Pelikan Summer Release Part II

Continuing what I started last week. Jakub sent me the latest offerings which I suspect will be released later this week. I showed them off at the MPP yesterday and a several people were completely bamboozled by them. 

Minima For Frederic

Minima for Frederic by Dr Volker Latussek

Oh, Yesssss! More Minima puzzles! By now, you will all have realised that I absolutely adore the Minima series and all its' variants. Initially they were designed by Frederic Boucher to have a box with a 2x2x3 cavity and varying numbers of oddly shaped, but small, pieces to be fitted inside the box. Usually the aim was to make sure all the holes were occluded and at times the solution required interesting rotations of the pieces. Some of the puzzles had clever slots in the box to facilitate the rotations which did sometimes make the puzzle very confusing. One or two of them had extra "bits" attached to the pieces. Other designers jumped on the bandwagon with all sorts of interesting shapes and challenges. I have loved every single one of them so far. There is something very special about Volker's brain - he sees shapes and movements that almost no-one else can see and produces challenges that are incredibly difficult and interesting to explore. He created the amazing Minima-Flop and I have been waiting with bated breath for another special Minima from him. Here we have, not only another fun Minima designed by Volker, but also a Minima which he felt was good enough to be named as a tribute to the originator of this series, Frederic. Jakub and team have manufactured it from a very beautifully grained Oak and Wenge. Volker wrote this about the puzzle:

"A few years ago, Frederic Boucher wrote to me and invited me to contribute to his MINIMA series. To make my decision easier, he suggested that I didn’t have to fill the box’s internal volume strictly as 3x2x2, but could also consider using half-cubes and thus interpret the box as 6x4x4. I still remember well how I expressed my confusion to him about this; from my point of view, this offer – though certainly well-intentioned – contradicted the originally intended minimalist design concept of a 3x2x2 box, given the generous interpretation of the strict guidelines.

Now we all know what outstanding ideas Frederic was able to realise in his MINIMA series. Nevertheless, I wanted to resist this temptation and only agreed to the project under the strict conditions. I’m still pleased with the result today: MINIMA-FLOP, especially as I was able to completely fill the 3x2x2 box with four identical Tricubes and incorporate the FLOP moves – which were so important to me – into the solution. In fact, I was very satisfied with the result, and I think Frederic was too.

However, when I was recently playing with one of my 14-piece complete sets of building blocks of the same size, I checked whether six of these building blocks – each consisting of one cube and two half-cubes – could be used to fill a 6x4x4 box in an appealing way. I was pleased to find that, out of the 924 possible arrangements, only 13 filled a 6x4x4 volume in 50 different ways. For whatever reason, I then looked for suitable 3x2 openings – which I’m familiar with from my FLOPs – in order to offer a challenging and unique solution. I was so impressed by the result that, despite my initial reluctance, I asked Frederic if he would sponsor it. To my great delight, he agreed immediately, and so Pelikan is now able to release this puzzle under the name MINIMA FOR FREDERIC. I’m very pleased about this, and I think Frederic is too."

As you can see above, the puzzle arrives in a special transport configuration which took me quite a long time to actually unravel from the box. It is so nice to have this extra challenge. It reveals the rather unusual pieces to be packed inside:

Six interesting pieces to be packed.

Having managed to unpack the pieces, I realised that the assembly was going to be a huge challenge. Especially when you remember the rest of Volker's incredible rotational packing puzzles. I actually struggled to make the 4x4x6 cuboid for a while and when I did construct one, I placed it alongside the box and looked for ways the shape could possibly be taken apart through the holes. The cuboid could be arranged in 8 ways to try and interestingly, only 3 of them had even a single removable piece which was very helpful but to my horror, none of those positions would allow a second piece removal (even with interesting rotations). The constraints of the box just wouldn't let another piece out. At this point I was worried that there might be dozens of assemblies of the pieces to then try and find a way to get them inside the box. Because of my time-constraints, I went to Burrtools to look for cuboid assemblies. There are just 2 and I had found the wrong one first. 

I used BT and constructed the correct assembly and looked again to see how it could be disassembled using the various holes in the walls. 

The first piece obviously has to just lift out the top hole but after that there is a sequence of clever rotations using the holes until there are just 2 pieces remaining. Those two pieces did look impossible to place inside but obviously that was going to be the main challenge that Volker had intended. Time to set to proper work...

At this point, I had my assembly order positions and then "just" had to work out how to get the first two pieces into position. I tried for days to get them inside and in position for the third piece to be placed but I just couldn't get them into place. I went back to the cuboid several times to see whether I had missed an alternative assembly or orientation but it was correct. There is plenty of room in the box but those two pieces need a very clever and very specific set of moves around each other to get them into place. After 3 days of trying, I finally packed them into place and after that the rest rotated into the correct placements fairly easily.

My Goodness! It's absolutely brilliant!

If you like Minima puzzles then you must buy this. If you like Latussek puzzles then you must by this. Hell, if you Like puzzles then you must buy this! It is up there with the best Minima puzzle designs by Frederic - it is a very suitable tribute. Thank you Volker.

Fatomino

Fatomino by Dr Volker Latussek

This gorgeous creation has been made by Pelikan using American Walnut and a rather fabulous Zebrano. As soon as I saw it I was immediately taken back to one a fabulous packing puzzle by Hajime Katsumoto in 2016, Penta in a box. 

