Minima(lly) Effective - So Others Try It

Minima Fibonacci series

I apologise for last week...I appear to have had Covid for the second time and it's just as nasty as ever! The only difference for me this time is that I had to obey the government's instructions and continue working with it if I was physically able. So having been poleaxed on Sat/Sun, I continued to go to my usual Monday meetings via Teams and then back to the operating theatre after that. I was told on a few occasions by colleagues that I looked shocking (and even once by a patient) but I soldiered on wearing my mask to protect others - not really sure how effective that will have been but that's the instructions. I'm currently on day 8 and still feeling pretty hellish but am at least more functional. Mrs S, on the other hand is convinced that I am trying to murder her with the virus. Only another week to go before we feel a bit better. Stay safe out there guys, it's still not a trivial thing.

On to the puzzling...

It has reached the point now that my friend Tye Stahly, knows what sort of puzzling I like and contacts me with news of things he is making that I will want to buy when they are released. He is a savage businessman as my PayPal keeps emptying into his bank account! Having fallen for the Minima challenge set by Allard and Frederic Boucher a few weeks ago, I couldn't resist it when Tye showed me that another renowned puzzle designer had jumped on the bandwagon with the Minima series and found some other wonderful challenges. One of the best designers in the world, Laszlo Molnar had decided that this was a good format. I have raved about many of Laszlo's puzzles over the years and been encouraged about them by my sadly missed friend, Felix, who saw the incredible talent and encouraged me to try them and even made me a whole load of them himself. 

The Fibonacci name could only mean one thing:

Fibonacci 1 pieces

Fibonacci 2 pieces

Yep! The Fibonacci series - polyomino sizes 1, 1, 2, 3, 5 all to be fitted into the 2x2x3 box to ensure that all the holes are covered (in fact the box is packed tight). Having said that the name makes sense, I am a little mystified about number 3:

Fibonacci 3 pieces
Still has 12 voxels but it just doesn't add up!

Tye has made them using his usual multicoloured wooden blocks and beautifully cut acrylic sheets - I am informed that it is actually Tye's own Mrs S who makes these and for that he is a very lucky man. I couldn't resist playing with them as soon as I was physically fit enough to concentrate on anything other than my chest. They are just as confusing as ever with the requirement to assemble shapes outside the box first being important and then gradually working out how to get the bigger pieces inside and what constraints they would have on fitting in the small ones. Just because there were single and dual voxel pieces does not necessarily make these easier - the 5 voxel shapes are very restricting and take up a lot of space inside. The requirement for rotations makes for a lovely challenge and interestingly, one of these is solved using linear movements only. I won't spoil it for you by saying which one.

Not to be outdone, the original Minima designer, Frederic Boucher, has extended his design prowess into flat (2D) versions - except the solution is most definitely not restricted to 2 dimensions. Not content with making me rotate blocks around in a box, Frederic has designed a tray packing puzzle - Flat Minima which is still available:

Flat Minima

In this wonderful little challenge the aim is to fit all the pieces inside the tray. Again, there is a limited entry way (in fact there are 2) and rotations are required. The end result is to achieve a 2D image of a 2x2x3 block inside the "box". 

How hard can it be? Well, I know that I am awful at tray packing puzzles and this has the added challenge of restricted entry and rotations as well as a viral infection - I figured I was buggered!

The first thing to do as usual is make your shape and that wasn't actually too hard. Next, work out a possible order of piece insertion. Finally, insert the bloody things. Erm! It's not quite that simple. The hole in the front and the side is not big enough to actually insert the pieces. This is why it's not really a 2D puzzle. The insertion of at least 2 requires rotational moves in the third dimension and can be quite confusing for am an of my limitations. Having achieved that, I worked on the remaining pieces and noticed that there is not a lot of room left after the first couple are in for the remainder to move about. The Aha! moment with this one is lovely. It probably only took me about a ½ hour but it was a delightful voyage. There's not much of a clue in the solved picture but look at your own risk.

