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.

It Ain't Wood, But Plastic is Still Fantastic!

These Brought Real Happiness

Great Haul from last week's MPP
Quite a few were from the IPP

After last week's MPP (great write up from Allard here), I came home with a bunch of new toys to play with much to the disgust of the first wife. There is a bit of pressure to tidy up in PuzzleMad HQ because the collection is out of control and I have been working so much that the new acquisitions have just been placed on my desk, next to my living room armchair, in the conservatory and (heaven help me!) in the dining room! "She" has told me in ever increasingly irritated terms that they had better be cleared up or extreme measures will be taken. I have not had the courage to ask what they were! I had one last day of annual leave last Tuesday and, having had some new fitted wardrobes installed in my, gulp, second puzzle room. I was provided with some storage containers (nice ones that her tidiness fetish had "forced" her to buy) and told that the dining room needs to be clear by the end of the day. 

Needless to say, with that look in her eyes, I quickly complied and after several hours of moving things around, finding 2 puzzles that I did not remember the names of (thank you Aaron for reminding me) and we had a nice tidy puzzle free (almost) dining room. The latest acquisitions were placed into a position to play with and I have used what little time I have had this week to attempt to solve some.

Jigs4w by Haym Hirsh (made by Tye Stahly)

Poor Colin!

I have had only a little success with the 5 piece Jig5aw from Haym, managing only to solve 1 of the 3 challenges and despite hours of attempts, not gotten anywhere close to success on the other 2. However, I had been full of confidence having solved the 10 piece jigsaw and had watched my poor assistant and trainee fail dismally at it. I received the Jigs4w as part of my IPP haul which Ali had carted back for me and immediately suffered the same problem as I had had with the 5 piece. Damn! That man is so devious!

No matter what you do with this one there always seems to be there always seems to be one of the tabs overlapping the edge of the frame. For heaven's sake! There are only 4 pieces! Why is it so difficult?

To my eternal shame, it took me 4 hours of trying the same thing over and over again until I finally got it! Why was I trying the same thing repeatedly? Because I couldn't remember previous combinations and orientations of pieces. Not only am I not a genius like Derek, I am actually not terribly bright. I think I have written that before on this website. 

I think this is called Second Stellation Interlocking puzzle

This shiny piece of jagged plastic was being given away free at the MPP (I think it was Allard that made it) and I was forced to take it home disassembled like this. When I unpacked it and stuffed it onto my pile to be payed with next to my chair, I got a beady eyed look and decided that I had better get on with it pretty quickly. It really does look cluttered when left as a pile o' pieces. I did express yet again the wish to buy a cheap 3D printer of my own but was very quickly disabused of the idea when I was told that the spiders in the garage might eat me alive whilst I slept...because that would be where I would be living!

I had seen this one come apart, so I was aware that it was yet another variation of the Diagonal star puzzle which I have written about many times. However, when trying to put this one together, there are various notches in the stem of the pieces (obviously they interlock) and an awful lot of sharp end pieces getting in the way of each other once more than 2 are assembled. Despite the pain of stabbing myself a couple of times, I happily played with these in various combinations and managed to create two 3-piece halves which would not assemble together due to being blocked. Time to think© and I had a proper look at the shapes and after a lovely little Aha! moment I had a more presentable shape to show Mrs S:

I think this might be the best diagonal star yet.
It would be amazing in wood

That is two puzzles solved in a week!

Happiness cube #001

Happiness cube #006

I have a history of misery with happiness cubes! I have a bunch of them in wood and the b£@$tards took them apart and mixed them all up......TWICE! Amongst the same pile of freebies was a few more happiness cubes and at the end of the day, there were a couple left over to be picked up my me. Yay!

Starting with this week, I will be working 6 day weeks for the next month which means I will need as much happiness as I could get. I was very impressed with Rich's collection of 3D printed hapinnes cubes and playing with them last week reminded me that I love finding disassemblies. After getting home from work yesterday, I felt the need to take something to bits and had a lovely time exploring the movements and disassembly sequence of these. I even managed to make enough muscle memory to be able to assemble them again after rearranging the pieces for the photo. I may need to prevail upon someone with a 3D printer to make me a bunch more of them!

Number 1 pieces

Number 6 pieces

They are now back together and ready for filing away with my other pieces of happiness!

Thank you Allard for a great MPP and also for the plastic fantastic fun.

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Also, thank you to my readers for helping me pass yet another milestone. I have now had over 4 million page views since I begun the term into lunacy in 2011. The views even continued after the death of my mother and have taken off over the last year. It may well be that my site is just being scraped by AI bots and if that is the case then we will be safe from the machine overlords for a while yet. My drivel won't teach them anything useful!

