Can I Add Up?

I Can With The Help Of Gorgeous Wood!

Cubic Fusion by Juno

I just cannot resist 2 things - beautiful wood and recreational mathematics. Oh ok, make that 4 things - I need to add puzzles (almost all of them) and cats as well. It would also appear that cats appreciate wood and puzzles as well:

Amenadiel and Mazikeen love wooden puzzles too!

A week or so ago, Juno announced the availability of his latest creation and I ordered it straight away. It flew all the way around the world faster than post usually goes from one length of the UK to the other! I received it and admired the fabulous woods that I asked for - just look at the grain on the box and on the Zebrano block:

My goodness it is so beautiful!
Camphor Laurel box with Zebrano, Silky Oak, and New Guinea Walnut blocks

The box has a 6x6x6 cavity, the small block is 3x3x3 and the larger blocks can be simultaneously assembled into a 4x4x4 and a 5x5x5 cube.

It will be a nice practical geometric proof that

3x3x3 + 4x4x4 + 5x5x5 = 6x6x6

if you can assemble all the shapes inside the box.

It's not terribly hard to do but it is very satisfying. Having solved it in about 20 minutes, I put the shapes into Burrtools which told me that there were only 2 solutions (both having 2 pieces that could be switched). It is very satisfying to see the arithmetical result displayed geometrically like that. Juno seems to think that most puzzlers might take about an hour to assemble the big cube. This would make it the perfect puzzle for newbies as well as us old hands. I will be taking this to work for a week or so to see what my colleagues think of it. It will then look glorious on display. Thank you Juno.

It is still available from Pluredro just now. You even get to choose which type of grain you would like for the box.

Update:

Having written my blog post and published it, I decided to solve it again so that I could pack it up to take to work. OMG! I retract the statement that it's not terribly hard! I cannot seem to solve it a second time. I must have gotten lucky the first time - this will be fun to show colleagues.

Did Juno Con Me? No Way!

The Con Way Puzzle by Juno

Frame assembled

A little while ago Yukari sent out an email to the puzzling world offering Juno's latest creation, the Con Way Puzzle, for sale. it was made from gorgeously grained wood so how could I turn it down? Also it was a design by Juno so how could I turn it down? On top of that, it came with a stand and I am a sucker for a puzzle with a stand for display so how could I turn it down? Fear of the present wife could have made me turn it down but I hit buy before I had time to think about what "she who must be flinched from" even impinged on my mind! Only a few minutes later did I wonder about the Whack! Ouch! that I might receive....again!

This gloriously beautiful thing arrived within a week from all the way across the globe and I lined up all the pieces for my photos. It was beautiful made from New Guinea Walnut and American Cherry. I admired the grain and then looked with horror at the shapes which appeared to be random and then the frame which unexpectedly came in pieces. I have a long history with Johan Heyns' puzzles having wonderful frames to display them on and me finding the assembly of the frames being a huge first challenge! I managed the frame after a few minutes of offing and blinding and had a look at what I had to play with:

This puzzle is based on a design by the famous mathematician, John Horton Conway who many of us have followed as teenagers interested in recreational maths. I remember programming the Game of Life into my Sinclair ZX81 - sigh, good times! The Conway puzzle was a classic packing puzzle that appeared in Stewart Coffin's Puzzling World of Polyhedral Dissections and has been made in some beautiful woods by various creators. It turns out that the original version was not that tough once the puzzler made a certain realisation. Juno had decided to take the initial idea and make it better by making all the cuts skewed. He had been worried that the challenge was too easy but when people tried out his 3D printed prototype they had really enjoyed it. As a result I have another piece of glorious wood in my collection.

I knew nothing about the original puzzle and set to afresh. There are 6 pieces that seem to be based on a 2x2x1 basic shape and then 3 mini cubes that are 1x1x1 voxel in size apart from the fact that only one of the pieces has been cut with orthogonal cuts. Everything was at an odd angle and looking at the pieces, they were all slightly different meaning that finding a basic assembly pattern wasn't going to do it. Juno showed off the solution to one of the versions way down at the bottom of his product page but I was determined not to look at it. 