Solved it. Looks like a 2x2x3

Finally, another of Laszlo's amazing designs was thrown in as a gift for me from Tye. The Hardcore puzzle is a sphere packing puzzle:

Hardcore
Pack these 3 shapes in the sphere with no force to close and a snug fit

This is one that Tye had asked me whether I had heard of it and might have the exact dimensions of the pieces. I searched my database and pictures for Hardcore and pronounced that I had no knowledge of it. When this duly arrived, I had a sneaky suspicion that I had seen it before but another search of my database did not reveal that name. I worked on this for a day and solved it with another lovely Aha! moment before realising that I had definitely seen it. In fact, Laszlo had used me as a guinea pig for it before he had come up with the name (hence I had come up blank) - I showed it off back in 2017.

Laszlo's prototype (he called it the Spherical packing puzzle)

I have to apologise to Tye for not realising and helping more - I had seen it before it was named. 

It is currently for sale here and is well worth your attention. It is not impossibly hard...it is just lovely and nice to show to non-puzzling friends as a gentle challenge.

A Coronation Needs Cake to Celebrate

The Dessert TICs or Cake TICs by Laszlo Kmolnar

I saw Neal show these off on a Mechanical Puzzle Facebook group a few weeks ago and I asked about them. The shapes are freely available to download and print but I have been told that the purchase of a 3D printer is grounds for divorce (which I cannot afford) and I really do prefer my puzzles in woof where possible. Luckily Neal was open to selling the set to me and for a very reasonable sum the whizzed across the Atlantic to chez Puzzlemad for me to marvel at. I have not had much contact with Laszlo for a while and had no idea that he had taken his unbelievable puzzle design skills into the TIC world - let me say that yet again, he has done something wonderful and designed some beautiful puzzles with just the right challenge level.

The beautiful wooden sticks were all made by Jeff Baz and he also assembled 4 of the puzzles. For a while Jeff was also selling stacks of wooden sticks for puzzlers to assemble into their own toys and Matt Hochberg made the other 2 puzzles for Neal. Jeff's usual items for sale are gorgeous wooden chopsticks and other wooden art and he seems to have stopped making puzzles for the moment and also is not making the sticks either but hopefully he will restart sometime in the future.

Neal very helpfully disassembled the 6 TICs for me prior to sending them and they were well packed with no glue calamities in transit. I had a bunch of challenges to play with. I have often in the past hesitated to do assembly puzzles because I am generally bad at them. But over the last year or so, I have gotten a little better due to the TICs I have attempted from various designers. I was very glad that these had been sent to me disassembled. They are all a very nice challenge level with only one of them being exceptionally difficult. Neal suggested that I start with Cookie, then Cake, then Scone and then Macaron. Off I went - I took them to work to play with in the odd moment of down time. Staring in the ascribed order.

CookieTIC was a beautiful way to start. These are all a pair of ring shaped larger pieces that have the interlocking then rotation to be done before sliding together into a 4x4x3 cuboid and then having the smaller pieces to filling the gaps. Sometimes the filling of these gaps requires a partial disarticulation and the sliding back together with the piece inside. The rotational aspects are very like a disentanglement puzzle in reverse with the possible movements highly constrained. This one took me just 15 minutes and left me with a smile. On to the next...

CakeTIC had a much bigger gap to slide the 2 ring pieces together but this did not make the assembly into place any easier due to the large paddle shapes at the end of the rings. This fun one took me a little while longer but had a fabulous Aha! moment when it did come together.

Scone proved troublesome! I attempted it and failed. I could not get the two ring pieces to interlock. I was always blocked in doing what I needed. Time to move on before frustration sets in and I push too hard and snap a joint...

MacaronTIC had some absolutely gorgeous dark woods and a very interesting initial assembly and then a little more of a challenge to place the 3 smaller pieces. There were a couple of possible assemblies but one was not actually possible.

