once I had the first two pieces correctly placed, it was obvious where the final one went and only a bit of work to back track to make space and then sequentially lock them all together:

3 pieces make my cube - the Snake eyes are visible

I have some serious concerns about being able to take it apart again. I have absolutely no idea how I did it! Yay! Brilliant fun - always looking for more from this great pairing of craftsman and designer.

Yesterday was the last MPP of the year and for once I wasn't working. I headed down to Birmingham and joined the boys for a day of fun, puzzling and a kebab. I am sure that Allard will be writing a story about it soon. Mrs S immediately commented on my arrival home that I had left with 1 box of puzzles and arrived home with 2! Whack! Ouch!

Here is what I got:

Not a bad puzzle haul - it includes what Ali brought back from IPP for me
The cardboard box is a new one from Kyle Chester Marsden with a Xmas theme (I'm saving it for then)

When I took the photo, I actually missed the extra gift from Stefan - he has perfected Micro 3D printing and made a Soma cube with box that are so small that you need tweezers. The one I got was the big one because age made me fearful of not being able to focus on the even smaller one!

Each Voxel is 1mm!

Chasing the Serpent's Tail - Uroborus

Uroborus by Girish Sharma made by Brian Menold

Another week goes by and I make absolutely no headway solving either the Box of Celts or Vertigo puzzles. Yep! Not even the first step of each! I am truly not terribly bright - but, I will keep at it. Perseverance is definitely my thing. In desperation, I turned to yet another of Brian Menold's gorgeous creations, the Uroborus designed by the incredibly talented Girish Sharma (he seems to be catching up with the master of the TIC, Andrew Crowell). It was Girish' second entry into the IPP design competition in 2022.

This puzzle is a more suitable size to be putting in my work bag for intermittent play when I get a quiet moment. It saw the light of day on several occasions and completely bamboozled me for quite a long time. There are "only" three pieces to be interlocked so should really not be hugely difficult. Despite this "should not be difficult", I really struggle to find an assembly for the 3 pieces even without actually trying to navigate the rotations. I was able to work out how to interlock any 2 of them in a few different ways but each time there did not appear to be any way that the third piece could fit into the 3D structure. This impasse went on for several days until I finally found a possible assembly. Time to navigate the rotations...

This is where it all got a bit frustrating. I am sure that you can all hear Girish laughing at me from wherever you are in the world. All three pieces end with a corner to corner gap and thus appear to be very restricted in how they can be introduced to each other. I figured to myself that I should start with the two larger ones and after a bit of dizziness inducing rotation I managed to get them interlocked in the correct position (yay!). Now it was time to introduce the third one and here lay a big problem. I tried for hours and hours and could not do it. Maybe I should start with a large one and the small one? AT this point, I had a horrible realisation that I had been wasting hours on an impossible assembly! 😱

Had I started with those two pieces from the beginning I would have very quickly realised that I had decided upon and attempted something impossible! This situation is quite unusual for these puzzles. I have previously found that the first difficult stage of finding the possible assemblies usually ends with just one possibility leading to a prolonged attempt at actually getting it together. Here, however, there are obviously (in retrospect) more than one assembly. Aargh! Time to find another one.

Finding the first assembly had taken several days and I was rather anxious that it might take weeks to find the other one (not helped by the fact that I am terrible at remembering what I have tried before). Getting increasingly desperate, I finally found another assembly and set to putting it together. This time I tried to make sure that the small piece could physically be placed (it is very limited in the rotations it can do due to the small hole in the middle). This proved easily possible and gave me the confidence to try assembling the larger pieces. Oh boy! Brian wasn't wrong when he said that the rotations were dizziness inspiring. There were quite a lot of turns involved and a few required very precise placement of the pieces before a particular move was possible. After about an hour, I had what I needed and then got the third piece attached as well - Yeehaw! Solved it!

Uroborus solved!

Dismantling the bloody thing was also a fun challenge. Needless to say, I had completely lost track of all the various rotations required and even had forgotten the direction to move in. I was stuck for quite a while this morning trying to take it apart again. 

