It's 2019, I Got a Bouquet and It Was FantasTIC!

Is That's a Hat-Trick?

......Erm No. This is About 4 Puzzles and Not 3!

Bouquet

At last, I have finally found some time to play with some toys and might have had some success at last! Yay! I can now tell Mrs S that I do still need to buy new toys as I am solving the old ones. I am not sure she believes me but I am sticking to my story.

I am going to start with the Bouquet which I bought from my good friend Brian Menold's Wood Wonders store quite some time ago (I am ashamed to admit that I got it way back in August and it has sat on, under or next to my puzzle chair ever since then! I love variants on 6 piece burrs (hence I own quite a few burr sets) and a burr with a frame (like Terry Smart's Premiere puzzle which I reviewed here) is completely irresistible for me. The fact that this particular puzzle was designed by another friend, Christophe Lohe, makes it even more special - he has a unique talent for designing puzzles that are just the right difficulty level and really interesting to solve. When I say "just the right difficulty level", I do mean it despite this taking me 3 months to complete!

Brian made a few copies of this in a number of different wood varieties and my rather striking copy is a Wenge frame, with Padauk and Maple burr sticks. It is simply stunning on display - maybe that is the real reason I left that on or around my chair for so long? BLUSH! It is very tactile, a lovely weight and feel to the finish (as we have come to expect from Brian) and I kept failing at it! There are quite a lot of moves possible from the beginning...some of them really look like they are leading somewhere until the trail runs cold and backtracking is required. Not only are the paths quite deep but there are several of them! They all look so enticing that I default to my "Einsteinian insanity" approach and kept getting surprised when nothing happened. Yes, I know, "she" is quite right...I am NOT terribly bright! I think I am supposed to be quite good at puzzling after such a long time but I always struggle.

Round and round and round in circles, I went! Surprisingly never getting bored (this shows how good a design it is) and as always got nowhere. I was obviously missing a critical move somewhere. But where? In fact, I was missing 37 moves (the puzzle is level 23.3.5.3.3)! In shame, I kept doing the same thing and putting the puzzle down for a few hours or days and even had thoughts of shelving it for a while - then in October, Mike published a review saying that he had managed his copy after just a few weeks. I continued my advance into madness and worked on it every evening. There had been a few comments on Facebook about it slightly taunting my prowess which kept me motivated.

At Last!!!!!

Finally, earlier this week I found something - instead of doing the same thing over and over again, I made a few moves and looked inside (visibility is great with this puzzle) and saw a potential opening. What if I???? Oooh! That's nice! Suddenly a new configuration but blocked again for a while. After a little more brain-ache, I realised that there was a certain rhythm to the sequence and then the first piece came out followed by the second. Removing the third and later pieces took a bit of figuring too as I tried to avoid inadvertent rotations and also keep a vague memory of the piece positions.

Wow! That is an absolutely brilliant BRILLIANT puzzle! The movement of the pieces is perfect thanks to Brian's craftsmanship and the design is simply awesome! This is one of the best 6 piece burr variants I have played with. Well done Chris! It is no longer available (due to the excessive time I spent solving it) but if you see one come up at auction then don't ask any questions, just buy it!

2019

Another puzzle which I received from Brian in the same delivery was the 2019 puzzle designed by the equally amazing Klaas Jan Damstra, another absolute favourite designer of mine. I wasn't sure about this particular design but I cannot buy just one puzzle from Brian...I think I may have bought 5 at that time!! Whack! Ouch! Brian made it sound intriguing with his description:

These pieces move about within the frame quite freely despite the rather close tolerance of the frame to the pieces. I was afraid there may be some unintended solutions but I was not able to find any. Not terribly difficult but a pretty good challenge that seems easier than it really is!

When it arrived, and I tried to take photos of it, I was amazed at just how mobile the pieces are! They basically slide around freely all over the place, including lots of rotation of all the pieces. It feels like it is just going to fall to bits but despite all the movement, it remarkably remains intact. It was really quite tough to make it sit nicely for a decent photo - in fact, if you turn it upside down it will not sit nicely to take a picture!