This is not one to solve on your lap (especially with cats around) - you need a flat surface and I would suggest a ruler or tape measure as well. Knowing that the cube is going to be 60mm in each direction was going to be very helpful. The grain of the wood was not going to be helpful - Juno was careful to ensure that you didn't solve it as a 3D jigsaw with the picture being the grain. I found that the constructed frame was very useful to find corners that were 90º in all dimensions. This helped narrow down what pieces could go where. After finding a few corners (unfortunately several pieces had 2 corners that could have been external and needed a trial and error approach with the ruler. I had sort of decided on what I thought was the only possible basic arrangement of the basic shapes but not workout which ones exactly went where.

I did take it to work a couple of times but got no where with it apart from to make a couple of arthropods laugh at my failure. Home it went for me to have a proper effort on. My basic idea was right but I needed to find which slanted cuts would match with each other - there were not going to be any odd corners internally which definitely helped.

Finally after a couple of hours of thought and a bit of trial and error, I had my Aha! moment and had a rather precariously assembled cube to pick up and place on the display frame, hopefully without it falling apart. I have put the photos behind a spoiler button so as not to inadvertently give any clues but I suspect that the grain in my version will be very different to yours and the pictures will to be helpful.

One Con Way Puzzle assembly

The single voxel cube is in the centre

I love a puzzle with a stand!

There are still 5 of these left in stock as I type. If assembling cubes is your thing then this will not disappoint you. It is a thing of beauty when on display, the frame is a puzzle in itself and this might be a really good puzzle to give to "normal people" to play with! it's very tactile and compelling to play with.

Thank you Juno and Yukari for yet another lovely fun challenge!

Did I Just Perform Animal Cruelty?

Tortoise Protocol By Junichi Yananose

Juno Does It Again

I missed out on the Hippo puzzle from Juno which was such a huge hit last year - it dropped at the wrong time for me due to a combination of finances and being too busy to pay proper attention. I was determined not to allow that to happen when the next of his fabulous sequential discovery puzzles dropped. I was poised, logged in and with Apple Pay ready to go. It was just as well that I took these precautions as I have never seen a production run sell out so quickly!

When it arrived, I was rather staggered at the sheer size and heft of it. It is 211 x 162 x 82mm across and weighs in at 870g. The sales spiel had mentioned that it was big and heavy but it really caught me by surprised. It may cause some storage problems but I am not going to think about that until someone who I am frightened of harangues me for leaving it lying around. It is rather stunning being made of PNG Rosewood (shell), Golden Sassafras (body), Silky Oak (limbs and head) as well as Jarrah, Iroko and Juno's often used beautiful plywood. There are also some brass pieces and a whole lot of magnets.

The aim is to find a cavity and a prize somewhere inside. Yes, there's a cavity and NO, it's not a box! The presence of a cavity does not automatically make everything a box. I myself have some cavities within me and I am definitely not a box!

Having received it, photographed it from a number of angles, it was time to torture the Tortoise. It sounds awful but if I was to get my prize from inside then I knew I had to do some awful things. Turning it over and over doesn't really reveal any suspicious noises of anything loose inside and pushing and pulling at limbs and shell does very little. However, if you poke a tortoise on his nose then what will he do? Yes, the obvious thing happens here:

Now you seem me...

Now you don't

After this a few more things are possible and you get to play "Pattycake" with your tortoise and on a few occasions a bit of the internals are briefly visible. I went around in circles for a while moving bits and then moving them back. The moves are rather satisfying and assisted by magnets inside. Up until this point, I was able to go back and forth to the beginning each time but seemed to be missing a critical move to progress. This was where I stopped for the first day.

Returning to it the next day, I used my Einsteinian approach for a bit until something spontaneously different happened - oooooh! Now I really had done something terrible to the poor creature:

That has got to have hurt!