This puzzle may look relatively easy but it really wasn't. It took the best part of a week of swearing before I found the solution. It definitely has two phases with almost equal difficulty. Finding the correct assembly was horrendously tough for me and then the assembly almost as hard. I created a BT file to establish how many possible assemblies there are and was horrified to see that there are 5 and presumably only 1 is actually achievable. Girish, you are a genius!

So “Easy” That It Took Me a Week

The Persistence of Memory
Just look at the beautiful grain in that!

Having splurged a little while ago and had a delivery of beauties from Brian's wonderful Wood Wonders store. There have been so many fabulous designs produced recently that I had to be pretty choosy in which ones I ordered. Mrs S is already unhappy with the state of my desk and study and I daren't upset her too much more. Of course, no puzzle purchase is complete without something from my friend Alexander Magyarics - he has a warped incredible mind! I particularly adore his cube packing puzzles with a restricted entry and the Persistence of Memory looked fun and not too difficult. Hahaha! Silly me!

It was sold in 2 versions and I am addicted to beautiful wood. Hence the puzzle that arrived was simply stunning - the Box made from Kosso and the pieces made from Boire. Brian stated that this one is similar in design to Collator and, of course, I checked my database of puzzles to see that I definitely had a copy of that one, had solved it and even written about it here. I can see the similarity in design and, as usual, I have absolutely no recollection of solving this one and certainly no memory of how it is solved. Don't tell Mrs S, but I probably only need about 15 puzzles and can rotate through them repeatedly without remembering any solutions - luckily she is very very keen not to read my blog! I guess that I should probably seek out this one again and have a play. 

I have been really really busy with work recently and had little time at home to play. I therefore packed this one into my work bag to show off and hopefully solve during a quiet moment (if I ever get one). The beautiful wood and exceptional finish on this beauty was much admired at work and I even got to play with it a few times. Just like Collator, it has a restricted entry box and 3 pieces of a shape that significantly restricts how they can be inserted inside. Unlike Collator, there are quite a few ways to make a 3x3x3 cube but the entry restrictions are very important. The most complex piece can only be inserted in 3 possible orientations and the next in also just 3. This should cut down all the shapes to attempt and also make the puzzle easier. That may be true for some people but I was seriously flummoxed by the restrictions. After a couple of days of attempts, I managed to pack all 3 pieces inside but the entry holes were not filled - this made me feel ever so slightly less stupid but was not the solution. Perseverance is not only the name of the puzzle but also the name of the game for me! I had to keep at it. Finally, this morning after a whole week of work, I had a wonderful Aha! moment. 

My goodness! That was difficult!

Whilst the assembly of the 3x3x3 cube is simple, the insertion into the box is a significant challenge. It requires 17 moves to assemble it (BT gives the disassembly a level 11.3.3)

I left it assembled for a little while for the photos and to try and forget the moves and found that just disassembling the puzzle is a challenge. It is difficult to see inside the box and work out what is happening. 

This is a really good puzzle - it's probably too difficult to be a casual puzzle to hand to people at work or visitors at home - whilst I am not terribly bright and it took me a week, most casual puzzlers would not be able to solve this in a reasonable period of time. If you get the chance to play with it or find a copy up for sale (along with Collator) then don't hesitate - it is fabulous!

Thank you Brian and Alexander

Always Take Your Photos First!

Neighburr designed by Christophe Lohe made by Brian Menold

Sigh! I have to say it yet again...I'm an eejit! I caused myself a flurry of work at the last moment for this post because I wasn't paying attention. I blame it on the fact that Mrs S is back "ooop North" again and I am home alone with a disturbed cat and a workload that is just too high including having to work the weekend yet again! The disturbed cat is gradually being made better by Prozac - yes, he's on the happy pills and making me look like a coke addict. Every couple of days I can be seen cutting a white powder on a glass coaster with a razor blade! The capsules are 20mg and I need to give him 2.5mg, hence I open capsules, pour out white powder and use a double edged razor to portion it into eighths and into little spoons for each day. The image is perfect, all I need is a rolled up £50 note and I am ready to be arrested! 😱😱😱