BaklavaTIC was next and was not a disappointment (I cannot resist Baklava!). Another fun entanglement phase which was extremely blocked up by the very large face on the larger open ring and then more interesting insertions. This probably took me about 30 minutes to find the full solution and on to the last one...

MuffinTIC was oddly very easy for me and I managed it in just 10 minutes - it is beautiful and a satisfying solve. It was time to go back to the SconeTIC... as an Englishman, I should be very good at devouring scones as it is part of my cultural heritage but maybe the absence of clotted cream and jam was affecting my abilities? There was something about this one that was really preventing me from finding a solution. I had developed a small audience whilst I was working on the others and they were all beginning to think I was some kind of genius until SconeTIC. At this point they saws me struggle and get nowhere for quite a while and realised that I am really a bear of very small brain and after a little mocking had occurred they all lost interest.

I had to take it home again and analyse it properly. I finally realised what was causing me so much trouble. Looking at the two large interlocking pieces, I realised that there was at least 2 ways that these could be assembled into the base cuboid shape and clearly only one of them was going to be correct. Maybe I had spent all my time attempting the wrong one? I changed my orientation of the two pieces as they attach and tried again. Still no luck, maybe a different orientation. Aha! I managed to get them interacting nicely and after a very fancy move but definitely not using any force I made a cuboid and set to inserting the final pieces. BUT they wouldn't go. No matter what I tried, I could not get the U-shaped piece inside. Then after looking very carefully I realised that the gaps left in the assembled cuboid could not possibly fit the remaining shapes. The wonderful thing with this particular TIC was that not only were there two possible frame assemblies but they were both reachable. So how do I get to the other one? I then realised that there were four possible ways to introduce the two frame pieces to each other and I assume that one of them allows the incorrect assembly. Time to try the other 3. Even knowing this, it was a huge challenge to get the other assembly. I think it must have taken me over 2 hours over a couple of sessions and kept me partially occupied during yesterday's coronation. Finally I had it done and could take a group photo:

Scone finally solved!

Stunning as an assembled set

I have assembled and disassembled them all now a few times and they are wonderful. The sticks are beautifully made and finished and the woods are gorgeous. I think I will keep them in the assembled state for storage and display. It might be too easy to lose a piece if I don't (I do have a single tetromino in my living room and I have absolutely no idea which puzzle it came from - I guess that I will eventually find which one has a piece missing!

Time to get back to the SD puzzles that I have had no luck with!

Man! That was Fast! Man! That was Good!

Man! I was Fast and Man! I was Good! 🤣

Ennui

Just a quickie again this week - I had to work yesterday yet again (unfortunately I missed another Zoom MPP) and when I got home we had a boiler catastrophe and no heating in the house (not going to be fixed until at least Thursday 😱😱😱) and this required multiple attempts to reset the boiler (failed) and then a mad scramble to source some electric heaters. Mrs S is grumpy/angry at me at the best of times - if she gets cold then I am in serious trouble! My only hope is that she freezes to an icicle quickly before she has time to murder me! Some one suggested on Facebook that I cuddle Mrs S to keep warm on Valentine's day - OMG - that is a dangerous thing to attempt!

At the top of the post is a statement you don't read on this blog very often! I pretty much never claim to be good at puzzling. At best I think I am sub par and at worst bloody awful at puzzling. I do wonder why I keep torturing myself with these things? It may be something to do with the eternal love of wood (a boy can NOT have too much wood) or maybe the fabulous community of puzzling folk who provide support (although mostly to me they just take the piss).  There definitely is something that keeps me buying these wonderful, ever more expensive toys.

So why those extravagant claims? Well, Brian Menold put some wonderful new toys up for sale on his site 2 weeks ago and I was mesmerised - they are just so beautiful and I might just have spent rather more than I should have. I couldn't resist it and in my defence, these were just the second puzzles I had bought this year after Aleksandr's wonderful Ternary pin burr I reviewed last week. Considering that it is the middle of February, I am telling Mrs S that I have been very controlled - she doesn't need to know about the other purchases that are on their way, does she?