In the original puzzle, the cavity of the box was a 3x3x3 cube and there were 5 planar pentominoes to be fitted inside allowing the lid to close over them. It looks pretty easy but there is a catch - the lid cannot close over any piece in the top row at the front and any piece in the lid cannot close over an adjacent piece that would end up behind it. This simple looking packing puzzle required quite a lot of thought. So what could Volker possibly do to improve on such a simple but fun design? Volker wrote his thoughts about it:

"It’s already been 10 years since Hajime Katsumoto caused a stir with his PENTA IN A BOX – a brilliant idea to pack five of the twelve flat Pentacubes into a 3x3x3 box with a clamshell lid. As I don’t collect puzzles myself, it wasn’t until years later, during a joint visit, that I was able to play with Götz Schwandtner’s copy at Bernhard Schweitzer’s house. The interplay between the Pentacubes and the clamshell lid feels really good. And the chosen mix of the five Pentacubes is truly something special. 

I’ve been experimenting for some time now with the FATs – the 15 Pentacubes, each of which is described by a 3x2x2 envelope. In doing so, I naturally also recalled PENTA IN A BOX; interestingly, I hastily dismissed it again because I concluded that there couldn’t be five FATs that could fit into a 3x3x3 box with a clamshell lid. Something very fundamental went wrong with this thought experiment. How foolish of me, considering that there are 262,344 cuboid arrangements. An obvious mistake. 

For with FATOMINO and its one of potentially 303 combinations of five FATs, it is even possible to achieve a filling with a unique solution. What’s more, I maintain that there is no other combination with a unique solution. In this sense, FATOMINO, modelled on PENTA IN A BOX, is unique. In fact, I would very much like it to stay that way."

I did ask Volker why he called the pieces "FATs" and apparently it originated from George Miller who described the pieces as being able to fit in a FAT cigar box. It is just a way to refer to the NON-planar pentominoes. The pieces are very interesting and very satisfying to play with:

A beautiful hinged box and 5 non-planar pentominoes

Recalling the problems that I had with the original puzzle, I knew what sort of arrangements I had to attempt to create:

Not going to work

The aim was to make 2 separate packings that can be folded onto each other with a hinged edge. This sounds very simple but it took me quite a while to realise that the intersection of the leading edges as the hinge closed was really causing a problem. I had to hunt for a very particular arrangement. It would be tempting to brute force this with Burrtools but it shouldn't be necessary. After a few failures, you should be able to think of the type of organisation that you need and then hunting for it is tough but fun.

Yet again, Volker produces a variation on an award winning puzzle and manages to make it even better than everything that has gone before. This is a MUST have puzzle as well! It is simply superb. If you enjoyed Penta in a box then you will adore this one.

Flummox

Flummox by Benjamin Heidt

This is the second burr in this summer release by Pelikan. Both of them have been sent out in an unsolved position and the aim is to created the solved shape before then completely disassembling and then reassembling it fully. Flummox is well named as it is VERY difficult and will really challenge even the best burrista's. It is a caged 6 piece burr with "extra constraining pieces" and a stick length of 8 voxels made from a very striking combination of Zebrano, Purpleheart and Maple. When it arrives, one of the burr sticks is protruding up out of the box and will not simply push back into place.

It took me a good ½ hour of fiddling about (there are quite a lot of possible moves of the other 5 pieces) before you can make enough space to sink the protruding stick back to flush with the cage.

After this, obviously, the challenge is to disassemble the burr completely into 6 sticks and a frame. This is not for a beginner to burrs. It really is a very complex disassembly and there are a LOT of well disguised moves including lateral as well as forward and backward moves. The disassembly level is 30.1.2.3.2.2. Whilst that doesn't look too bad and I would usually say that is an optimal number of moves for a satisfying burr but in this case, with a frame, and being very difficult to see inside, this is VERY difficult. It's very rewarding when the pieces start to come out but even after the removal of one or two of them, the remainder remain very difficult to remove. This will be impossible for most puzzlers to reassemble without resorting to Burrtools but creating that file will be an extra challenge for you.

That was a massive challenge!

Fudou

Fudou by Frederic Boucher

Yes, another incredibly tough challenge by Frederic Boucher. I had to ask Jakub what the aim was. The Bubinga pieces arrived all nicely packed in the tray and I wondered whether we had to create some sort of structure that would stand up. I should have realised that this had a much simpler premise - the aim is to pack all the pieces into the tray in such a way that none of them are able to slide around. The triangular notches cut into most of them will allow them to interlock at 45º angles to each other and will ensure that they can be placed against the wall of the tray to prevent sliding. i.e. pack them into the tray but not orthogonally - simple? Hell, no!

I am terrible at anti-slide puzzles. I have managed to find a few very interesting ways the pieces can interact. The aim seems to be to find which pieces will fit together so that their corners reach the sides of the tray and then won't move if others are matched up to do the same. There must be a logical way of thinking about these but I have no skills in this sort of puzzle. It is a fun thing to play with but for me, I have made almost no progress in the 2 weeks that I have been playing.

For you clever puzzle enthusiasts this should be a massive challenge. Anything from Frederic is going to be very rewarding.

Pelikan Waits For No Man!

Having returned from the IPP, sneaked my new puzzles in (in their rucksack) and secreted them around my study, I started to work my way through them. I thought I was doing pretty well and felt I might just manage to get a few blog posts in before anything else arrived (I might have a couple on the way). Just when I thought I was safe, Jakub contacted me to say that he was ready with the next batch of Pelikan wonder. My first thought was: "Hooray! More gorgeous beauty and fabulous, difficult challenges" This thought was rapidly followed by another: "She's going to kill me!" Luckily, this time, the box arrived, and it was smaller than the previous ones. She who must be feared thought there were fewer puzzles in there, but don't tell her...they have just been packed tighter. Gulp.