Having given my excuses, here is todays puzzle and what I did:

Bouquet

I had a little splurge with Brian Menold's Woodwonders store (I cannot resist the gorgeous woods and his fabulous choices in puzzles) and one of the delights was a caged 6 piece burr designed by Christophe Lohe - the Neighburr. I love burrs in general but I am hopelessly addicted to caged burrs - especially if they are caged 6 piece burrs because the addition of the cage can turn a relatively straight-forward exploration of simple moves into a wonderful interlocking nightmare. It is also made much more fun when the basic grid for the pieces strays away from the standard 2x2xn grid. The Neighburr has burr sticks based on a 2x3x6 grid and ads in the feature that one end is 2x3 and the other 2x2. This allows for much more interesting shapes and interaction. My copy has a wonderfully white Holly frame and the pieces are beautifully coloured Koto (white), Kirandy (yellow) and Redheart. This puzzle is very reminiscent of the Bouquet that I bought and wrote about a few years ago. That one was a fantastic challenge with a level of 23.3.5.3.3 and this one was described as an even harder level 34.3.2.2 - who could resist? Chris has a special skill with his designs - he always manages to find interesting shapes, interesting moves and just the right difficulty level.

Having received a bunch of puzzles from Brian, I put a few of them in my work bag and started playing whenever I had a brief moment at work. The disturbed cat was interfering with my ability to concentrate at home! There are quite a few moves open to you initially and all but one fails to lead very far which is also part of Chris' special skill. As you work your way in the puzzle does become a little rickety and require a little bit of control of the pieces to allow subsequent moves to happen but no rotations seem to be possible to inadvertently knock you off progress. On several occasions I got lost and couldn't seem to progress or find my way back but always after a little panic found my way to the start. In my usual to and fro process, I managed to gradually work my way in. This puzzle has a wonderful unlocking sequence with a lock mechanism being used, moving a piece before re-locking and then carrying on with another piece. The sequence of Aha! moments is wonderful.

I got to a point where there were a good few pieces sticking right out but not actually free. Everything could be seen inside but I just couldn't find the next move. At this point it was time to extubate a patient and I put it down for a couple of hours. The break did me good, on picking it back up, I could see the next moves straight away and I removed my first piece. Time to back-track. Except...I tilted the puzzle to align the removed piece and a precariously hanging second piece fell out on to my anaesthetic machine. Aargh! I bent down to pick it up hoping that I remembered the correct orientation and tilted it again whereupon 2 more pieces fell out - Double aargh! At this point with my surgeon laughing at me, there was no hope that I would be able to assemble it again without Burrtools. To be honest, I don't really mind that because making the BT file is all part of the fun.

Interesting pieces

I took my photo this morning of the pieces and looked through my photo database and to my horror realised that I had dismantled this one without taking my initial photo. I needed to make my BT file and reassemble it before I could blog about it. As I said above - I'm an eejit! When I went to BT to enter the pieces I suddenly found that this was not an easy one to enter the starting shape without having an assembled puzzle, or at least a photo to use as a reference. Luckily Brian has photos in his archive gallery but even then, this one is a bit awkward to enter into BT without having a puzzle to rotate around and look at from all angles. My initial attempts produced a puzzle with no solutions but after a bit of fiddling with my pieces and pushing them into the frame and rotating it around, I managed it and reassembled the puzzle.

This is absolutely terrific as I have come to expect from Chris. It even has some repeatability due to the lovely locking mechanism. 

Now, it's time to clean the litter tray (yuk!) and spend some time with the disturbed cat whilst playing with some of the others I received from Brian:

Uroborus by Girish Sharma

Persistence of memory by Alexander Magyarics

RIB

RIBlet

RIBeye

Yep! A series of wonderful Ribs designed by Andrew Crowell. These are 6 piece board burrs that need to be assembled with rotations. I hope that I have more luck with these than with the RIPley board burr which I haven't managed to assemble after quite a few years!