Main site

New stuff site

3,975,734 + 97,169 makes 4,072,903

Thank you so much, guys and bots, for putting up with my craziness!

It Seems That Less Is Definitely More

Having Less pieces seems to make things more difficult!

 

J1GSAW by Haym Hirsh from Nothing Yet Designs

Recently I have been buying and playing with a whole bunch of very complex puzzles. This includes the Who Dares Wins from Shane and the Two Brass Monkeys, the Ant Hunt from Boaz Feldman, Chained Key from Luke Waier, Blinded from Dee Dixon, the Box of Celts from Numbskull puzzles and the Fibonacci Box from Jesse Born. I have been playing with these amazing puzzles and getting absolutely nowhere with any of them! I am beginning to think that I have lost my puzzling mojo yet again. Mrs S is starting to say that if I can't solve anything then I really shouldn't buy them. Whilst I protest that I don't know that I can't solve them until after I have actually received them, I am actually beginning to think that she might be right. 😱

Having failed so badly at these puzzles, I went back to something "simple". Except maybe they are not simple! Haym Hirsh, as well as being the head honcho in the Mechanical puzzle community FB group, is also a superb puzzle designer of apparently simple designs which have a hidden twist to them. Recently, he has been producing some lovely little Jigsaw puzzles along the lines of those we have come to love from Yuu Asaka. In this case, Haym has made a few with varying numbers of pieces. The 4 pieces challenge was sent back to Blighty in Ali's suitcase for me and I will be picking it up at the next MPP but I have been playing with the 5 and 10 piece Jigsaws for the last few weeks or so.

Jig5aw by Haym

I had tried and failed the Jig5aw a month or so ago and had spread it far and wide at work in the hope that someone else might manage to educate me in how to solve these apparently easy challenges. Having received it at the beginning of September, it had remained unsolved.

In desperation I picked up the 10 piece puzzle and had little hope for success. After all, if I can't pack 5 pieces then I stand no chance on 10! The frame is much bigger than expected when putting an array of pieces inside but it quickly becomes clear that a simple solve is not possible:

Lots of space but not quite enough

Unusually for me, I looked at this attempted solution and had a "what if I do this?" thought. As a man who is most unaccustomed to thoughts, this really caught me by surprise. I rearranged a few of the pieces and opened up some space and it didn't solve it but left me with space for another of those rogue thoughts. After 10 minutes, I had actually solved it - Yay! Has my mojo come back? Maybe just for Jigsaw packing puzzles?

Quick...get the Jig5aw challenges out: There are 3 colours to try, each with their own challenge. 5 pieces to fit in the tray. It is quite easy to get almost there:

Orange - almost there?

Yellow - not even nearly

Red - this is bloody impossible!

I have spent a few days doing the same things over and over again and if I wasn't insane beforehand then I am rapidly approaching it! How can a 5 piece jigsaw be so damned difficult?

I have managed to solve the orange version which is the only thing that has reclaimed the remnants of my sanity. I have had lots of really really good ideas for the red and yellow challenges. The only problem  being that my really good ideas have all been wrong. Despite "only" being a jigsaw and despite "only" having 5 pieces, this is a really good puzzle. It is perfect for experienced puzzlers but also a wonderful introduction to non-puzzlers to try and get them hooked on our addiction.

At the moment the 5 piece puzzle is solved out at Nothing Yet Designs but I am sure that if enough of you badger Tye, then he might deign to make some more copies.

Thank you Haym and Tye for making me mental. I do the ECT list in Sheffield on a Friday morning and may well volunteer for a zap or two myself after this! 🤪

Packing Pies Positively Peaks My Performance

Pie Box by Haym Hirsch

A few weeks ago, I saw with some amazement that a very talented Facebook friend of mine, Haym Hirsh, had teamed up with a craftsman to have some of his puzzle designs made. They looked fun and mathematically based so I decided that I should give them a try. I was not surprised to see mathematical puzzles from him seeing as he works at Cornell University having studied Maths and Computer Science. I love mathematical stuff and even attempted to study for a Master of maths degree with the Open University based here in the UK (unfortunately after my first few years as a consultant I got much too busy to study in my spare time and had to set it aside but do maintain a more than passing interest). Haym had teamed up with Fin of NothingYetDesigns (primarily based on Etsy but also now setting up his own webstore). The advantage for us in the UK with using Etsy is that they automatically add the VAT and hence cut out any nasty surprises and delays on arrival of my toys in the country.