Matruschka

Matruschka by Benjamin Heidt

3 tiny pieces make a stand

There have been quite a few creations on this blog from Benjamin. He designs interlocking puzzles and burrs that are just the right difficulty level for most puzzlers, with some very interesting design features and a lovely sequence to explore. Many burrs are much too complex for most due to multiple long blind dead ends, or alternatively have too simple a sequence and no challenge. Benjamin always gets it right, and Matruschka is a beautiful example. This chunky puzzle is made from Wenge, Cherry and Acacia with a diminutive stand made from Merbau. Looking at it, I was slightly confused as there only appears to be Wenge and Cherry visible, but after a couple of moves, the reason for the name and the extra wood type becomes apparent. A matryoshka doll is the name for the Russian nested dolls, but here Benjamin and the Pelikan team have taken the idea and altered it a little bit to make a nested burr.

The initial exploration reveals quite a few possible moves, and I was worried about having lots of long blind ends to explore, memorise and discount on my way to the correct solution. You can be reassured that, as usual, Benjamin has got it just right. There are quite a few possible ways to start, but the sequences are short before they stop, and you are forced to look elsewhere. The tolerances of the burr manufacture are superb, with everything sliding beautifully. The correct sequence is very well hidden, but once found, you are quickly on your way to the disassembly, and more and more pieces can be removed after you look for the unlocking sequence. The burr within a burr is revealed nicely:

Acacia burr nested within the final 3 large burr sticks

Once the inner burr is released, it can also be disassembled into 6 very beautiful sticks and then the whole lot displayed. 

 

That's a LOT of burr sticks!

The reassembly would actually have been possible for me without the use of burrtools, as I had sequentially removed pieces and placed them in their correct order and orientation on a table. I think most puzzlers should also manage the reassembly if they are careful to do this. Unfortunately, a cat decided to run across my carefully arranged table and scatter the sticks widely. A few unsafe for blogging words were uttered, and Burrtools was going to be my next step.

Once you have done the reassembly that you found then it is time to do it all over again! The 3-piece stand that is interestingly burr shaped can actually be reassembled inside the 6 piece burr so we end up with a burr in a burr in a burr! This is simply amazing!!!

This is a wonderful challenge for all burr aficionados, just the right difficulty level! With an extra twist at the end.

Surround Wil

Surround Wil by Frederic Boucher

There seems to be no end to the puzzle design skills of Frederic Boucher - there are several of his designs in this upcoming Pelikan release. This delightful packing puzzle is fun and should be perfect for all puzzlers of all levels. The puzzle is made from Acacia and a very vibrant Purpleheart. It is quite reminiscent of some of the packing puzzles by Yuu Asaka. There are 4 longer pieces with curved ends, and half-circles cut out, plus 5 disks, all to be fitted into a tray that is too small to take the long pieces side-by-side. If you look at my photo, the top-most large piece is tilted as it doesn't fit in.

This inability to fit the pieces side by side is a big clue that you need to get inventive with how the big pieces can be organised. I found a lovely way to get them all in the tray, but then the half-circle cutouts had been filled, with no space left for the disks. Time to think© and get creative. There is a lovely Aha! moment in this one, and it is very satisfying to pack them all in. This will be coming to work with me to challenge my colleagues - it's perfect for casual puzzling..

T Time!

T Time! by Frederic Boucher

This wonderfully clever packing puzzle by Frederic had me fooled for most of the week. It looks like a simple tray packing puzzle, but there is MUCH more to it. There is a 5x5 space inside the tray and 5 T-shaped pieces to be fitted inside alongside a 2x2 smiley disc. That doesn't look too difficult until you realise that the tray is covered by an acrylic cover with a T-shaped hole in it, in one corner. This explains the nicely curved corners on the pieces - they need to be inserted and manipulated using the holes in the bottom of the tray, plus some use of gravity, until they are in position. There will obviously need to be some rotational moves as they cannot possibly be arranged in the same orientation as the hole in the lid. It doesn't take long to find at least one (if not a few) possible arrangements of the pieces in that 5x5 space, but then the fiddly task of actually getting them into place begins, and, OMG, it's difficult! I spent several days trying everything I could to pack them all in. Nothing would work, and I had to stop for a bit and think© again. 

Finally, after several days of work, I had a special thought (unusual for me!) and realised that there was something very unusual about the design. My jaw dropped when I finally succeeded - Frederic is a genius!

Convolution Cube

Convolution Cube by Stewart Coffin

Convolution ball

Over the 15 years of this website, I have reviewed several versions of the Convolution puzzle by the amazing Stewart Coffin. This incredible interlocking design is not solvable by Burrtools due to the requirement for a rotational move with one of the pieces (does that make it a TIC?). I have a version from Brian Menold and a fabulous spherical version from Pelikan.

I personally would say that a Convolution (as well as its associated cousins, Involute and Involution) should be part of every serious puzzler's collection. All 3 are essential. If you don't have this, then you owe it to yourself to buy a copy. The Pelikan team have done a wonderful job creating this out of multiple different beautifully vibrant woods and the fit is just perfect!

Only 7 pieces but great fun!

The next bunch of puzzles will be reviewed next week - they include more from Dr Volker Latussek, another from Benjamin Heidt and then yet another unusual puzzle from Frederic Boucher. Wish me luck solving them!

