Guy and Dan Are Sneaky B@$^@rds!

AKA Don't Believe What You Are Presented With!

Bed Pack Designed by David Goodman and Guy Loel

At the IPP in Italy, I spent quite a while at the main party looking for toys that caught my fancy. There was a huge amount there, and I came home with a rucksack full of new toys (I haven't actually let Mrs S know that yet). Whilst wandering, I was met by a very enthusiastic Guy Loel, who confessed to reading my blog (which proves he is not very discerning) and then showed off his exchange puzzle. I had been tempted to buy it because there is something so compulsive about the apparent simplicity of the challenge. When I mentioned getting hold of a copy, he put it into my hands and said it was mine for nothing. I just love puzzle people - they are always so pleased to show off their ideas.

Once I took it home and took my photo, I could see that it consisted of a nicely 3D printed box with a sliding lid and a bunch of single beds plus one double bed. In terms of voxels, the double is 1x2x2, and the singles are 1x1x2, giving a total of 12 voxels to be packed. Interestingly, the space in the box is 3x3x1.5 voxels, giving a space to pack into of 13.5 voxels - i.e. plenty of space!

Assisi, there seems to be a problem!

Believe me - it IS packed in there.

The premise is great! This is perfect to hand to anyone. Experienced and newbie puzzlers will quickly see that there is a problem. I managed to pack either 3 or 4 beds inside before always running into a problem. That ½ voxel depth is a killer. Time to try various jaunty angles, and nope, that won't work either. After about 10 minutes, I had completely run out of options. It's so damned easy to look at and try, but there is something not quite right. I put it down for a day and went back to it the following day.  

During that time, I thought about the playful character I had met at the IPP and wondered what he would do to make a puzzle fun and clever. I played with the impossible and wondered how Guy would make it possible. After a bit more fiddling, I had a wonderful Aha! moment and gasped, allowed. "Damn! He's a sneaky B@$^@rd! I quickly managed to pack all of the beds and closed the box with a huge grin on my face. That was wonderful! It looks easy, then impossible, and then fabulously solvable. This will be coming to work with me for a few weeks to torture my colleagues. Hopefully, they will also smile for a while as I did.

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All Bar Nun from Dan Shane

Another exchange puzzle gifted to me by a very generous puzzler. I loved it that Dan and Amy dressed as Nuns to exchange this, and the box has a very saucy nun winking at the intrepid puzzler on the box. It was with some trepidation that I started to work on this one. My last puzzle from Dan was the One Piece Un-packing Puzzle, which remains fully packed in my study after months of work. I can separate the pieces using a forceful move, but that is not the correct approach. I was rather anxious that Dan's new exchange would be just as impossible for me

2 fixed cubies in the nunnery

It consists of a nunnery and 5 pentominoes with nuns on a face, plus a metal bar. There are 4 identical L shapes and one sort of cross shape. The aim is to pack the nuns in the nunnery along with the bar. The 5 pentominoes make up 25 voxels in total, which, when added to the 2 fixed in the box, make a completely full box with no gaps. The bar has to be inserted through holes conveniently piercing various parts of the pentominoes (but not the fixed pieces). So this should be a relatively straightforward packing puzzle, and knowing Dan, there would be a twist of either a rotational move or the extra challenge to get the holes lined up.

First challenge then was to make a cube shape with the 5 pieces, but outside the box. Interestingly, making a cube shape with that particular set of pieces is not that simple. I found one after about 15 minutes, but the gaps were in the wrong place. It took me another 30 minutes to find a cube with the correct gaps. Now it's time to insert that shape in the nunnery. Except...it won't go! Rotations, sliding moves, alternative assemblies? Nope! I couldn't get the damn nuns inside.

Cube shape that matched the fixed voxels.
How do I get that inside?

I spent a day or so stumped with Dan's name being uttered like a swear word every 20 minutes or so. Eventually, I stopped and thunk© for a bit. What would Dan do to make this fun and clever? Aha! I had a great idea, and suddenly I had packed all the pieces inside - he's a sneaky B@$^@rd! I was feeling very clever until I looked down and saw the bar... I hadn't solved it yet. I needed to redo the assembly to line up the holes and allow the bar to be inside the nunnery, too. I found only one assembly which had the 3 holes in the pieces lined up, but then the pieces couldn't be placed back in the box. Huh?! That's very odd. I was sure that I had worked it out, but that final packing seemed impossible.