All of a sudden, I could see the innards of a tortoise and just like my own innards, they aren't really intended for the world to see - so I won't be showing them to you! At this point, it's possible to see the sheer complexity of the puzzle and understand why it had taken Juno quite so long to design, perfect and manufacture them. The interior is an absolute masterpiece! Let's just say, more horrors are possible for the poor tortoise including amputatlion of all limbs and tail as well as decapitation. It's gruesome!

Having ripped all appendages off, hopefully to use as tools later, I decided to return it back to the beginning and got my first shock - I couldn't;d not close it up again. I thought I had understood the process but I had missed something and part of the reassembly was blocked. I was flummoxed for a while and was forced to Think© for a bit. Ouch! Eventually I saw through the fiendish design and was able to return to the beginning and leave it for another evening. This was proving to be real fun.

The following day, I quickly tore the tortoise to pieces and examined the interior to see where tools would be used. There were magnets, buttons that were sunken, buttons that were flush, it was beautiful. All you can do is push and prod a few bits to see what happens. Interestingly, you need to combine pushing stuff with specific orientation to make pieces shift inside. Initially, you can see the move but it doesn't seem to help get you any further along. Thinking© again and trying an old old trick reveals a new part of the interior and then brass pieces can be seen sliding around inside. The odd thing is that sometimes those brass things disappear and won't return.......until they do. Why???

I got stuck again at this point. There is an obvious thing to do but it wasn't doing anything until I did it again and it did. It caught me quite by surprise as a component shot out of the tortoise and landed in my lap. Juno did suggest solving this puzzle over a fusion ops folded bath towel and I agree - in the end there are quit a LOT of pieces which could easily be lost down a sofa if you are not careful. Having gotten this piece out, I was able to see a bit more of the interior but it didn't really help me and I was pretty stuck for a day or so. At some point, I must have manipulated a mechanism without realising it because after a couple of days of getting nowhere, I suddenly had a gorgeous piece of plywood in my lap and no idea how. It had quite obviously been held in place by a pin and that pin was nowhere to be seen. I frantically checked my lap, the sofa and the floor and couldn't find the pin. I had no idea where it was and had no way to put it back. Now I had no option but to continue to the end and hope that I would work out how I had achieved that step or I would not be able to reset.

I was able to see why one piece had been disappearing inside and only occasionally reappearing during the early part of the solve. I suddenly had an extra tool and an obvious place to use it. Another beautiful piece of plywood was revealed and I was stuck again. From now on, there was a lot of thinking, a lot of trying random ideas that wouldn't work until in desperation I tried the correct random thing. The progression over another few days was absolutely delightful. There are sliding pieces, magnetic locking mechanisms and even a lever to manipulate (once you have found the lever) and all of a sudden a cavity is found - not the cavity of a box, you understand... it's the cavity of a tortoise. I had my prize!

For some reason, I was expecting a loaf of bread!

This is an absolute Tour de force of puzzling! It is beautiful, well thought out, fabulously logical and worth every penny. It is absolutely certain to be in my next Top Ten(ish) of the year. Whether it makes it to number one depends on whether I manage to solve some of the other incredible puzzles I have received over the last few weeks. The Jukebox, the Moonage M5, the Ice Bucket, Dead Mortimer are all proving impossible for my feeble brain but I do hope that I might manage to solve one or two soon!

Thank you Juno and Yukari for an amazing odyssey!

Does Being Married Decrease Your Solving Ability?

Tortoise Protocol from Juno

Well! That was an inflammatory thing to write as a title! It might earn me a Whack! Ouch! but probably not as she never looks at my site. If one of you rats me out then I'll be very upset with you.

The reason for the title is that I have nothing solved to write about due to a combination of work (catching up after some annual leave has left me little time) and having a better half who insists on decorating the house periodically seems to get in the way of puzzling. Yes, she doesn't make me actually do the decorating but its the moving everything around from room to room and forcing me to tidy up my piles (yes, multiple) of puzzles to be solved gets in the way.