Pelikan Begin 2026 With An Extravaganza

There are a LOT of fabulous puzzles here

On Monday, February 2nd, 2:00pm CET, Jakub and team will be releasing the first set of wonderful toys for 2026. This release has some truly incredible puzzles to keep you busy for a while. As always, they have been made from glorious woods with incredible precision. The choices of challenge are all superb,

Grid by Lucie Pauwels

Prison by Lucie Pauwels

Donjon by Lucie Pauwels

Yoga I by Benjamin Heidt

Conundrum by Benjamin Heidt

Minima-Flop by Dr. Volker Latussek

Minima XIII by Frederic Boucher

CUBI series by Frederic Boucher

I have had these puzzles for a couple of weeks and have been hard at work solving them so I can review them in time and help you make a choice. Whatever you choose, you cannot really go wrong here. 

Conundrum

Conundrum by Benjamin Heidt

Here we have another fascinating burr by Benjamin Heidt. The box from Pelikan says "mixed woods" but the pre-release gave more information - it has a beautiful set of dark woods (Bubinga, American Walnut, Purpleheart, Wenge and Padauk) arranged into a caged burr containing 4 sticks held vertically alongside each other in a frame. Initially it looks like the frame can split into several more pieces. As usual, Benjamin has created a fun logical sequence of moves that follow each other very nicely without leading you too far into long dark pathways. as you explore, these pieces dance around each other in a circle and go back and forth. After a decent sequence the dance stops dead and there seems to be no way forward and it looks like you need to go back and explore the side paths further. This won't get you anywhere so after a little while of returning all the way back to the beginning and trying alternative starts you realise that there must have been a hidden move at the end of that dance. There is a lovely Aha! moment when you find the cleverly hidden move and then suddenly the dance can continue to the removal of the first piece. The removal of the remaining pieces is now a nice logical sequence that you can work out by looking inside the space left after the initial removal. At level 21.3.3.2 this is a fabulous fun challenge with a lovely Aha! moment to keep any burr solver happy.

The reassembly would be impossible from scratch for all but the best burr solvers but having gone back and forth multiple times, I was able to put it back together straight away from memory with only a bit of experimentation. Fabulous!

Prison

Prison by Lucie Pauwels

There is something compulsive about the packing puzzle designs from Lucie Pauwels! This wonderful little challenge has been beautifully created by Pelikan with a wonderfully contrasting Bubinga frame (prison) and white Maple pieces. The prison consists of a simple 3x3x3 cube but is made much more complex by the addition of a single voxel hole in the floor and ceiling which also have to be filled - on top of that the openings to be fed through are partially obscured on all sides leaving a 2x3 gap on each face. The pieces are a variety of small simple shapes - there are 7 pieces in all to be placed in the prison. I thought initially that this should not be terribly difficult but the slightly limited entry and the need to fill ceiling and floor holes turns this into a proper challenge. Burrtools tells me that there are 151 possible assemblies and I struggled to find even one of them! I think it must have taken me a good 30-45 minutes to get my first one. Working outside the box as is traditional was not helpful as it is really hard to hold the pieces in place as you progressively add more of them. I was forced to work in the prison to use the prison bars to hold the pieces as I added extras. I frequently seemed to be making progress only to either have a final shape impossible to add into the puzzle due to blocking walls or the final gaps were split into several shapes. I had to use a bit of thought to work out an initial approach and then a lot of trial and error to get the first assembly. There is plenty of repeatability here to look for different assemblies.

Late update!!!!

Having posted this article, I was contacted by Lucie this morning to tell me that I had completely misunderstood the nature of the puzzle! Jakub and Simona don't give me the instructions. I had assumed that this was a packing puzzle but I can now tell you that the packing element is a secondary challenge (and not even the toughest challenge). It would appear that the top surface of the prison is held on with rather strong magnets and it can be lifted off to give very good access to the cavity of the prison. The true aim is to place all the inmates inside the prison and then replace the roof. This sounds easy and it really is BUT the pieces need to be placed in such a way that once the roof is back on, the pieces cannot slide out. Yes this is an anti-slide puzzle and looks like a very difficult one. I will need to go back to it soon.

Donjon

Donjon (delivery positions) by Lucie Pauwels

Donjon (or dungeon) is yet another very VERY difficult puzzle from the warped mind (we have one prison and one dungeon in this release!) of Lucie Pauwels.  Made from beautifully contrasting Ash and Wenge, the first challenge is to remove all the pieces from the transport positioning. This in itself was a major feat due to the very limited access! The aim is to place all the "prisoners" through the entry down below the surface into the dungeon and lock them in. The dungeon itself is just a 3x3x3 cube but the entry is ferociously blocked by a complex crowning door leaving only a 1x3 entry gap on each side. It is made even tougher by the fact that the entry gap is very narrow (smaller than a finger) - controlling the orientation of the pieces is going to require considerable dexterity. Having eventually taken all the pieces out, I was seriously worried about my ability to get enough back in even for storage, let alone solving it. I started assembling my 3x3x3 cube and quickly realised that could not be the sole aim - the presence of a 1x1x5 piece made me realise that the aim was to create a 3x3x3 shape filling the box and then lock them in with a crosspiece. The use of gravity to move pieces around inside adds to the fun - The Pelikan team have made the pieces with such precision that everything slides beautifully by tilting the box in whatever direction that you need.

There are 213 ways to use the pieces to make a cube so the use of the limited entry to narrow it down is crucial. There are 3 pieces with 90º corners in their shapes which very much constrain the orientation and movement once placed through the very limited entry hole. Finding the orientation of these and an order that they can be inserted without blocking each other is key to the solution here. This puzzle took me many hours and a little help from Burrtools as well. The end result is very satisfying - once the locking piece has been placed, the pieces are all locked inside. Inverting the puzzle will not let anything drop out. This is a huge challenge for any puzzler!