Amongst the puzzles released by Brian is a Turning Interlocking Cube (TIC). I adore these puzzles and will pretty much buy any of them when they come up for sale but with Ennui, we have added attraction...this was designed by Laszlo Kmolnar. Laszlo is one of my favourite designers. He is delightful to chat to and his puzzles are always fabulous - well thought out with some stunning logic or a wonderful Aha! moment. I had never seen a TIC design from him and knew straight away that it would be fabulous. On top of that, the TIC-Meister himself, Bernhard Schweitzer, had been extremely complementary about it:

"It has a very very unusual move for solving, a combination of 'unnormal' turns coordinated by 2 pieces together, I don't have any similar solution moves in all of my 240 different TICs (Turning Interlocking Cubes), it is a must for a serious TIC collector"

WOW - what an accolade! Click, it was in my cart. Then, I am delighted to say, Brian was absolutely on fire! He used DHL for the postage which was a little more expensive but unbelievably quick - it took less than a week to arrive and was not held up by customs (I assume that I will be billed soon for the VAT that I will owe). After a short quarantine in the porch by Mrs S, she heeded my plea and unpacked them (yes, I bought more than one puzzle) for me on Thursday evening for me to play with on Friday.

I set to on Friday evening whilst watching a bit of TV and, as is usual, tried to find the position of all the pieces. This allowed me plenty of time to admire the gorgeous wood choices - Brian has used Movingui, Bocote, Peroba Rosa and Maple for this one with some lovely contrasting dowels to strengthen the joints - the pieces are gorgeous and beautifully finished as always. I seemed to be on fire...I found the placements of the pieces in ust a single evening! Unheard of for me and I hoped this boded well for the assembly - but...Brian had said this about it:

"This puzzle has a very difficult to find maneuver. You may be tempted to force the pieces together but you should not do it. You will be able to make the move you must just be patient (or lucky) and keep searching. It requires precision. I have put each of these puzzles together several times and finding the move never got any easier and often took several tries."

As always with these puzzles, it is one thing entirely to find the final positions of the pieces and another, much harder challenge to get them into said positions. I started that straight away and noticed a very interesting move for one piece and then tried to insert the second. No way was that going in - completely blocked. Maybe change the order of insertion? Piece 2 inserted first yep! Oh dear the second (first) piece also blocked. No matter what, these two had to go into these positions and even if they were 3rd/4th the same problem would occur. This was the main challenge of the puzzle. 

I discovered some interesting possible moves of one piece but was still stuck and couldn't get them into the correct positions when the other piece was in place. Time for bed and back to work again on Saturday. This was going to cut things really fine for a blog post this week! After my boiler shenanigans yesterday evening, I was a little frazzled and sitting in a room just about heating up with a fan heater listening to Mrs S rant about the failure of British Gas to offer an appointment any sooner than Thursday (we have a service contract) and I focussed on Ennui to try and decrease my feelings of "weariness and dissatisfaction" (the definition of Ennui). Eventually I narrowed it down to only one potential move for those pieces and remembering what Brian had written, I fiddled very carefully.

AHA! That was Good!

Actually, it was better than good. It was amazing - I have done quite a lot of TICs over the years and I cannot recall a move sequence like that. The precision required is amazing - everything needs to be placed absolutely perfectly to the fraction of a millimeter. The rest of the pieces were inserted over the next few minutes to give me my assembled cube:

Man! That was good!

As Brian stated, undoing the assembly is fairly straightforward but putting it back together never seems to get any easier - it must be just perfect or it won't go - brilliant design by Laszlo.

In the end I managed it in 2-3 hours over 2 evenings - that's pretty quick for me to solve a puzzle - I was Fast and I was Good......for once.

I might have a few more puzzles to play with and hopefully something to write about next weekend. Wish me luck!