Then, it just happened to be our 31st wedding anniversary yesterday and that involved something really special and really time consuming - kittens! I married a crazy cat lady and we got our first cats 28 years ago in an attempt to prevent the further multiplication of cat pictures, porcelain cats, stone cats etc. It didn't really work very well as they still proliferated but at a slightly slower rate. Our last feline friend died last year and after a little break to get over it she decided (and yes, I did not disagree) that more were required. So, when the most international MPP of the year went ahead, I drove with a happy Mrs S to pick up Amenadiel and Mazikeen (I am sure you can work out where those names came from). I cannot leave much lying around for fear of it being chewed or batted around the kitchen floor and also have been "forced" to spend some time in the company of the crazy cat lady and her cats. It has been quite refreshing.

I have attempted some puzzling and made some progress but not much. My copy of Tortoise Protocol from Juno arrived and I have been working on it. Just as with the Hippo, you have to do some truly awful things to the poor tortoise but progress was being made...until it wasn't. I have found lots of pieces and things that happen but I've been stuck at a critical point for a week. Sigh!

The Clutch lock from Andrew Coles has been in my pile for weeks and weeks - I have made some real progress in that the lock is open - I am not entirely sure why but now it will not lock properly. Actually it will lock but I cannot remove the damn key. He's a devious bugger that Mr Coles as I have mentioned before. Allard has discussed this lock recently and loved it - I am not very bright and hopefully will love it in a year or 3 when I understand it. You should love it soon when he puts them up for sale.

How does being married interfere with this? She got very upset with the constant muttering and the loud click, clunk noises I was making as I repeatedly opened and closed the bloody thing.

The day before our wedding anniversary, a nice compact box arrived from China. It had some puzzles in it that I was hesitant to tell "her" about until she was in a very good mood. My latest batch from Aaron Wang arrived and, GULP, they are noisy jingly things! I'm hoping the cats love the sound and that will give me an excuse to play without being shouted at.

Trumpet

Double-Barre

These two named after musical instruments are "just" level 8 out of 10. I have started with Trumpet yesterday and today and after an hour, I wonder whether Aaron is a superhuman being. These are the easy ones and I still can't do them!

Luckily for me the cats are fascinated by the jingling!

Circuit Board I

Circuit Board II

These two are level 10 and look ferocious. I wasn't going to buy them but Aaron insisted that the solutions were truly something special and I would love them. I am sure he is right but I do not know if I will ever find the solution!

Grenade V

Grenade VI

I have no idea why I bought these! I guess it was to complete the set. I do own the Grenade I - IV as well and as far as I remember have only saved one of them! They are impossibly tough but they really are wonderful to look at. I did have a forlorn hope that maybe without string they might be less impossible? Doh!

French Horn

Galaxy I

Another music themed one but this time level 10 and something that looks like it will be in a knot in no time and with no quick release mechanism that may stay that way. Aargh!

Concertina Wire

Sweet Hug

I absolutely adore these wire puzzles with a base. They tend to be very N-ary but the complexity of the interlocking rings can make these incredibly difficult to follow the solution and I often find myself either hopelessly lost or back at the beginning. Some have some very complex movements which I am never able to find. These looked like the two most straightforward ones from the current batch - I have hope even if it's just a faint one!

Summer in the Xiaoshang Bridge

This is one of a series of four designed by Aaron himself. Looking at the picture, maybe I stand a small chance at solving it despite the level 10!

If you want some of these wire puzzles then some may still be available - contact Aaron via FB or via me.

Hopefully I will have a bit more time and success this week.

Is There Something About Japan?

Gentle Interlock by Junichi Yananose

Today, I have two puzzles from people heavily influenced by Japan - Junichi Yananose is of Japanese origin and lives in Australia and Frederic Boucher who is American but has lived in Japan for many many years! They both design puzzles that are really special.