Brian and Girish Make a Fabulous Pairing

Clutch 1 by Girish Sharma

When Brian Menold offers new puzzles then I jump at the chance and place an order. Now, I am sure that a whole lot of you will be about to say that the Clutch 1 puzzle is NOT a new puzzle and you would be absolutely right in shouting that at me. I noticed way back in 2022 that the Clutch 1 was the winner of a Jury Honourable Mention award in the IPP design competition. I took note that it looked like Brian's beautiful work and then promptly forgot about it. Shortly after that Brian began to offer it up for sale and I was either busy or ill or away or something because I completely missed it when they were released. Sheepishly, I contacted Brian to ask if he was planning to make any more and, phew, he said that he was planning at least one more set in the future. 

When it came out, I pounced and got my copy ordered (I think it was at the end of 2022 that I put in my order). Why am I only writing about it now? Because I am eejit! I realised that ordering only one puzzle would make the postage as much as the puzzle itself and I asked Brian to hold it for me. Then in 2 or 3 subsequent puzzle releases, I added one or two more of his gorgeous creations to the ever increasing set that he had held until a few weeks ago with the last release, I finally decided to brave the postal service and the wrath of "she who frightens the universe" and get them actually sent to me. They arrived whilst "she" was out and I managed to smuggle them in without her noticing. My desk is a huge mess again and she didn't notice the extra ones on it - hooray! I managed to nab both Clutch 1 and Clutch 2.

The Clutch puzzles were supposed to have been sent out in disassembled form to torture me more but Brian had a little brain slip. I received the Clutch 1 that had been intended for Rox and George's collection and they had specifically asked for them to be sent assembled (I suspect it is to prevent pieces getting lost in the sheer enormity of their collection and the vast numbers of arrivals) - it would appear that they will have the extra challenge intended for me as my copy went to them! Maybe Rox will chime in to let me know how she gets on?

To be perfectly honest, assembly puzzles make me very very nervous. I'm really not very good at them but these TICs have become some of my absolute favourite challenges and my skills have improved over several years of attempts. I set to on the assembled puzzle and realised that there are only 3 pieces to come apart so how hard could it be? Cough! Blush! It would appear that Girish is a master at the art of puzzle design and yes, it's VERY hard. There is quite a lot of possible movement and quite a few possible rotations as well. Except none of them seemed to go anywhere that I wanted them to. This was fabulous. I'm always anxious about the glued joints on these sorts of puzzles but the ones that might get a little force on them have been reinforced with attractive dowels. This sort of attention to detail is what keeps me buying from Brian.

I am embarrassed to say that the disassembly took me 2 days to work out! I am actually grateful to Brian for his mistake - I might have been at it for weeks if it was sent as an assembly puzzle. Poor Rox and George! They both are much better puzzlers than me and I am sure that they will have assembled their copy in just a few minutes.

Three rather complex pieces!

Luckily for me, I also managed to nab a copy of the Clutch 2 follow up puzzle which Brian released last year. Yes, it was utter torture waiting for it but I did have erm, one or two other toys to play with whilst I waited for these to arrive! My backlog is horrific!

Clutch 2 also designed by Girish

This was correctly sent out to me in the disassembled form. 3 rather complex pieces to be made into the usual 4x4x4 cube. It really is stunningly made with lots of gorgeous wood which you know I cannot resist!

Having struggled for quite a long time with just taking Clutch 1 apart, I was expecting this to be a significant challenge. It may only be 3 pieces but I was expecting a fight! My confidence soared quite quickly when I saw that there was only one possible way the pieces could make the required shape. I thought to my self: "self, this will be much easier than the last one". It is really easy to assemble into any 2 pairs and none of those pairings require rotation. I should have realised at that point that I had been lulled into a false sense of security. 

Having established the only possible assembly and having seen how they could all be put together, I then hit a brick wall. Trying to move/rotate one piece out of the way to allow the third to be introduced proved impossible for me. I just couldn't seem to find a way to interlock all 3 at the same time. In fact when any two were assembled, the third could not be introduced to the puzzle in any meaningful way. It was always blocked.