Despite all this movement, it is not a trivial puzzle to solve and there are no illegal solutions either. I played with this one when I got fed up with failing at Bouquet and realised after a couple of days that this also needed to be solved by looking inside. Once I started doing this then the Aha! moment occurred and I said to Mrs S that "I love it when a plan comes together" (that is for those of you old enough to remember the A-team). After 3 or 4 evenings of fiddling I had my 2 pairs of sticks and the lovely pinwheel frame:

That was a nice piece of fun

The reassembly is not a terribly hard challenge but you must remember which orientation to hold the frame and then try not to get the order of the pieces wrong when you put them back.

FantasTIC by Andrew Crowell

I cannot resist buying a TIC (Turning Interlocking Cube) when a new one comes up for sale! My collection is now pretty extensive - not quite up to the level of the world expert, Bernhard but still pretty good. I had noticed that there had been a couple of TICs in the IPP design competition and they looked like they had been made by Brian (apparently they hadn't). The designer initially was not known but let's face it...we ALL know who has been turning out TIC designs like there is no tomorrow for the last year or so! Yes, Andrew Crowell is some kind of evil genius when it comes to these. The sheer complexity and beauty of the designs that just pop into his head is nothing short of incredible. Luckily for the puzzling community, Andrew had allowed Brian to make a nice batch of them after the IPP was complete.

I had bought a few TIC's at the same time as I bought the Bouquet and 2019 puzzles but mostly they remain unsolved as a small pile of pieces around my puzzle chair. Despite that, the new ones looked so gorgeous that I had to have them. If Andrew thought they were good enough for the competition then that was all the encouragement I needed. These arrived at the beginning of November, after taking my photo and admiring the gorgeous combination of Purpleheart, Redheart, Yellowheart and Holly that had been used, I set to work straight away.

They are a wonderful 3 phase challenge...firstly, work out where everything needs to go (this can sometimes be a massive challenge if the pieces are small or not very complex). Secondly, try to establish the order in which the pieces might need to be added to the puzzle and finally, twist your bwain in the same way that Andrew has when he worked out all the required rotations. For many of these puzzles, I even get stuck at the first stage of the solve process! A puzzle with rotational moves always comes with the ever-present worry that a glued joint will be snapped but here, Brian has excelled himself with the very attractive dowel reinforcements in the pieces at risk.

This puzzle lives up to its' name...it is truly FantasTIC!! It is not terribly terribly hard and has just enough to keep you working on it for a good few hours (in my case days) and the positioning/rotation of the pieces follows a lovely logical sequence. That is...until I attempted to place the final piece! I knew where it needed to go but for the life of me, I could not get it into position. I tried to change the order of insertion but that just blocked other pieces. Stuck - AGAIN! Sob! After playing and sleeping on it for a couple of nights, I had the most marvellous Aha! moment! A very unexpected rotation suddenly leapt into my tired brain and I had my cube:

It lives up to its' name!
Andrew and Brian - you are amazing!

I have taken to storing these puzzles (as well as most of the Osanori Yamamoto packing puzzles) in the disassembled state so that I can challenge myself and friends again in the future. I went back to this one to write this article and...Lordy, that's still a huge challenge! One of my favourites of the year!

Hat-Trick by Laszlo Kmolnar

Finally, the 4th puzzle in the Hat-trick(????) from Brian is a gorgeous packing puzzle from another designer I am proud to call a friend, Laszlo Kmolnar. He is one of the most interesting packing puzzle designers out there and I try to get a copy of everything that he designs. In fact, with the names Laszlo Kmolnar, Osanori Yamamoto and Volker Latussek, we have the best packing challenge designers in the world today!

As soon as I saw this glorious creation in Box Elder and Redheart I knew I wouldn't be able to resist. The wood is stunning, the joinery on the box (with the highlighting corners) is gorgeous. Plus, another puzzle from Laszlo HAS to be added to the collection. It was a Top ten vote winner in the IPP design competition which means that there is something fun to the solution and hopefully doable by me.