It's been quite a while since I bought anything from Juno. He has been a little quiescent this year due to having what sounds like rather extensive renovations done to his house. I guess that during such upheaval, it must be quite difficult to keep working on exciting new toys. When he announced (actually, it's Yukari who does the announcing) the production of a new toy (they also hinted that there might soon be a new sequential discovery puzzle) I couldn't resist. This one is a "simple" six piece burr except Juno never produces simple puzzles - there is always something interesting about them. He announced this one in his usual self-deprecating manner:

"This is a six piece burr puzzle designed by Juno to make use of odd sized stock of American Rock Maple. The first piece can be removed in just six moves from the assembled state, making it relatively easy and suitable even for beginners of burr puzzles. Prioritizing ease of play, the fit between the pieces was intentionally made slightly loose.

Juno also designed puzzles with the same final shape but with level 10 and level 11 solutions. However, after making and testing prototypes, he determined that this puzzle with the fewest number of moves offered the most satisfying play experience, and thus decided to manufacture this version.

The main material used for the puzzle pieces is Fijian Mahogany. This wood varies in color and texture depending on where it was cut, so the pieces were intentionally selected and assembled to create a mix of different colors and textures. As with most of our puzzles, a lacquer spray has been applied, resulting in a smooth finish. Additionally, all edges have been chamfered to ensure that no sharp edges remain."

It is a nice 9 x 9 x 9cm in size making for a lovely tactile experience. The method used to make this more interesting is to make the stick lengths 8 voxels rather than the usual 6 which allowed him to design a rather unusual set of moves. There are no blind ends and the sequence is gun to explore. Holding the puzzle in a certain orientation which does feel the most natural way to hold it led me to reach 5 moves and then a large chunk of the puzzle dropped out into my lap which nearly gave me a heart attack. I looked down at what I was holding to see a 2x2 voxel hole in it which had allowed a pair of pieces to just drop out. I stopped at that point and spent a few minutes working out how those two pieces could go back inside and closed it up. Phew! I didn't have a 1 way experience at this point.

Once I had my palpitations under control, I did it again and then deliberately took it apart and had my 6 rather unusually shaped pieces. I did put it back together straight away from memory which was reassuring and then moved to the kitchen to dismantle it again and arrange the pieces for a nice photo:

Odd looking pieces
Juno's branded hanko visible

At this point, I thought I might manage the reassembly but, no, Whilst the sequence is in my head, the pieces all look rather similar but are subtly different with notches in either the front, left or right sides. Slightly disappointed, I resorted to Burrtools which is still fun but reminded me that Juno is very VERY 

Minima XIII by Frederic Boucher
This version produced by Tye Stahly

A very long time ago, I received a very precious gift from Frederic - he sent me a copy of the Minima XIII puzzle which he had produced himself. It was a rather special copy (one of just 12) and I more or less immediately went to work on it. 

It is the usual 2x2x3 voxel box with cutout holes and, in this case, 4 pieces to fit inside in such a way that the holes in the box are all covered by a piece. The pieces were very unusual in that there had been some slanted cuts in the sides of them (presumably to aid with the required rotations. Interestingly, I solved this one quite quickly - probably inside a single day. Now many of you would think that I should be quite good at them by now and that is not unreasonable. BUT this puzzle was the first minima I had received ever (October 2021) and I really had no skills with this sort of challenge.

Solved in less than a day!

When I fed this back to Frederic, he realised that I had found an alternative and MUCH simpler solution. He went back to the drawing board and altered one of the pieces to be dark and have the requirement that this single dark piece not be visible from outside. He sent me a new instruction card along with the replacement piece:

Notice the slanted cuts

New instructions

I set to work on this version straight away (still 2021) and to my eternal shame, I never managed to solve it. Subsequently, I obtained a whole lot more Minima puzzles. Initially from Tye Stahly's Nothing yet designs store (many are still available) and then of course from Pelikan puzzles (they also have the sets of 1 to 12 still available and are an essential addition to your collection)

When Tye made number 13 available, I couldn't resist having a more portable version that I could take to work. I have have been trying again for about 5 more months and again, have completely failed. I think I know where the pieces are supposed to end up - to be honest, there are not many options to try which will have that dark piece (or the dotted piece on the plastic version) covered up. For the life of me I cannot get the triominoes into the correct position after the dark piece is placed or to allow it to be placed. So far it has been 4 years working on this thing - I hope not too many more.