I spent a few days failing with this approach and then had a rest with another couple of the bandaged cubes for "light relief" and returned to it with the aim of working it out as a disassembly in my head. I could find the first 2 or even 3 linear moves of the disassembly but then struggled to visualise how to go further. Another day went by! My goodness! Maybe Rox and George are correct in their demand to have everything sent out assembled? In the end, I took each of the pieces as pairs and worked out what possible moves were available for all of them. This led me to take the 2 most complex of them and plot out a really complex sequence of possible moves. It did not appear to be terribly helpful because there seemed to be no point where the third piece could be introduced until...

AHA!

Suddenly I had found a rotation that left the perfect gap. Piece number 3 was inserted and I realised I was lost. I could not remember the complex path that I had walked down. Backtrack and start again. This time I took some notes and I let out one of my annoying shouts of success earning me a glare with the laser-burning stare and the warm aroma of burning flesh!

Clutch 3 assembled in all its' glory
No spoiler here - establishing the piece positions is trivial

I have to say that I am absolutely delighted with these wonderful puzzles - Brian has made them beautifully and the challenge is fabulous. They are suitable as either assembly or disassembly puzzles (I think the latter is best but either is good). If you get a chance to play with or buy these then don't hesitate - you will love them! Thank you Brian and Girish.

I still have a few more from Brian to play with and gulp, may have some more currently in the post. Whack! Ouch! Sorry dear! I'll make it up to you later this year for our big anniversary.

Stealthily Lined Up by Alexander

Stealth by Alexander Magyarics (made by Brian Menold)

It's my birthday today (no I am not saying how old but it's an embarrassingly high number) and I am not using it as an excuse not to post on the site. I would have hoped to have something written in advance but I didn't manage to solve anything until yesterday because I am rubbish at puzzles and these were a bit of a challenge for an ageing puzzler like me.

I haven't bought anything from Brian for a while. Mostly that is because he has been living a real life and enjoying himself which has meant less puzzles produced and also because the few that he has been making recently were already in my collection. However, a couple of weeks ago he showed off a few new ones that were released and rapidly snapped up by me and lots of other delighted puzzlers. This sneaked across the pond very quickly and through the customs without raising an eyebrow or a bill and even managed to get into chez Sadler despite frequent Royal mail postal strikes.

The first one (pictured above) was another fabulous packing puzzle by the incredibly talented Alexander Magyarics (someone I am lucky to chat with on a regular basis and consider a friend). When Alexander produces yet another of these packing puzzles I almost always jump at the chance. They invariably have only a few pieces to place but the requirement to leave no visible holes and the interesting piece shapes makes for a really fun challenge. I am less keen on the packing puzzles with lots of pieces because of the random trial and error nature of the puzzling. When there are so few pieces and with complex shapes and other constraints, this forces the puzzler to use thought© and logic to solve them. I was not let down with this one at all.

It is absolutely gorgeous made with a Wenge and Bocote box and having beautiful bright white Holly pieces. It is chunky at 3" in each direction and surprisingly heavy. This was the one I started with because it looks the most solvable by me whilst tired and not good at puzzles. The disassembly level is 11.2.2 meaning that the final insertion was going to be fairly tough to find. As usual, I worked outside the box and found several shapes that would meet the assembly criteria but mot of them could be quickly excluded as requiring rotations to get them past the limited opening of the box. I settle on one that looked good and proceeded with logic and thought and ignored Mrs S laughing at my muttering. She finds it funny that I can't think without muttering to myself! I got stuck for a while as I could not find the correct move and when I thought I had found the removal sequence, I could not remember it for long enough to reverse it! Eventually, I learned the sequence in reverse and managed to place all the pieces. I hate to think about what other facts I have pushed out of my feeble brain in learning something new!

Everything in place

I admired it like this for a while and left it overnight and then couldn't remember the disassembly. Taking it apart required me to visualise what was happening inside and was also fun. This could be an assembly puzzle for some and for less experienced puzzlers, just as good as a disassembly puzzle.