The box cavity is 4x3x2 voxels in size and there are 6 identical L shapes to be placed inside. It did not take me very long to find a number of possible assemblies but at that point, I stopped dead. The T-shaped slot in the top of the box makes the insertion quite tricky! Pieces go in nicely at first and then we are stuck. It's immediately obvious that rotations are needed but where? There is a lot of space inside for the rotations to be done and I reckon I was stuck on this for a couple of evenings. The Aha! moment was a delight - it took me a couple of hours in total to solve it and with the calibre of the IPP attendees, it will be a perfect difficulty level for them to solve in the competition room.

It's gorgeous packed too!

Phew! That was quite a blog post and finally some decent solving by me! Hopefully, this winning streak will keep going! I have spent a few weeks on Brian Young's Ages sequential discovery burr and to my horror have literally only found 2 small moves so far! Luck! Don't fail me now!!!

If It's Spherical Then There Must be a Little Trick to It

Maybe I Need To Give it a Little Hug?

Spheres from Stephan Baumegger

A month or so ago I stopped dead in my tracks/iPad whilst on Facebook when I saw an update from Stephan Baumegger. He had produced a new batch of his entry into this year's IPP Design Competition, Spheres. At this, he had won a Top ten vote award from the puzzlers who played with it. Interestingly, when I had initially perused the puzzle list, it had not been a puzzle that had sung out to me at first and I could not even tell by looking at it who was the designer and craftsman. The beautiful inlay, the carving/routing work on the lid and the stone balls did not scream out Stephan to me. When the results came out with a notification that it was my friend who won, I took more notice and decided I would wait for him to announce availability and then pounce on it. Then in October, he announced that a batch was made and I immediately asked for a copy.

Now in early October and September, I might just have had a "few" new arrivals (who can blame me for a post-IPP splurge? I hadn't been to Japan and felt I had to do something to maintain my puzzler status. Mrs S had got just a "little" fed up answering the door to the various delivery men and had little words in my ear about behaving myself and not spending so much. There may or may not have been a laser-burning stare involved and she may also have inflicted a Whack! Ouch! upon my person. I decided that I could not risk the wrath of a "woman of a certain age". The age adds a whole new level of extra "psycho" to boost the extra copies of the violence gene provided by her Scottish ancestry on top of the 2 copies of the X chromosome where said gene resides! Whack! Ouch! Sorry dear! As a result of her admonition ringing in my ears, I asked Stephan to wait until the end of October before sending it. He ended up sending it just before the alleged Brexit date was due to occur in order to avoid any new customs fees.

I took my customary photos and marvelled at the incredible craftsmanship - he had sourced a beautiful inlay made in a similar way to the Japanese techniques and created his usual sticks from lovely woods:

It is just stunning!

Mrs S seemed to have been mollified by the small gap in additions to my collection and I escaped serious physical harm this time. I set to playing with it that very evening and the cats were particularly fascinated by the 3 stone marbles inside. I did struggle on a few occasions to prevent them from zooming off with a beautiful ball. It might have made the solution easier but having played with it for quite a while, I am not entirely sure that it would!

There are 3 copies of each of two sticks which are mirror images of each other, two large balls and one small one. Trying to pack them into the box proved pretty tough from the beginning as I always seemed to need 4 of one particular shape to make a nice packing. Of course, I only had 3. To my chagrin, I then discovered that I could not even get the pieces back into the box in the state that it had been delivered (picture at the top). I had to store it between attempts in a much more precarious way and hope that it didn't tip over and lose any pieces. Stephan suggested that I should "Count the Voxels" which I did with enthusiasm and without any idea how it might help me...It didn't help me!

After almost a couple of weeks without progress, I took it to the MPP and after my shock at having all the pieces of my (un)happiness cubes liberally spread amongst Rich's boxes of disassembled puzzles, I displayed my new toys and let people play. I was rather shocked when Oli said it had only taken him 10 minutes to work it out! OMG! How awful am I at packing puzzles? He gave me a helpful nudge:

Pack the pieces outside the box and ignore the balls.