Grid

Grid by Lucie Pauwels

Grid is the third design by Lucie Pauwels in this release by Pelikan. It has complex pieces made from Wenge to be fitted into 5x5 grid constructed from an acrylic plate which has been beautifully frosted. We are accustomed to amazing wood from the Pelikan team but even their plastic work is perfect.

My initial approach was the usual random placement of pieces onto the grid which always progressed very nicely until I realised that I had isolated one small section of the grid and could not place a piece to fill it. Maybe starting with the more complex pieces would help? It did up to a point but then I always got trapped with a couple of pieces unplaceable. This was going to need planning - not only are there 3 complex pieces but there are also a couple of simpler pieces that have missing side voxels. My head was starting to hurt and I was on a deadline. I decided to use Burrtools to give me the position of just one piece and this was miraculous. After finding the position of just one of the complex pieces, the remainder of the assembly was wonderfully logical with literally only a few possible piece placements making the final assembly a lovely exploration. Maybe you talented puzzlers out there can solve it without help? If you can't, then making the BT file is fun and just makes the puzzle all the more satisfying.

Yoga 1

Yoga 1 by Benjamin Heidt

4 possible tetrominoes

This unbelievably complex design by Benjamin Heidt has been made by Pelikan to look incredibly beautiful using stunningly marked Leopardwood for the panels of the box and Garapa for the pieces as well as the corners of the box. Benjamin has picked 4 of the possible tetrominoes to be placed in the box which already has 4 voxels stuck in place inside and then deliberately not told us which tetrominoes he has chosen - he (and Pelikan) have obfuscated the puzzle even further by creating a hinge across each pair of dominoes and allowing the poor challenged puzzler to rotate the pieces into any of the 4 possible shapes. My goodness! This is hard enough if we were given all the correct pieces in the correct shapes to be inserted. By adding the hinges the puzzle has been made MUCH tougher! This is not for the faint-hearted.

Creating a Burrtools file for this puzzle is a challenge in itself - it will require you to know about how to use variable numbers of pieces (it is actually a great way to educate yourself into the more complex aspects of the program). Once this has been done it can be seen that there are 268 ways to insert these different combinations of these tetrominoes inside the box but only 1 is actually possible to create as a true solution. Amazingly it requires at least 1 of every type of tetromino (I'm not telling you how many of which ones). I have been working on this for many hours and have so far not managed to get anywhere at all. I suspect that I will need to go back to BT and find out how many of each piece type is required and try with that knowledge.

Minima 13

Minima XIII by Frederic Boucher

I have reviewed many Minima puzzles over the last few years. The original idea by Frederic Boucher was to fit various pieces into a 2x2x3 space through a limited opening and requiring various rotational moves which are facilitated by odd holes in the sides of the box. The series has been continued by him and also taken up by many of the best puzzle designers in the world - I have lots of them and love the variety of challenges. I now have several versions of the Minima 13 and reviewed it in June 2025 having taken 4 years to solve it. When I finally managed to review it last year, I said that this 13th challenge in the Minima series was the utter pinnacle of the series - it is quite literally the very best of them all. It takes the original premise to pack the pieces inside and adds extra stuff:

1. It is trivial to place all the pieces in the box without rotations but this is clearly not the solution because...
2. There is a single coloured voxel which must not be visible from the outside
3. Several of the pieces have been cut at odd angles to allow some rather fancy rotations.

This is a seriously tough challenge and the Aha! moments are multiple and difficult to find. I had almost no recollection of the last solve and it took me quite some time to get it again this time. The crucial moves are very well hidden.

If you own the rest of the Pelikan wooden Minima series then this is a MUST BUY. If you don't have a copy of the 13th challenge at all then this is a MUST BUY! The Minima 13 was one reason the whole series made it to my Top ten(ish) for 2025.

Minima Flop

Minima Flop by Dr Volker Latussek

Yes, we cannot have a Pelikan release without an incredible challenge from Dr Volker Latussek! This one takes the amazing Minima designs from Frederic Boucher and adds a certain Latussek flair to it. The Minima Flop has been gorgeously created using Purpleheart and Saman (also known as Monkeypod). It is simply stunning. The puzzle arrives in a specific transport configuration that Volker always designs and the initial challenge is to take the pieces out - this will give you at least an idea of the types of moves that are possible with this box and pieces. There are 4 cornered triominoes to fit into the usual 2x2x3 space. It looks like it should be a simple challenge - Volker has even given us 4 really quite large holes in 4 of the faces. One of those holes is huge but not big enough to place a piece inside on its side. Volker said this about the puzzle:

"Frederic Boucher said to me in the summer of 2024, asking if I would like to contribute a puzzle to his MINIMA SERIES. At the time, I was deeply immersed in working on my FLOP SERIES, so I suggested a MINIMA FLOP. I was confident that I would come up with something suitable despite the strict requirement of a 2x2x3 box. It quickly became clear to me that it had to be a four-piece puzzle consisting of identical pieces. The pieces could only be V-shaped. Now, the task remained of finding the right openings. And, to suit a FLOP, as many openings as possible with dimensions of 1.5x1. To my surprise, there were five of these openings, two of which I had to combine. This was the only way I could meet the requirements. MINIMA-FLOP is a nice experiment within MINIMA and FLOP. Frederic wrote to me that he had a lot of fun with it. I wish the same for you."

The name gives us a clue about part of the challenge - Minima Flop will have rotational moves like the other Flop puzzles multiple times during the solution. This gives the puzzler a few obvious things to try having some memory of what has been done before but there really isn't much space inside and as soon as one other piece has been placed, the flop move that you really want to try gets blocked almost immediately. This is time to think© and work out what is needed. The name and the simplicity of the pieces leads you astray and you need to discard your preconceptions and start from scratch. I spent a long time trying to do what I had learned in previous releases and failed before I was forced to think again. Unlike Frederic, Volker doesn't give you any useful bevels or angles on the pieces. There are no small holes in the box panels. It requires multiple rotational moves to get the pieces inside and the solution is just beautiful. 