Line Up

How gorgeous is that? This boxed burr puzzle is also designed by Alexander and made by Brian. I chose the Mansonia box with the Chakta Vita and Holly pieces. I particularly loved the checkerboard top and bottom face as well as the lovely curved corners of the box. This is another relatively "simple" design with just 4 pieces to remove and replace from the square tube box. The level (24.3.4.2) is getting up quite high but because there are only 4 pieces, it is perfectly doable for an average puzzler and very much an enjoyable exploration.

I started work on it during the week and found a lovely little starting sequence with only a few blind pathways off the main one. Unfortunately, I struggled to advance more than about 10 or 12 moves before finding myself back at the beginning or stuck with nowhere to go. I was missing a turning somewhere. I played every evening this week whilst watching TV with Mrs S and kept going around and around in circles. What was I missing? During the disassembly the pieces get very well separated but still linked together and it is easily possible to see inside. Despite this, I just could not spot the required pathway. Finally yesterday, I spotted something and tried a new move which opened up a new set of pathways. From this point on the solution is logical but still a bit of a surprise in the direction that the pieces come out. I had my 4 pieces for the photo:

Line up with pieces lined up

I was almost certain that I would need Burrtools to reassemble the puzzle after that (especially as I had scrambled the pieces up for the photo) so I just left it for a couple of hours until a suitable time to get to my computer. It kept calling to me, though and I couldn't resist picking it up and trying to assemble it from scratch with only a very hazy memory of the solution. I wondered whether the checkerboard might help but, surprisingly, it is of no significance at all. The pieces cannot be assemble incorrectly and the placement of them within the box is very logical indeed. I tried a few alternatives and it was immediately apparent that it is impossible to place them incorrectly. Having worked out the placements, the actually assembly was quite fun and did not take me much more than 30 minutes. The cat was unimpressed when I shouted and showed him what I had done and Mrs S just rolled her eyes.
If you get a chance to play with these then go for it, they are beautiful, tactile and designed at just the right level for a puzzler to solve in a reasonable period of time. Even I solved one in an evening! Thank you Alexander and Brian.

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One of my friends (Ross) on Facebook asked about buying some of my Jerry McFarland puzzles from me. I haven't yet ever sold a puzzle (I cannot stand the thought really) but it did make me think about how many I had accumulated from the master. I brought them down yesterday and took a photo. It was so impressive that I thought I would share it with you:

Now that is something to be proud of!

and lets not forget the rather special Caramel case that he produced as well in very limited numbers:

I cannot resist a burrset! This is the 42 piece burrset

Now those definitely take pride of place in my collection!

Pillar - Just Perfect...

By Alexander Is The Great!
Brian is pretty incredible too...

Pillar by Alexander Magyarics

Whilst my experience cannot be compared to what has been going on in Texas recently, I am now on day 8 or 9 of no working boiler - I have had 3 engineer visits and still not fixed. Mrs S is going to murder someone if this isn't fixed soon and my worry is that it will be me! It had been suggested by a rather mean Facebook friend that I could burn some wooden puzzles for heat whilst my boiler is not working - I am seriously considering unfriending that person and certainly not showing that post to Mrs S!

I reviewed Ennui last week from Brian Menold's Wood Wonders recent releases and you know that I could not possibly resist and just buy one (or two)...I bought a bunch of them - my addiction to glorious wood is being fed by Brian and Eric and Brian and Alfons and...

Houston, if you weren't covered in snow with a power outage then you'd see I have a problem!

I bought the Pillar puzzle for two reasons:

1. I saw Brian show it off on Facebook and was stunned by the glorious grain
2. It was designed by my friend and "master puzzle designer", Alexander Magyarics
3. It's a combination of interlocking and packing puzzle which I absolutely adore

This beautiful puzzle has been fabulously crafted from Pistachio wood making the walls of the box, topped and bottomed with a wonderful creamy Holly. The remarkably simple pieces are stunning in very deep red Pau Rosa. I love beautiful wood grain and this Pistachio (a wood that I have never seen before) is a wonderful example. Even Mrs S admired the beauty of the box. Of course, she did not admire it enough to want to play with the puzzle much to my relief as it would be quite humiliating to have her solve it in just a few minutes and be much faster than me!