Ignore my balls??? What kind of a man did he think I was? Mrs S is the keeper of the balls! I get to look at them wistfully every year or so when she lets me! Despite this odd idea, I decided to have a try using his idea the following evening with the aid of 2 boys, I had my wonderful Aha! moment. I could not have done it without Oli's idea and the cats help:

I could not have done it without help. Masked to hide the solution!

The lid fits on with all inside! Take my word for it!!!!

If you get a chance to buy this puzzle then BUY IT! It is beautiful. It is the perfect level of difficulty and you need to think without your balls! I adore it and will be challenging some colleagues with ut at work.

Next up we have another couple of beauties about to be released by the wonderful New Pelikan Workshop - Little Trick and Little Hug both by the amazing Klaas Jan Damstra.

Little Trick

Little Hug

These two lovely puzzles will be available soon along with the Osanori packing puzzles that I reviewed last week. These have taken Jakub and Jaroslav a little longer to produce and hence I received them a bit later than the others. They have been stunningly made as you would expect from Pelikan and are rather fun to explore and play with.

Little Trick, is 48x48x60mm made from Ovangkol and Maple and consists of three oddly shaped pieces inside a frame. The movement is silky smooth to explore. The disassembly is not terribly tough at level 10.4.1 and only a couple of short blind ends. It is a very nice challenge if you scramble the pieces and leave them for a while and try the reassembly after you have forgotten how they go together. I often am too frightened to do this but I dropped a couple of the pieces on the floor and could not disturb the sleeping cat on my lap to pick them up and hence forgot how it had come apart. I could have asked Mrs S to pick it up for me but she was already pissed at me for another delivery so soon and I didn't dare risk it. The reassembly probably took me another 20 minutes to work out when I finally got around to it. Not too tough but definitely beautiful and fun.

Little Trick pieces - you could use Burrtools but it should not be necessary.

Little Hug is tiny but gorgeous - it is 40mm cubed and stunningly made from Wenge and Ovangkol with absolutely wonderful grain in it. This puzzle hides the pieces very well and only after a little fingertip poking can you find where one piece stops and another starts. After the first move has been found then all sorts of sliding is possible and then it would appear that rotations are possible. Ignore the rotational sliding and carry on exploring the sliding...it moves from in 2 dimensions to 3 and then there is a rather clever little move available if you spot it. Suddenly you have separated it into 2 pairs of similar pieces which had been held on a ring - the level was 12.3.2.3.

Little Hug pieces - Burrtools could help you but don't bother - work it out!

I had been planning on keeping the orientations in place on my lap after I disassembled it to make reassembly easier. For some reason that never works out for me...a cat knocked them all down the side of my seat cushion and by the time I had fished them out, I had no idea which was which! The reassembly is a really fun challenge - I sort of had an idea roughly what was required but it took me a good hour of effing and blinding at the cat before I had worked out how to place the pieces without blocking the required moves. If I can assemble a puzzle from scratch then it is definitely possible for all you decent puzzlers out there. It is a brilliant but tiny challenge and looks gorgeous!

These puzzles should be available soon from Jakub and Jaroslav's site. Also well worth buying at the same time as the Osanori packing puzzles!

Blame the Royal Mail For the Delay in Your Puzzling!

Latest Pelikan Offering

Many of you might have noticed at about midnight last night (BST) that Jakub and Jaroslav put up a bunch of new puzzles for sale on the New Pelikan Workshop. I think that they were hoping that they would go up a week ago but thanks to the Royal Mail, the date had to be put back. I do apologise! Why should the Royal Mail affect the sale of puzzles from the Czech Republic? Because Jakub always offers me the opportunity to buy the puzzles a week or so in advance and in return I write some of the descriptions and a mini-review for his site. This does mean there is a big pressure on me to photograph and solve them as quickly as I can after arrival so as not to disappoint the hungry puzzling masses.