Take care out there guys - the numbers in Europe and the UK are heading in the right direction and even in the craziness that is the USA, the infection rates are decreasing. But this is not the time to let down your guards - stay at home as much as possible and wear your masks when out and about. 

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

Is That's a Hat-Trick?

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

Bouquet

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

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

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

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

At Last!!!!!

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

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

2019

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

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

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

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

That was a nice piece of fun

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

FantasTIC by Andrew Crowell

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hat-Trick by Laszlo Kmolnar

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

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

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

It's gorgeous packed too!

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

Thinking Outside the Box? Not Always That Helpful!

Or Laszlo Does It Again!
A TIC, a Packing Puzzle and a Dexterity Puzzle All in One!

Rollercoaster by Laszlo Kmolnar
Very nicely made by Brian Young

My friend Laszlo Kmolnar is one of the best puzzle designers around today. This blog is littered with posts gushing about his wonderful puzzles and he has made my top ten of the year with a few of his wonderful designs and I suspect that this one will make it to that exalted list at the end of 2019. Let me say up front that this is AN ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL PURCHASE! Before you read on, you MUST go and buy a copy from Brian and Sue Young's MrPuzzle site - it is available in 4 different kinds of wood:

• Blush Alder - This is a hardwood with a pinkish brown colour. It weighs lighter than the heaviest wood like Jarrah. 
• Saffron Heart - This wood grows in Australia and Papua New Guinea. The wood has a distinct yellow tinge to it.
• Jarrah - A dense and heavy wood grown mostly in Western Australia this wood varies from light to much darker red in colour.
• Black Wattle - A lovely brown wood that mostly has darker streaks in it.

I think that mine is Jarrah and there is the 67 x 67 x 67mm perspex box. I bought my copy from Wil Strijbos when he was visiting the UK for a Midlands Puzzle Party and he may have a few copies left if you are ordering something from him anyway. When bought from Brian it apparently comes with the solution - mine from Wil did not! I try never to look at a solution and if you do buy from Brian then throw the leaflet away! DO NOT be tempted by it - you DON'T need it! This fabulous puzzle is only $19US as I write and so an absolute bargain.

As you can see it consists of just 3 oddly shaped pieces of wood which must be placed completely within the 3x3x3 box with no piece protruding out. The box is rigid, does not dismantle and has a single 1x1x1 hole in a corner to allow the pieces to be placed inside. Don't dismiss this simply because the box is perspex - it has been beautifully made too and actually looks lovely in itself.

Very clear - box and instructions
On the MrPuzzle site, it also says to solve without putting your fingers inside! OMG!

A simple puzzle I can hear you claim? Only put 3 pieces in a regular box? That must be pretty easy! Hell! No! This little bastard kept me busy for 6 months! There is a lot more to the solving of this puzzle than you might think which is why I am so overwhelmingly enthusiastic. Brian Menold made a copy last year with a wooden box that I think must have been almost impossible to solve - the inability to see through the walls of the box will have made this immeasurably harder. This puzzle was an entry in the IPP design competition last year (2018) where it missed out on a prize (I suspect this will have been because of the sheer number of amazing designs that were entered).

New to puzzling - look at that smile!

I have carried the puzzle with me everywhere for 6 months and only just solved it last week! Many many people have been consumed by it and all have failed. They don't let me loose in the Day surgery suite very often but every single time I go down there, I am immediately asked to hand it over and the nursing staff spend a whole day playing with it. I love watching the annoyed looks on the surgeons face as the pieces clunk about in and out of the box! It drives them mad hearing the nurses have some fun. I have given it to a few of my anaesthetic trainees to keep them occupied whilst I write my chart or prescribe the post-op medications. The premise of this is so simple that no-one can resist the temptation - even a new trainee who has never tried puzzling before.