The aim (as with many of Alexander's creations) is to pack the 4 easy pieces into the box through the rather limited opening and also have the opening completely filled with no gap. I picked this one up immediately after my success with Ennui and was sure that I would solve this fairly quickly and rack up a puzzle to write about on the next blog. So I thought that this would be quick? I never seem to learn do I? This puzzle should not be that difficult but it took me 4 evenings of toil and swearing at myself to solve it. Initially I couldn't even find a 3x3 shape that would fill the holes and then none of them had piece orientations that could fit through the holes. Yes, the genius of this is that 2 of the pieces have a very limited number of ways they can fit in through the top and then, due to the 3 unit length of all of the pieces, it is really tough to find a way to get them to move around each other.

On day 2, I found a very nice 3x3 assembly which met the requirements and focussed on that. How could I get those pieces in place. I couldn't do it! I must have become fixated on that assembly because every time I abandoned it because I couldn't move the pieces around each other or get one of them into the box then I would try to find an alternative arrangement and still come back to my original. I am sure that Alexander must have known this would happen. I spent 2 days muttering Alexander's name under my breath along with some other choice expletives and got nowhere. 

On Friday evening watching some TV I had a marvellous Aha! epiphany. There is an alternative assembly and maybe that would go...yes it does - everything is arranged so it fits inside. I managed to get 3 of the pieces in the box and was left with the L shaped piece outside and wondered how to get that in with it blocked so much. There was an L shaped gap left for it to go into but I couldn't see how to move it in. Time to Think© outside the box. I often find that this is what is required with these puzzles - make the assembly and see whether I can work out how they come out and then try and remember what I did and do it in reverse inside the box. I am not very bright and reversing a series of steps gets me terribly confused. Just in time for a blog post, I had it solved - Phew!

Beautiful whilst packed

The disassembly of the puzzle requires a sequence of 20 moves (10.4.3.3) and takes advantage of the unique shape of the pieces and the box. It is very clever. I really don't know how Alexander keeps finding such simple yet such challenging designs. They are stunning - I think he needs to be given a title as I have at the top of the blog... henceforth he shall be "Alexander the Great" (hopefully this won't go to his head and make him attempt to take over most of the civilised world). 

I am greatly looking forward to more puzzles from this amazing duo - Brian and Alexander work together so well.

Keep safe everyone. The new infection numbers are going down in most places around the world but this requires constant vigilance and attention to social distancing/mask wearing. The vaccines will start to have an effect (at least on hospitalisation rates) soon as well.

Man! That was Fast! Man! That was Good!

Man! I was Fast and Man! I was Good! 🤣

Ennui

Just a quickie again this week - I had to work yesterday yet again (unfortunately I missed another Zoom MPP) and when I got home we had a boiler catastrophe and no heating in the house (not going to be fixed until at least Thursday 😱😱😱) and this required multiple attempts to reset the boiler (failed) and then a mad scramble to source some electric heaters. Mrs S is grumpy/angry at me at the best of times - if she gets cold then I am in serious trouble! My only hope is that she freezes to an icicle quickly before she has time to murder me! Some one suggested on Facebook that I cuddle Mrs S to keep warm on Valentine's day - OMG - that is a dangerous thing to attempt!

At the top of the post is a statement you don't read on this blog very often! I pretty much never claim to be good at puzzling. At best I think I am sub par and at worst bloody awful at puzzling. I do wonder why I keep torturing myself with these things? It may be something to do with the eternal love of wood (a boy can NOT have too much wood) or maybe the fabulous community of puzzling folk who provide support (although mostly to me they just take the piss).  There definitely is something that keeps me buying these wonderful, ever more expensive toys.

So why those extravagant claims? Well, Brian Menold put some wonderful new toys up for sale on his site 2 weeks ago and I was mesmerised - they are just so beautiful and I might just have spent rather more than I should have. I couldn't resist it and in my defence, these were just the second puzzles I had bought this year after Aleksandr's wonderful Ternary pin burr I reviewed last week. Considering that it is the middle of February, I am telling Mrs S that I have been very controlled - she doesn't need to know about the other purchases that are on their way, does she?