Jakub posted out my batch of puzzles on 7th August and they left his country on the 9th. After that, there was a note on the tracking that they had arrived in London and there it stopped. It usually takes only another 48 hours to be delivered at this stage. The Royal Mail tracking site acknowledged their existence but not that they were in the UK. They were nowhere to be seen. This can not be blamed on Her Majesty's Customs and Excise department as, for the moment at least, we remain in the EU and no Customs should be due. Yes, the Royal Mail had lost them. After 10 days I even phoned them and they said this was not trackable in the UK (a lie). After another 3 days later it suddenly appeared at my house to my (and Jakub's relief - he really wanted to sell this batch of puzzles). The pressure was really on now - I had to solve them quickly so that you can buy them. As I type here it would appear that one, Petit Pack,  is already sold out. So, without further delay, here are my thoughts on the latest batch.

Petit Pack by Osanori Yamamoto

Petit Pack

Another lovely packing puzzle by the Master, Osanori Yamamoto. Pelikan has made this available in 4 gorgeous wood choices (A Cherry box and choice of Bubinga, Wenge, Purpleheart or Padauk pieces). The puzzle should be received by you with the pieces in the configuration above so that you get no clue about the eventual solution. There are just 3 pieces to fit into the 3x3 box.

3 simple pieces - I chose Purpleheart

These puzzles are a great challenge with a low number of pieces to fit in a box open at diagonally opposite corners with no gaps visible in the bigger hole. The first time I did it, I think I cheated by introducing pieces through the smaller hole and I found the challenge relatively easy. Next, it occurred to me that there might be more of a challenge if I place all pieces into the box via the front hole. This way the packing puzzle requires a lovely dance of the pieces around and has a lovely Aha! moment as you find the right order and the moves. The sequence is fun to find and at level 7.2.2, not terribly tough. It is perfect for beginners and experienced puzzles and, of course, if you are a packing puzzle collector then it's an essential purchase.

Solved it!
This one took me about 10 minutes for one approach and another 15 for the best solution

It is interesting to me that this has sold out so quickly whereas the others released by Pelikan have not. This puzzle is my least favourite of the releases this time - it is still a great little challenge but not as good as the other recent releases from Yamamoto-san including Petit ring and Pack 012.

Dunant by Volker Latussek

Dunant

Let me start off this review with these words:

GO BUY IT......NOW!

This is an absolutely amazing puzzle! Just another packing puzzle? Hell no! This is in part interlocking puzzle and part sequential movement puzzle. It is wonderful and seriously difficult. It was entered into the IPP design competition this year and it says a lot about the other entries that this did not win and award. The Aha! moment with this is a multiple and prolonged event. It is available with an Oak box and either Ovangkol or Mahogany pieces.

Initially, when you invert the box you pull out 3 pieces that simply slide in and out easily but clearly are nowhere near the solution as they protrude from the box in the start position. I initially thought that this was impossible until I realised that the 2 larger pieces can be divided up until we have 5 identical pieces.

Looks impossible here

The + shapes split in two - maybe there is a solution?

I spent a long time searching for a configuration that stands a chance of fitting in the box by searching outside the box. Even this is a tough challenge as I discovered when during a very long (7 hour) vascular angiography case I gave this to the nurses and radiographers to play with. It was fascinating to watch them all fail to even find a position that was possible. In the end, I found 2 conformations that might possibly fit inside the constraints of the box only to discover that I could not get them through the pretty large opening at the top. This was going to take a very complex sequence to get them into the box and then get them organised appropriately. I think there must be at least 3 Aha! moments in the solution and quite a lot of groaning too. This puzzle is wonderful - for €36 it's a bargain!

No! I am not going to show the solution here! Find it yourself and ask me by email if you need help.

Party by Klaas Jan Damstra

Party

I cannot resist puzzles designed by Klaas! Both he and my friend Chris Lohe seem to have a marvellous eye for a puzzle with a wonderful balance of interesting shape and fun solution without being impossibly high level or impossibly difficult.