Thank you to Juno, Frederic, Tye and Japan for making me look stupid yet again!

Oops! I Did It Again!

Happy New Year Everyone 

Tornado Burr from Juno

It has been a very long time since I bought anything from Juno. I missed out on the fabulous Hippo puzzle due to cash flow issues and he has been quite quiescent recently whilst carrying out house renovations. But...he has found time to create some new unique burrs. I couldn't resist them and the flight around the world with them on was the fastest I've ever seen! Mrs S was really unimpressed to see 3 packages arrive in 2 days. The first was the parcel from Juno and Yukari along with a package of a "second" quality Xmas tree from Dee Dixon and then there was a rather large box from Alex Magyarics - I think he is intending me to suffer a painful death from a blunt teaspoon at the hands of Mrs S. She can scoop at parts of anatomy with the teaspoon and cause intense pain and harm as well as death should the fancy take her. Note that we only allow blunt teaspoons in the house as I wouldn't want the damage to be done without at least some effort on her part so that she has to think about it before inflicting it.

We have LOT of toys from Alex - I hope that I can solve just one or two (if I survive)
He is an evil genius wholeheartedly has been equipped with a 3D printer and let loose on the world 

The Tornado burr is not actually a new creation. The original was made by Brian Young in 2008 before I started my puzzle madness. There is a video of Brian making pieces on YouTube and the sheer amount of work is incredible. This does explain why this burr is not particularly cheap. For the workmanship in it, it's a bargain. Brian wrote this about it:

"This ingenious burr was designed by Junichi in May 2007 with “head and hands; no computer”. Junichi had the idea for a multiple rotational movement but did not get to finally apply it to a puzzle until he came up with the Tornado Burr.

People often ask puzzle designers “What was going on in your head to design this puzzle?” What was going on in Junichi’s head when he designed the Tornado Burr? Visualising things going up and down and back and forth at the same time is one thing, but things going up and down, back and forth and around as well is quite another! Junichi says the Tornado Burr “has very eccentric movements” and challenges puzzlers to “Try your luck, and stop this fierce tornado.”

Needless to say this puzzle is not solvable in any computer program that we know of.

This interlocking burr puzzle was recognised for its innovation, design and the amazing puzzle solving experience it provides in the 2007 Nob Yoshigahara Design Competition with an Honourable Mention. Until Brian tackled his Limited Edition of this burr the puzzle had not been commercially available and now Brian knows why. Making the jigs, the number of and complexity of them, was more difficult than making the puzzle itself. As well as conventional check-outs there are routed check-outs and a further 16 sections that must be hand-turned on a lathe."

After reading this, who could resist such a fabulous challenge? I took my photos and put it down to explore. To be honest, I had not seen anything like this before. It very much reminded me of the Kamikaze burr that I bought years ago which also cannot be solved by computer but is coordinate motion rather than rotational.

Pushing and pulling at the sticks immediately reveals that this is not even close to the right approach. After fiddling with it a little bit, the pieces sort of settled into a shape that would give a hint of the approach. I should have realised from the name - what does a Tornado do? It spins!

The pieces just settled like this
A strong sense of foreboding hit me!

Having seen this movement begin of its' own accord, I felt that it was my duty to continue it and the whole thing very rapidly gets warped out of cubic shape. Having moved some pieces (I was very careful to ensure all 4 moved at the amenities time),  I realised that is they were turned enough then it would free up others to also turn. OK, challenge accepted! 

OMG! I backtracked very quickly at that point as the puzzle became very distorted and pieces started to move independently of each other. It was very stable, there was no chance it was going to just fall apart but it became obvious that I needed to concentrate and be aware of what I was doing. The intrepid puzzler started again and very rapidly got himself into trouble - somehow I had turned one of the sticks 90º independently of the others in the same plane and then nothing else was possible. It took me a while to realise what I had done and attempt to backtrack. The heart stopping moment where I realised that the solo rotated piece could not be returned in synch with the others stopped me a bit and in ever increasing panic I tried various moves to extend the gaps that appeared to allow the piece to turn back. Only after about an hour of swearing at myself did I manage to get it back to the start and calm my nerves again. It's very exciting stuff this puzzling isn't it? Why to I scare the crap out of myself so often?