Amongst the puzzles released by Brian is a Turning Interlocking Cube (TIC). I adore these puzzles and will pretty much buy any of them when they come up for sale but with Ennui, we have added attraction...this was designed by Laszlo Kmolnar. Laszlo is one of my favourite designers. He is delightful to chat to and his puzzles are always fabulous - well thought out with some stunning logic or a wonderful Aha! moment. I had never seen a TIC design from him and knew straight away that it would be fabulous. On top of that, the TIC-Meister himself, Bernhard Schweitzer, had been extremely complementary about it:

"It has a very very unusual move for solving, a combination of 'unnormal' turns coordinated by 2 pieces together, I don't have any similar solution moves in all of my 240 different TICs (Turning Interlocking Cubes), it is a must for a serious TIC collector"

WOW - what an accolade! Click, it was in my cart. Then, I am delighted to say, Brian was absolutely on fire! He used DHL for the postage which was a little more expensive but unbelievably quick - it took less than a week to arrive and was not held up by customs (I assume that I will be billed soon for the VAT that I will owe). After a short quarantine in the porch by Mrs S, she heeded my plea and unpacked them (yes, I bought more than one puzzle) for me on Thursday evening for me to play with on Friday.

I set to on Friday evening whilst watching a bit of TV and, as is usual, tried to find the position of all the pieces. This allowed me plenty of time to admire the gorgeous wood choices - Brian has used Movingui, Bocote, Peroba Rosa and Maple for this one with some lovely contrasting dowels to strengthen the joints - the pieces are gorgeous and beautifully finished as always. I seemed to be on fire...I found the placements of the pieces in ust a single evening! Unheard of for me and I hoped this boded well for the assembly - but...Brian had said this about it:

"This puzzle has a very difficult to find maneuver. You may be tempted to force the pieces together but you should not do it. You will be able to make the move you must just be patient (or lucky) and keep searching. It requires precision. I have put each of these puzzles together several times and finding the move never got any easier and often took several tries."

As always with these puzzles, it is one thing entirely to find the final positions of the pieces and another, much harder challenge to get them into said positions. I started that straight away and noticed a very interesting move for one piece and then tried to insert the second. No way was that going in - completely blocked. Maybe change the order of insertion? Piece 2 inserted first yep! Oh dear the second (first) piece also blocked. No matter what, these two had to go into these positions and even if they were 3rd/4th the same problem would occur. This was the main challenge of the puzzle. 

I discovered some interesting possible moves of one piece but was still stuck and couldn't get them into the correct positions when the other piece was in place. Time for bed and back to work again on Saturday. This was going to cut things really fine for a blog post this week! After my boiler shenanigans yesterday evening, I was a little frazzled and sitting in a room just about heating up with a fan heater listening to Mrs S rant about the failure of British Gas to offer an appointment any sooner than Thursday (we have a service contract) and I focussed on Ennui to try and decrease my feelings of "weariness and dissatisfaction" (the definition of Ennui). Eventually I narrowed it down to only one potential move for those pieces and remembering what Brian had written, I fiddled very carefully.

AHA! That was Good!

Actually, it was better than good. It was amazing - I have done quite a lot of TICs over the years and I cannot recall a move sequence like that. The precision required is amazing - everything needs to be placed absolutely perfectly to the fraction of a millimeter. The rest of the pieces were inserted over the next few minutes to give me my assembled cube:

Man! That was good!

As Brian stated, undoing the assembly is fairly straightforward but putting it back together never seems to get any easier - it must be just perfect or it won't go - brilliant design by Laszlo.

In the end I managed it in 2-3 hours over 2 evenings - that's pretty quick for me to solve a puzzle - I was Fast and I was Good......for once.

I might have a few more puzzles to play with and hopefully something to write about next weekend. Wish me luck!

Take care out there guys - the numbers in Europe and the UK are heading in the right direction and even in the craziness that is the USA, the infection rates are decreasing. But this is not the time to let down your guards - stay at home as much as possible and wear your masks when out and about.