With all the muttered swearing at Dan, I had to put it down before Mrs S killed me. The following evening, I went back to it and explored all possible ideas. My fancy Aha! A moment from the previous day led me to another wonderful discovery, and then the time I had spent on day one paid off. This time the second Aha! moment was absolutely stunning! I managed to pack all the nuns back in the nunnery and added the bar. I didn't think nuns were allowed to drink, but obviously, they do have a bar in their nunnery, and it must be OK.

If you have this or get it, do NOT be tempted to use Burrtools. It is not really helpful and might even spoil things for you. If I can solve it with my little brain, then you should be able to as well.

I had a fabulous time with both of these puzzles. Dan and Guy are very sneaky B@$^@rds. They created puzzles that look straightforward but in reality have very clever twists which require careful thought and discovery. Simply brilliant - thank you, guys!

A Good End To A Bad Week! Sort Of...

MPP puzzle haul

It has been a rather bad week. Some very very big very looong operations which were not expected to be so big or so long which turned a couple of normal days into some very stressful big days. There is an old adage in anaesthesia that "many a good anaesthetic is spoiled by a surgeon having a fuck up" and this was very much the case. Nothing incompetent I hasten to add but just unexpected, unprepared for occurrences on the surgical side made my life very tough. It did mean that I had managed no puzzling at all during the week and was hoping that I might manage something to write about at or after the MPP. I was really quite pleased when the weekend hit and it was one of those days to get in the car and drive a couple of hours to Birmingham for an MPP with an unrecognisable roman numeral on it. I always buy a gigantic pile of car sweeties (I always lie to Mrs S about exactly how many bags I consume) to keep me going during the journey there and back - the constant dipping into the bag(s) prevents a knackered sleep deprived puzzler from dozing off in the car. It also has the added advantage of leaving me completely wired with a sugar high for a day of puzzling and banter. You will find out later when Allard writes his review of the day that I was particularly wired at one point and the tongue was loose! 😱🤣

One piece "unpacking" puzzle - OPUP

OPUP starting position

After getting home on Saturday night I picked up a couple of toys to play with and my misery continued. I had watched several people play with Dan's exchange puzzle the One Piece Unpacking Puzzle. A play on the original One Piece Packing Puzzle from the late Eric Fuller. Dan was kind enough to give me a copy and said that it really wasn't that difficult. Bastard!

I was hoping that I would have more luck with it than Eric's original which took me the best part of a year to solve!

Only took me a year! With some help

I duly removed the wire loop and took out the cube - There are 24 possible ways to insert the cube into the box and Sod's law actually made me get it right on the 20th try! This didn't bode well!

Now unpack the bloody thing!

AT the MPP, quite a few people played with it and I caught cries of delight at their success. I was very careful not to watch what they had done and this was the first one that I picked up when I got home. How hard could it be? Oh you stupid boy!

I have now spent about 4 hours playing with it and found a tool which has no apparent use and that is it. I have used a light source and a magnifier and found nothing useful at all. I'd like to put it down to fatigue from the week but nope, it's purely that I am rubbish at puzzles! There is only one cube to remove from a box! The temptation is to try and stuff a shim down the edge but it would need to be very thin and that would be cheating. Dan may be helping me out sometime! 😭

Next up when I got too frustrated with the OPUP, I had to play with something else to prevent me throwing it across the room. I picked up the Hamstersaurus puzzle which, with that name can only have come from big Steve!

Just from the name, you know who's puzzle it is

It was a burr and I really thought it was a variant on the tetrahedral burr that I had had fun with from my last MPP. A standard 6 piece burr but with extensions on it which interfered with movement and really messes with my feeble brain:

It's rather beautiful and has very sharp points!

It took me about 10 minutes of pushing and pulling everything in every direction to find the first move. The new shape still messes with your head. I then got a bit of a shock! It's not a standard 6 piece burr. As soon as the first slide has happened, it becomes clear that Burrtools is not going to help me later. There are diagonal faces inside! Oh Lord! Is this like the NOS burrs from Gregory Benedetti? Was I going to have 6 bright colourful pieces in a pile forever more? The rest of the disassembly took only a few minutes and I carefully took photos of the pieces as they came out. I then scrambled it to take my photos and then give me the reassembly challenge:

Hell! That is going to be a challenge to reassemble!

Luckily, Steve has designed this in such a way that the reassembly is possible using logic and a knowledge of burrs (a little bit of my too and fro memory probably also helped) - this one is possible for a simpleton like me in an hour or so. Phew! Some success at last!

Now I need to start shaking the OPUP vigorously to try and dislodge the cube! 😱🤣