The Cubi Series

Four amazing Cubi challenges by Frederic Boucher

There seems to be no end to Frederic Boucher's talents! Not only do we have the incredible Minima series, the Jammed series (two of which I still haven't managed to solve) as well as numerous tray packing puzzles, he also has created a series of cubic packing puzzles here that have an enormous challenge to them due to very irregularly shaped pieces, blocks attached to the inside of the boxes, as well as rotational moves. Effectively, these seem to be the combination of a Turning Interlocking Cube (TIC) at the same time as a packing puzzle. This series has been fabulously recreated by Pelikan using beautifully contrasting woods.

We have:

CUBI 12 - Ash and Wenge

CUBI 18 - Limba and American Walnut

CUBI 24 - Limba, American Walnut and Acacia

CUBI 25 - Mahogany and Zebrano

Cubi 12

Cubi 12 by Frederic Boucher

This initial slightly easier "taster" puzzle for the series consists of a box with a rotational symmetry to the interior. and four identical Wenge pieces made from 3 offset cubies. They need to be placed inside without anything protruding above the top surface (it will obviously not be completely filled when solved). I started with the 4 pieces and worked to create a cubic shape that would interlock enough to be reduced to a 3x3x3 cube. This part of the challenge was actually not that difficult. There are 58 ways to create a shape that fits in a 3x3x3 box but most of them are not symmetrical or pleasing to the eye. Searching through them to find something that would fit amongst the pieces stuck to the walls of the box was a fun exercise and quickly revealed a rather beautiful shape. Now time to place it inside the box. At this point I realised I had a problem. Burrtools will not solve this one - rotations are required. However, once I had realised this I quickly saw what was needed and managed my assembly. This is really very clever and definitely possible by any decent puzzler. I suspect the rest will be MUCH more difficult!

Cubi 18

Cubi 18 by Frederic Boucher

The second level of the Cubi series consists of 4 rather complex shapes created from cubes offset from each other. Two of them form rather fun looking staircase shapes around corners. I started initially looking at making a cube outside of the box but they were quite awkward to hold in place and I swapped quickly to trying to place the pieces into the box past the various obstructions attached to the walls. This was definitely the right approach as insertion of these large pieces takes a bit of thought and rotational ingenuity. Getting one in is easy but the second always seems to be blocked. I tried the second shape first and then the other was blocked. I was fixated on this for quite a while before exploring further. There is an alternative way to place one of them and it only got me even more confused until I went back to my initial thought. Trying the same thing again did not get me anywhere until I looked at the pieces properly. Whilst one is identical no matter which way it is inserted, the other can be reversed and whilst it looks similar now there is no blockage. My advice to you of to look at the pieces properly and experiment with everything that you can do. After inserting those, it only took a little further exploration to work out how to place the other two. The Aha! moment with this one is fabulous!

Cubi 25

Cubi 25 by Frederic Boucher

Whilst this is the 4th in the series if you take them in ascending numerical order, it probably should be the third that you try. Jakub and team have made this absolutely gorgeous from Zebrano with a Mahogany box. Again there are a number of pieces to place inside the box which has a couple of half-voxel pieces stuck to the walls. These half voxel interfere with your ability to place the in the box and also will form part of the eventual cube shape. To make it even more difficult this time, several of the pieces are made with half voxel lengths on one or more places. This will make it seriously tough to assemble the cube shape. After I failed for a while, I counted the total number of voxels on the pieces and there are 25 in all plus the 2 halves stuck on the walls (not much room to manoeuvre). I decide to try and make a cube shape outside the box with half voxel gaps in the crucial positions. I'm not very good at Soma cube puzzles and this is similar but much harder. It took me over an hour to find a cube shape - remember, the half voxel shapes make all the difference to your search. Having made my cube it was a lovely, much smaller, challenge to reassemble it in the box. Rotational moves and sliding is required. This is great fun and a wonderful next step up in difficulty!

Cubi 24

Cubi 24 by Frederic Boucher

The fourth (and final?) puzzle in this wonderful Cubi series is a really tough challenge! There are 3 beautiful grained woods. The box has a slightly limited entry due to the attachment of a 1x2x½ voxel piece across one corner. The pieces are rather complex with 2 ½ voxel pieces attached to each one. There is also a disk with smiley face on it to be added inside. This is another one where it would be best to assemble a cube outside the box and the work out how to get it inside. Burrtools won't help you as a rotation is required but it can help you search for cube assemblies. I needed this help and found 57 possible cube shapes but as soon as you adjust it to leave the 1x2x½ voxel gap, it is reduced to a single possible solution. In the interest of time, I used this to find the position of a single piece and then worked from there. It still took me quite long time to find a solution outside the box. Assembling it inside was a lovely sequence! I am sure that all you fabulous puzzlers will manage this without resorting to Burrtools.

This is an incredible release of brilliant puzzles to start off the year. There are challenges for all levels of puzzler. To me the absolute essentials are:

Minima XIII - if you have the others then this is a must buy - it's the best of the series.

Minima Flop - it's a Minima with the Latussek extra

The Cubi series - any will do but the set is incredible!

Probably The Toughest Pelikans Ever!