I chose a bunch of designs and Fin said that when the other was back in stock, then he'd let me know. I was ever so slightly horrified to see how the USPS tracks the packages. I watched my first batch of 4 go across the US and then saw an attempted but failed deliver in Florida. In a panic I checked my delivery address and it definitely said the United Kingdom on it. The following day, I was even more horrified to see that they had tried again and actually successfully delivered the package in Florida and my tracking was showing as delivered. I quickly checked my front door and it definitely wasn't there. After a reassuring contact with Fin, it would appear that the USPS consider delivery to the airport as delivered. About 4 days later I received my pack of puzzles.

They are all really nicely packed up - it looks very like he either makes his own sealable bags or they are available in every possible size combination:

Every puzzle arrived in its' own sealed envelope of exactly the correct size

The only thing I did need to be careful of was that the very robust black rubber bands did not get eaten by my cats! They absolutely adore chewing on rubber bands and then eat them. It is really unpleasant when they get to the other end with "stuff" hanging out! Mrs S gave me a very stern warning about the rubber bands and in fear I kept them safe whilst taking my photo.

I started with the Pie Box at the top of the post and attempted to put all 8 segments of pie (that fit so nicely in the circular cutout on the right) into the slightly smaller square on the left. I thought that this would be a trivial matter of moving the segments so that they form straighter lines i.e. alternate directions to approximate a square shape. Well that didn't work! I should have known that Haym would be more sneaky than that. The search was on. I really don't enjoy puzzles that seem to have a huge amount of random trial and error and it initially did seem that this was the case here. However, I quickly realised that I needed to investigate ways to get these pieces packed with as little wasted space as possible. Definitely not trivial but after an hour of thinking© I had a nice little Aha! moment. No! I am not going to show the solution - go and buy it and work it out for yourself.

After having some pie, you always want More Pie

Time for More Pie. We start with a pie cut into 7 equal slices and an eighth waiting to be put in the box. There looks like plenty of room but believe me, there really isn't. Again, I tried the same technique as I did with the first puzzle and of course that didn't work. Here we go again - time for another brain workout. This was oddly even more difficult and took me quite some time to find the solution. Very satisfying and quite a lot of puzzling for such a cheap puzzle.

I was on a roll - packing pies had helped my brain power! Time for another one - I was particularly interested in this as it looked really quite logical - Eloquint:

Eloquint - 5 L's to be placed in the space

It looks like there is not enough space in the puzzle for them all but the packing space continues under the lip of the top plate. Each L is 3x3 units and the space for them to be fitted into is 6x5 units so there is plenty of space for them to be placed but getting them in proves to be a bit of a challenge! This puzzle is like a 2D version of the wonderful 3D designs of Osanori Yamamoto and Alexander Magyarics. Finding the position is one thing, then the challenge is to actually get it into the frame. It only took me about ½ an hour but had a very nice Aha! moment.

This is fabulous - I cannot fail! Time for:

Stubborn Twelfth

A nice big square with 11 asymmetric pentagons inside. There looks like plenty of space for that twelfth. I am afraid that this is where my luck ran out! I have spent a good few hours fiddling with this and am getting absolutely nowhere with it. So I moved on to the other one that had to wait until he made some more:

Trapped

This one consists of a circular space covered by a clear perspex/acrylic lid which can rotate freely. The 6 Trapezoid shaped pieces can fit under the lid through a segment removed from it. Just finding a shape that fits in the circle was fun and a bit of a challenge but it has so far proven totally impossible to fit them in via the small hole!

It may be that my 2D packing puzzle prowess is limited to pies and "ells"? I have been working on the Legal packing puzzle on and off for 6 months and have got no closer with that either - triangles and quadrilaterals are obviously impossible for me!

I have put them away for a while because I have run out of ideas and I have been distracted by some new toys that have arrived from Jakub. I will need to come back to these later. I always assume that if I keep returning to a puzzle then I will get there eventually. Some puzzles have taken me years! Some puzzles still remain unsolved after year but then I will keep trying.

Take care everyone - most of the world is improving slowly (although the rates in many parts of the USA remain stubbornly high). Keep paying attention to the rules, get vaccinated when it's your turn and we will eventually get back to normal.

Haym Designs a TIC-in-a-box

and I Wonder Whether Brian Had Made It Impossible!

Y Pack

This gorgeous puzzle is called Y Pack and it was made quite a while ago by my good friend Brian Menold and sent to me back in the BC era (that's "Before Coronavirus"). It has been sitting on my desk and my living room puzzling tray for a very long time taunting me. In fact it taunted me in 2 phases.