Party is a wonderfully picturesque puzzle with a burr appearing to float in the middle of a frame. Just a three-piece burr held in an open cubic cage, how hard can it be? Well, let me tell you that it's part simple, part tough and completely fun…just like a party should be. In most good parties there should be dancing and that's just what we have. The disassembly sees the three pieces moving around and about each other in a fun way with a few but not too many choices to lead you astray.

I had an interesting and promising conformation and rotated the puzzle to look at the back when a piece dropped out onto the bemused cat on my lap. Needless to say, it didn't stay in the starting orientation! After a few more moves the remaining pieces were out and at that point, I had a wonderful realisation…all of them were identical! Wow! What a lovely and clever design!

I did not know until after I had removed them that the three pieces were identical

The real challenge comes later. Having scrambled (even if by accident) the pieces, the reassembly is a really pleasant but doable puzzle. It took me about 45 minutes and left me with a big grin – I finally had solved something (after my weeks of failure with the Slammed car and Eric's burrset) and really enjoyed the process. This puzzle is available in several choices of wood. I chose Maple frame (when Jakub posted my blurb I realised that the frame is actually Cherry) with Ovangkol which has a gorgeous grain but it is also available with Purpleheart or Wenge pieces. All are lovely!

Well worth a place in your collection even if you are not a burr fanatic.

Rattle Twist III by Osanori Yamamoto

Rattle Twist III

I already own The Rattle Twist duo (I & II) made for me by a very good puzzling friend and I was very keen to investigate this 3rd one in the series (there are even a 4th and 5th published). These puzzles are all designed by the amazing Osanori Yamamoto and his devious mind manages to produce wonderful challenges with very few pieces which may or may not require rotational moves. As a quick interesting feature let me show you that this definitely has rotations in the solution:

Mine arrived doing this and who knows where it should have started!

This puzzle shares the same pieces as the original pair but a different plate for them to be arranged within. There are 4 different woods available and I couldn't resist the Cherry (again, in my blurb for Jakub I thought that it was Maple) and Purpleheart combination. The other options are Padauk, Merbau and Bubinga. Challenge to fit just 2 pieces in a simple frame? Shouldn't take long? I thought so and I thought wrong (as usual) – it took me several hours. There's at least one rotation and the pieces get caught amongst each other blocking most moves. Eventually, I had to stop and think© about what I needed to do and how the shapes would do it before solving it. As is usual for me I tried random moves but this just would not work for me here. The moves are quite well hidden.

Finally managed it - only 2 pieces and it still took me over 2 hours!

This is a lovely idea and I'm pleased to own the third in the series – so beautifully made by Pelikan too.

Merlin by Stephan Baumegger

Merlin

Merlin is a serious work of art for serious puzzlers! This tremendous puzzle was designed by the genius Stephan Baumegger at the request of Dave Holt (The Metagrobologist) to accompany the Arthur and the Excalibur (also Cubic caged burrs) in the theme of TH White's “Once and Future King”. This gorgeous burr consists of 8 burrsticks in 2 sets of 4 and Merlin's wand passing through too. This is a high level burr at 64.7.3. The burrsticks move but they are heavily constrained by the wand which can only move along 2 constrained paths. I have not managed to solve this yet (and may not ever manage it) but this is one incredibly beautiful puzzle which will be fun to try, fail and then put back on display.

This is available with either Purpleheart and Wenge burr sticks or Merbau and Wenge sticks - either choice is fabulous and will provide you with many many hours of puzzling. I was particularly fascinated to read the account written by my friend James Cardinal on Facebook as he solved his copy (from Stephan) - read it here:

This latest batch from Jakub and Jaroslav are all superb - my favourites are Dunant,  Party and then Rattle Twist III. The Merlin is a stunning addition to your collection even if you never manage to solve it. Go out there and give Pelikan your money...I did! Much to Mrs S' disgust - no Whack! Ouch! ...Yet.