Upcoming puzzles from Pelikan

10 days ago, I received the latest batch due to come out from Jakub, Jaroslav, Simona and the team and managed to solve just one of them (Petit Albert) in the time to review it for last Sunday's blog post. Since then, I have been slogging away at them to try and have something to help you decide what to buy when they come out. I suspect it will be later this week. The amazing bunch is from a very talented bunch of designers:

Social Distance Soma Cube by Lucie Pauwels

Antislide 2L by Lucie Pauwels

Smuggler by Lucie Pauwels

Out of Center by Alfons Eyckmans

Minima 2nd Drawer by Frederic Boucher

Apotheca by Dr Volker Latussek

Slider H by Benjamin Heidt

Petit Albert by Dr Volker Latussek (reviewed last week)

Social Distance Soma Cube

Social Distance Soma Cube

I couldn't resist starting with this one - it is simply gorgeous! My version is made from Purpleheart and Maple and I am told that there will also be versions with Bubinga and Maple as well as Wenge and Maple. A very nice playable size at 78mm in each dimension. It arrives assembled in the cube shape but don't fret about the solution being given away. Tip it out of the packaging and it will quickly fall apart into the constituent pieces:

OMG! Not JUST a Soma cube!

Lucie has taken the Soma cube and separated the 27 individual voxels by a bridging piece. Taking it apart reveals that the constituent parts are still the standard Soma shapes but you can see that the bridges appear to be in specific places on each piece. As usual, the challenge is to assemble the puzzle into the standard cube again (I do wonder whether any of the other Soma challenges are possible as well and I may well attempt to put these into Burrtools to see if that is the case. The cube shape of the Soma cube has 240 solutions but the version designed by Lucie has just one.

I am terrible at assembly puzzles and do not expect to solve this any time soon without help from Burrtools. It is still a very compulsive puzzle and I couldn't stop trying as many assemblies as I could find. My problem is keeping track of what I have tried. Given more time I think that the placement of the bridging pieces will allow a more logical approach but I haven't found it yet.

This is well worth buying - it is beautiful, very difficult and compulsively addictive.

AntiSlide 2L

AntiSlide 2L

Another compulsively beautiful puzzle design from Lucie Pauwels. This one will join the others in her series of tray packing puzzles with anti-slide challenges (Minimal Frame, Open Frame and Trimini Frame).They are all wonderful challenges with effectively 2 levels to the puzzling. First of all take all the pieces and pack them into the tray - the fun thing with this one is that it is now a 3D packing puzzle and you need to form 2 layers on the tray and then second, much MUCH more difficult, the assembly needs to be made in such a way a way that the pieces cannot slide out sideways if turned on its' side.

This is a nice pocketable puzzle with a tray that is 6cm square and has just 2 retaining cubies in opposite corners and the pieces are all made from various attractive woods. This one accompanied me to work for a day or so and kept several people amused. Even finding one assembly is tough. It took me several hours before one was found and of course, it wasn't the anti-slide solution. The presence of an L shaped piece makes that challenge very tough. Placing the pieces into Burrtools reveals that there are 41 assemblies. It took a careful trawl of the 41 solutions before I found the correct solution.

NOT the final solution - just one I found on the way!

Smuggler

Smuggler by Lucie Pauwels
As delivered it doesn't look like much!

This lovely puzzle from Lucie Pauwels looks very straightforward when delivered. Just a tray packing puzzle with some very attractive pieces made from Ovangkol to be packed into a standard Maple tray. It is a lovely size to play with at a table (11.5cm across in a 3 layer deep tray). Only when you look at the pieces closely do you realise that there is something odd about some of them - they are 3 layers high and when they are looked at from a particular direction, there seems to be notches in them each of which is a single vowel in size. There are 8 pieces each having 1 voxel missing and then four 2 voxel bars to be inserted alongside them. Tipping the pieces out of the tray reveals the full extent of Lucie's madness and what is going to be required:

Interesting tray packing pieces with 4 "gold" bars to hide

This was the easy bit

Now we understand the name. Smugglers have often buried their treasure to keep it away from competitors and the authorities so that they can come back to it at a later date. Here we need to place all the pieces in the tray so that they lie flush with the edges. Then we need to find a way to repeat it but with the gold bars inside and hidden. To do this will require solving the packing with the notches in the middle layer to be organised so that they line up with 4 2x1 voxel gaps.

I first of all set to work on just the main pieces and ignored the gold bars. I found quite a few assemblies for this and, after playing with Burrtools, discovered that there are 168 ways to do this. I then worked on adding first one and them progressively more of the bars. Placing just one was relatively trivial once a packing for the main pieces had been found. Placing a second one, at least for me, did not seem much tougher. I have been trying to assemble the packed tray with 3 of the 4 bars now for a day or so and have so far failed. I am sure there is some logic to it but I haven't yet worked it out. Burrtools tells me there are 30 solutions. The final challenge with all 4 bars has just one solution. I expect this to take me the rest of my life! For you tray packers, this might just be an essential purchase.

Out Of Center

Out of Center

I am a sucker for a good burr! I am not good at assembly but that is why Andreas gave us Burrtools! The disassembly, I find a delight of effectively exploring a hidden internal moving 3D maze as you slide pieces about. I have quite a few burrs, both stick and board versions and as the number of pieces go up, they get much much more difficult. My 18 piece burrs are always a huge challenge and this one by Alfons Eyckmans is something very different to everything else I have ever seen - this is the first time I have ever seen an 18 piece board burr! It certainly is not for beginners. Jakub and team have made this beautifully from Wenge, Maple and Bubinga. They have made it a decent size at 10cm across.