In general, I am not a huge fan of packing puzzles because there seems to be too much random trial and error during the solution process. The Rollercoaster, on the other hand, will never be solved by random movement. It requires thought© and purposeful movement with a decent amount of dexterity to solve this - no chance that you will manage it by accident. Not only is it a packing puzzle, but it is also a dexterity puzzle as well as a wonderful Turning Interlocking Cube (TIC) too. Yep! As if that weren't enough...it requires rotational moves too. Brian and Laszlo are going to force you to make rotational moves of pieces through a small hole and barely within reach. Yay! Bastards! 😂

The first of the Aha! moments occurs early on when you realise part of the order in which the pieces must be placed in the cube, then another Aha! moment arrives as you work out the specific orientation that the large piece requires when inserted. Having made what you feel is good headway with discoveries, then you hit a wall! I did! Many many times.

Time to "think© outside the box"? I thought so too - this is often helpful for these puzzles but remember that Laszlo has a history of making "out of the box" thoughts unhelpful! Obviously, a 3x3x3 cube has 27 voxels inside but this puzzle has pieces with only 15 voxels which means there will be lots of empty space inside when it is complete. This also means that there are dozens and dozens of ways that the pieces can be fitted into a 3x3x3 shape when you do not have the constraints of the walls and the single hole to work through. After a month or two of thinking outside the box and not really getting anywhere plus allowing everyone who wanted to try it a good while to play/fail, I went back to thinking inside the box...that didn't help much either!

Another difficulty with this is that the 2 small pieces look very similar and when you think© that you have an idea, by the time you have made a first move or two, you are completely confused about which piece should be where and oriented in which direction. I took to drawing weird little stick diagrams on pieces of paper that I would leave lying around. At this point, you have a real idea of what to do (or so you think) and then you find that the little buggers move around in the box completely of their own volition and nothing you can do will keep them where you want them! So, you cannot work out what to do, cannot keep track of which piece is which and then cannot control where they go whilst in the box.......Aaaargh!!! This is AWESOME!

Having described what sounds like a nightmare, you have to realise that all this contributes to something that needs yet more Aha! moments. The first 2 or 3 are not enough! I continued to get nowhere and increased my frustration very frequently when the pieces would spontaneously rotate whilst I was trying to manipulate them within the box and frequently I would find myself unable to advance any further and then couldn't pull the bloody pieces out again......Aaaargh!!! Again! I must have come close to a heart attack on several occasions.

Last week I attended a rather good Anaesthesia conference and, as I usually do, took a few toys to play with on the train and in my hotel room in an evening. I failed every time but on the train home where I met one of my orthopaedic surgical colleagues by coincidence, I threatened him with it and when he started to cry (I tortured him for a year when he was a trainee!), I let him off and played myself. Much to the bemusement of a young lad further up the train, I had my final Aha! moment during that journey and managed this:

Yes - it can be done - this picture is of no help to you whatsoever!

The elated feeling lasted for days! Interestingly, the challenge does not end there! Disassembling it is still tough as the pieces rotate and block you without you being aware of what has happened and then eventually when you do take it apart, it is still damn tough to redo the puzzle. After another 5 or 6 solves, I had got to the point where I have worked out the quickest and most efficient method of packing the pieces inside. Phew! The next challenge (which is incredibly tough is to do the whole thing without sticking your finger inside the box! It can be done but be prepared to lose a lot of hair in the process! Yet another challenge - is there no end to them?

When I told Derek (the genius) about my eventual solution, he was rather impressed - at that point, he told me that it was a really difficult puzzle that he had solved with the aid of Burrtools. I have to admit that with the rotations involved, it had never occurred to me to even try using that miraculous program.

This puzzle is simply awesome! It should definitely be in any serious puzzler's collection and everyone should take some real time to actually think© and come up with the solution. There are quite a lot of Aha! moments to find and the final feeling of success is amazing! Don't be tempted by Burrtools - just solve it...even if it takes 6 months!

It is still available from Brian and Sue and maybe Wil still has a few copies - go and buy it. You will see why it will be rather high up my top ten of this year.

I think I need a rest now! Maybe something easy like a twisty puzzle?