Designed by Haym Hirsh, whom I have only interacted with on Facebook, I have never actually tried one of his puzzles before and had been keen to remedy that situation. When Brian made such a gorgeous version, that sealed the fate of my bank balance yet again. My copy is stunningly made from a really deeply coloured and heavily grained Padauk with pieces made from Spalted Alder (this also adorns the corners of the box). It is a "simple" packing puzzle - place the 5 Y-shaped tetromino pieces inside the box. Only 5 identical pieces? How hard can it be? I expected to solve it in 15 minutes or so! Erm....WRONG!

Of course, I am generally rubbish at packing puzzles which won't have helped me but for some reason, this took me quite a lot of hours! I just couldn't seem to see the wood for the trees/puzzle pieces! Brian wrote this about it:

"While Haym Hirsh has become known to my customers as the designer of the inelegant series of puzzles, he has now busied himself coming up with a few different types of designs. This one, a rather difficult packing puzzle. I spent 3 weeks trying to solve this and finally had to give up in the interest of production time. Several rotations, (one which is particularly tricky) must be accomplished. But the restricted opening only allows pieces to go in one way! Hmmmmmm."

Having bought it and put it on my "to be solved" mountain (yes, there is quite a large backlog of puzzles I either haven't had time to work on yet or have been totally unable to solve - hence it's a mountain rather than a pile). I started work on it in February and conveniently forgot Brian's 3 weeks and giving up thing. I realised that this is actually only a four piece packing puzzle because the final piece just needs to be able to drop in place through the gap - the key is to make it so there is space left from that first four pieces of packing activity. Right! Easy! Arrange those 4 pieces with a nice Y-shaped gap at one corner.

Interestingly, there is loads and loads of room - the space to be filled is 27 voxels and the 4 tetrominoes will fill just 16 of them (adding the final piece still leaves 7 empty voxels). With so much space, there would be a lot of choices to place the pieces and I quickly got fed up with trying to find dozens and dozens of arrangements of 4 Y pieces that can fit in a 3x3x3 cube. Time to Think© again (sigh! Bloody Allard and his insistence on using my brain!) Having thunk outside of the box, I started thinking inside it and realised that the entry hole was very limiting. This would seriously cut down the ability to fit those 4 pieces inside and in fact it made me realise that rotations were involved. I know that you all were instantly aware of the need for rotations but I had forgotten the puzzle description and not reread it.

I adore all the TICs by Andrew Crowell and the other incredible designers so was sure that this "TIC-in-a-box" was going to be a fun challenge once I had realised what it was. There are considerably less possibilities than I had originally thought and I searched for what is possible in the constraints of the small box - in fact I eventually (I think I was 2 weeks into puzzling at that stage) worked out there was only one placement of the 4 pieces inside that would work. Thank heavens that Brian had cut small circular holes in 2 of the faces to assist with manipulation of the pieces inside. There are several rotations possible if you manipulate everything into just the right position...it has to be millimeter perfect to get it to work.

Like Brian, I had a wonderful Aha! moment after about 3 weeks:

3 weeks this took me! OMG - I am exhausted!

I took some photos and put it down for a day. I have recently started storing many of my puzzles in the unsolved state so that I can have fun playing with them again in the future by reattempting them from the unassembled state. So I decided to take this one apart again for storage and also maybe to torture a few friends at work. The first piece gets tipped out quickly and then I "just" undo the rotational moves I had done on the way in. I had only done it the day before so shouldn't be a problem...WRONG! Again! I just never learn do I?

Brian had mentioned that there is a really tricky rotation and yep, he's absolutely correct. It is so tricky that I couldn't find it again. There are other rotations possible with relative ease which did confuse me a lot - it actually made me completely forget that it had been tricky to find in the forward direction. After 2 days, I had a bit of a panic - I was completely stuck! I could only get one piece out of the bloody box! Aaargh!

I was not going to be beaten easily...I was going to solve this thing! Sob! It took me another 3 weeks to dismantle it. There are indeed several rotations involved but one in particular is simply "perfect" - it is so well hidden in plain sight and needs to be manipulated with absolutely pinpoint accuracy for it to be possible. I very nearly tried force on several occasions but the thought of damaging one of Brian's incredible creations stopped me.

I think I may have to buy a few more of Haym's creations. I am aware that I have missed out on subsequent packing puzzles and I hope that Brian makes them again in the future. If you get the chance then don't hesitate - empty you wallet in Brian's direction - you cannot have too much good wood!

Thank you Brian and Haym for a wonderful frustrating 6 weeks! It did take my mind of the Coronavirus for a few hours at a time.