This is a huge challenge but also a lot of fun. From the very beginning there are quite a few possible moves but the pathways aren't very long to get lost in. It will be important, as with all board burrs, to ensure everything stays aligned and no rotations happen. I don't think there are any early rotational shortcuts but small rotations will block the required moves. As I got further and further into the puzzle, I realised there was a repetitive locking and unlocking sequence which gradually made space for pieces to be further and further extended out of the puzzle. The burr has a level 22.3.6.1.2.1.1.1.1.1.1.2.2 disassembly which is just perfect for most experienced burr-istas and remains pretty stable right through to the final pieces being removed.

Looks horrific to reassemble?

Having taken it apart, there was no way that it was going back together from memory. Burrtools to the rescue again and despite being a board burr and despite the huge number of pieces, it was a nice easy assembly to follow. It will look lovely on display.

Minima 2nd Drawer

Minima 2nd Drawer by Frederic Boucher

It took a while to open the drawer!

This incredible design by Frederic Boucher is the next in the Minima Drawer series. I reviewed the first one here in July. Like the first one, this is a "must have" for any serious puzzler. But be warned...it is MUCH tougher than the first one. 

Pelikan have made this with an Elm box and Wenge pieces. On arrival, only one of the pieces is outside the box and the drawer will not slide to release the others. It takes a bit of experimenting with gravity and rotation to release the drawer enough to release any pieces. Once you have them, the difference from the first puzzle is clear - the dowels are captive inside and actually prevent the drawer sliding completely out. There are 2 L shaped triominoes, 2 dominoes and one single voxel piece. All have holes drilled through in various positions.

I have not yet managed to solve this one despite several hours of attempts. It is clear that an assembly will be needed outside the drawer first and then a sequence of insertion and moves will be needed to get them inside. Make sure that you keep track of the movements that you use during the insertion because it is quite easy to get blocked up and unable to move. At one point I had to shake pieces about inside to release a blockage and nearly had a heart attack! This is an incredibly tough challenge! Let's also just say that Burrtools will NOT help you with this. Good luck!

Apotheca

Apotheca by Dr Volker Latussek

The second puzzle in this release by Volker is another one that reveals that he has a very devious mind!  It has been beautifully made using a lovely grained Limba Frake for the pieces and American Walnut for the box. The box is 7x7x6.5cm and, as always with Volker's puzzles, it arrives in a special delievry configuration. This one looks solved when it arrives but notice that the pieces are protruding from the box. Obviously when packed they will be flush with the surface.

Shallow notches and dowels on each piece and in the box

Taking the pieces out reveals the madness in his head! The pieces are really fairly simple with 3 and 4 voxel L-shapes to which shallow holes and dowels have been added as well as a single dowel on one wall of the box.  This one looks very similar to the Farmacia puzzle from April's release but the are bound to be some special differences.

Having taken my photo of the pieces, not only could I not assemble the cube, I also couldn't put them back in the box into the delivery position! Having worked on so many puzzles this week, my head was broken!

The intention is to create a 3x3x3 cube inside the box. The presence of the dowels means that this has got to be done in a certain order and only one orientation. Again, Burrtools is not useful for this puzzle which really adds to the difficulty. 

Volker was very pleased with how this puzzle design worked out. he said this about it:

"When working with the usual v's and developing FARMACIA, I had to learn that some very nice moves are not possible. However, from my experience with FILLING V, I know how powerful L's are. So what could be more obvious than turning four v's into three L's and filling the 3x3x3 box together with the remaining five v's? And suddenly, the previously impossible moves become possible.

I really hope that you too will see that the price of losing the simple and clean construction principle of the 9 v's of FARMACIA is not too high and that the beauty of the solution in the APOTHECA solution justifies the mixture of eight v's and L's. In fact, the mixture is so powerful that I can offer another puzzle with APTEEK. Perhaps Pelikan will once again show how perfectly crafted ideas in wood enrich the world of mechanical puzzles."

With this description, who can resist? I have still not solved the Farmacia puzzle! I thought it was related to the Logical progression puzzle which ultimately took me a couple of years to solve. Whilst the Farmacia is solvable using Burrtools, the Apotheca has been deliberately designed such that "impossible moves" become possible and I suspect this one will forever be a nemesis. It will be fun to keep trying over many years!

Slider H

Slider H by Benjamin Heidt

Finally, a stunning looking puzzle from Benjamin Heidt. This chunky 7.5x7.5x8cm puzzle has been beautifully made by the Pelikan team from Padauk, Acacia and Peruvian Walnut. It is a good solid heavy puzzle and arrives with one piece outside the box which has an H shaped opening. Benjamin has taken the basic Soma cube pieces, one has been glued inside the box and another pair have been altered and combined into one complex piece.

Pieces outside the box

One is captive inside

The aim is to insert the pieces inside so that only one colour is visible from above when finished. There is a second solution that does not have this restriction and this will be a nice extra challenge for you. I started placing pieces inside the box straight away and failed to pack the cube before I realised that something was amiss. Have a close look at the trapped piece inside and you quickly realise that there is a gap underneath that cannot be reached by sliding pieces in from above. There is something very interesting built into the mechanism of this puzzle which Pelikan have made with extreme precision - it is a marvel to play with and once you have realised what is possible then you are on your way to a solution. It might take you a while! I still haven't solved it!

So we have an incredible set of puzzles coming from Jakub and team soon. These are significantly tougher than many of the usual puzzles and may keep you going for a very long time. I have yet to solve  all of them with some I have only partially completed.

My favourites are:

Petit Albert - a stunning idea and beautifully produced.

Slider H - an interesting twist on a classic

Minima 2nd drawer - it's just so clever (or it will be if I ever complete it)

Social distance soma cube - so gorgeous on display and a huge increase in difficulty for a classic puzzle.