After a rest for an hour or so, I started again and found a combination of moves that seemed to open up the grooves a little bit. A little bit of shookelling about (it's a Scottish term) and I had a wonderful Aha! moment. Oh that moment was wonderful - I took a photo and jiggled the puzzle only to have a slow motion moment of horror! I had a whole lot of pieces in a pile and only a vague idea where they should be. Bugger! Having reached that point and gone beyond the point of no return, I pushed everything together for a couple of photos and now I am wondering what to do next.

Aargh!

Look at the workmanship in those pieces!

It's always good to see Juno's mark.

This reminds me very much of the situation from July 2023 when I thought it was a really good idea to dismantle the Euroka puzzle (also from Juno). I ended up with a pile of pieces and absolutely no idea how to reassemble it. I did get sent a video of Juno showing the assembly but I cannot for the life of me manage it and it remains in a bag as a puzzle to be attempted soon. It is so important that it is in my current to be solved pile in the conservatory. It really needs to go back together and displayed. Sigh, one day maybe!

Euroka

Oops! That was stupid

I really hope that the Tornado burr doesn't end up next to the Euroka over here:

The white bag of shame!

Thank you Juno for the fabulously beautiful puzzles, for the wonderful Aha! moment and also for showing me up yet again!

Gravitational Burr

A Burr That’s Also a Maze

Gravitational Burr by Junichi Yananose
Gorgeous wood!

Well, what a way to start the year! First, I start on the amazing PicoLock and now I have a stunning and fun chunk of wood sent all the way from t'other (getting in touch with my inner Yorkshireman) side of the world.

This beauty has been made from a rather gorgeously grained American Black Walnut and Juno has mixed and matched the light grained pieces with the dark to make something arrestingly beautiful (I am a sucker for lovely wood) and the fact that it is a fabulously tactile 117mm across in each direction makes for a really nice thing to play with. The only downside is that my Juno puzzle collection is currently stuffed into 2 shelves of my Billy bookcases and this (plus the equally stunning Dual Meanders Box I also received) will now no longer fit in that space and I will need another reconfiguration.

Looking at it, you would think: "so what! It's just another 6 piece burr. Surely everything interesting has been done with this type of puzzle?" You might be right about that as I have multiple burr sets and am always on the lookout for more but this is NOT "just" a 6 piece burr. Juno has added a ball bearing inside and a track for it - therefore it is a 7 piece burr and the seventh piece needs to move around inside to allow the other 6 to move.

In fact, it is even more amazing than that. It is actually a level one 6 piece burr with a solid key piece which Juno has made into a level 2 one by having a tiny locking move that needs to be pushed to allow the key piece to slide. The locking mechanism is held firm by a pair of magnets. Once the key piece is unlocked then the first movements are possible and it quickly becomes clear where the name Gravitational burr" came from. You cannot initially see the ball bearing but you know it is there and the only way to manipulate it is to rock the puzzle side to side or turn it over and over. It is clear when the bearing has moved because you can hear it click to a new position. It is only after 4 moves that you can actually see the ball bearing and at this point a small part of the track/maze that it is in can be seen.

4 Moves in and the BB with some maze is revealed

Having found the bearing, I return to the beginning and try it again - it is weirdly satisfying just rolling the ball around and controlling where it goes by holding the key piece tight and clamping the ball in place and not allowing it to roll or fall until I was ready. I found a choice at the 5th move and I carried on deeper into the maze. After a few more moves I lost my courage and returned to the beginning again...except I couldn't get back to the beginning! GULP! Lost already? I knew that I was in good company because Goetz had got himself into the same difficulty. It was a little early for a full on panic and I just wiggled it about in every direction I could whilst manipulating the movable piece and, after a rather fraught 10 minutes, it was back at the beginning again. Phew! I was unable to play with this whilst Mrs S was around. She often takes the piss out of me for listening to puzzles and she very rarely will sit in silence - there is always radio or music or TV on around her and if it's too loud or too distracting then I cannot tell where the bearing is going.

I carried on with my exploration and found another pathway and all of a sudden my ball bearing was peeking out at me in a different part of the maze on a new section of the puzzle. How on earth did I get there? Back-tracking was really hard as I hadn't been really paying attention to orientation as well as piece position and I must have missed an opening. It took me a whole evening to return to the start.

Time to think©! Ouch! I could see that this was going to be rather complex and maybe I was going to have to draw a maze pathway. I started off doing just that and quickly came to the conclusion that my mapping skills weren't going to work. The problem for me and the fun part of this puzzle is that it is not just a burr...it is a maze and to make it extra fun it was a dynamic maze because the pathways moved with the key piece and parts that are blocked become available to explore only at certain positions. On top of this, the bearing needs to be moved by gravity making it impossible to randomly find your way through. I would go as far as to say that randomly exploring will get you into trouble as you will almost certainly get lost and then be in trouble.

Oh, the think©ing hurt me bad this time. I suspect that designing a hidden maze inside a burr using Burrtools might not be that difficult for an expert but that would almost certainly lead to a puzzle that required a lot of random moves and luck to get through - it would not be a good puzzle. Here Juno shows his true genius - with the Gravitational burr, Juno had designed the maze in such a way that once the initial confusion of manipulating the bearing and it popping up in odd places has been overcome, then the think©ing makes you realise that he is showing you different bits of the maze as you go. First you see the top of the key piece, then you see the sides of the key piece and later, a bit by surprise, you get a peek inside the body of the burr and see pathways on the fixed walls of the cavity. Each time you see a bit more it opens up a possible section for use. 

In the end, I actually deliberately worked my way through the pathway section by section until all of a sudden the key piece is in a very extended position to allow the extraction of other parts and full disassembly of the burr. Again, the genius of Juno is shown by the presence of a magnet which holds the ball bearing in place so that it doesn't fall out and get lost in the furniture or swallowed by a cat. In retrospect, I realised that magnet also held the bearing in place at the start of the puzzle - there is no rattle if you listen to the closed puzzle.

All 6 (7) pieces and Juno's stamp is revealed.

Once the puzzle is in pieces then the true genius is on show and you can look at the complexity of the pathway. Not really a spoiler but if you don't want to see the key piece detail then don't click the show hide.

Only half the key paths shown

Now it was time for reassembly. Juno has provided a quick assembly method which doesn't use the maze at all - there is a big cavity in one of the pieces where you can store the bearing and just assemble the 6 piece burr without it.

Ball in the hole and then assemble the burr for a level 2 puzzle

As usual, I had not paid attention properly to the positioning of the pieces and which order they came out in. Have I told you before that I am truly awful at assembly puzzles? To my eternal shame, it took me several hours to reassemble the burr without using the maze. Blush! 

Once I had worked out the burr assembly I was then able to deliberately work out my sequence of moves whilst able to see inside the puzzle and plan out the true reassembly. It took me about an hour to work it out and be certain of the sequence and orientation. Such fun even when you can see everything in place.

This puzzle is a masterpiece! It looks gorgeous, it looks simple and has layer upon layer of complexity and is definitely not solved by chance. It requires initial blind exploration followed by a reveal or 2 or 3 and then definite planning of your moves. Finally the reassembly is not just a simple backtrack - I wanted to truly understand it in its' entirety and that took some time and a lot of fun. Thank you Juno!

The Dual Meanders Box is waiting for me and after just a tiny bit of exploration, I have to say that it frightens me a lot - there are 506 moves to open it!

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Are you a Brass monkey fan? You should be! The BM puzzles are amazing. The 6th Brass monkey burr has just gone up for preorder/early bird sale! The previous 5 were amazing and this is set to be the very best yet. Go buy it now.

Brass Monkey 6 preorder information