Sometimes Burrtools Is A Godsend...

And Often Not!

P3C by Yasuhiro Hashimoto (produced by Mine)

Every 6 months or so, Mine offers up a bunch of puzzles that his Japanese friends design (many of them appeared in the IPP design competition). The P3C arrived and I set to work on it shortly after it arrived. Needless to say, I failed! Again and again and again! It got to the point that I put it in my work bag and would get it out every few weeks to try and yes, you guessed it, fail again! 

There's another one that shares that fate - the Turning Quarter Hole has been in my bag for 5 years and still not been solved! OMG! I received it in March 2022 and still not solved it. Maybe I need to give up this puzzling hobby?

Interestingly, these two puzzles share the same 6 tetromino pieces and same aim of packing them in a box that measure 24 voxels in volume but have different dimensions (the P3C has a box that is 2x3x4 and the  Turning Quarter Hole box measures 4x4x2 with all 4 corners blocked by diagonal walls. Obviously the entry holes are different and the latter puzzle has a top lid that is captive but can rotate freely. 

These two have accompanied for such a long time that I eventually got desperate with one of them and decided to let Burrtools do a comprehensive analysis for me. I was pretty certain that it would not be able to solve it for me. The box has a nice 2x2 hole in the top and there are two single voxel holes in the bottom. I did wonder whether the solution would be linear with pieces needing to drop through the holes to allow others to pass over the top. But... after nearly 2 years of trying I was fairly certain that the holes in the bottom were just finger holes to allow manipulation and that some kind of rotation might be needed. 

I duly entered the puzzle entirely into that wonderful programme by Andreas and, as expected, no solution popped out. It did give me all the possible ways that the 6 tetrominoes could be assembled in the box. "All" that was needed was to try them all out systematically and work out which could be disassembled a reasonable amount through the hole in the top until there was room for other pieces to achieve any required rotations. BT found that there were 28 possible assembles and I started at number one. It didn't take much to work out that all but 3 of them were absolutely impossible as solutions. After this, I tried to be systematic on them and skipped past the solution for several hours. It was right in front of me but I couldn't see it! Those holes are not just finger holes - once you realise that there are a whole lot more possible moves to think about. I had my Aha! moment and finally one of Mine's creations can be put away. Yes, Burrtools to the rescue yet again.

I am not going to show the final packed solution because that is not allowed with these puzzles from Mine. I don't think he has any left but I am sure that you could find the shapes and print your own if you were allowed a 3D printer in your house. Unlike me who daren't even think about it.

I still have the Turning Quarter Hole puzzle accompanying me everywhere and I don't think that BT will help. 

Actually, whilst I am focussing on Mine's puzzles that are always with me there is an even "simpler" design of Koichi Miura's produced by Mine, the Chiral 2&2 which has also completely stumped me because rotations are going to be needed and BT won't help me:

Chiral 2&2 by Koichi Miura

This one has just 4 tetrominoes to be placed in a 3x3x2 box - yes, there are 4 spare voxels free inside so it should be easy peasy - but not for me. I have had this one and gotten absolutely nowhere. Sigh!

Minima Imposter currently available from NothingYetDesigns

Finally, Tye Stahly sent me another Minima puzzle - this one, designed by Kyle Waszak and Ryan Sinatra, shares the 2x2x3 cavity of the usual Miinima box but has a slide on lid.  As soon as I tipped the pieces out, something didn't look right. I had to put my maths head on and calculate that 2x2x3 equals 12 voxels. Then I counted on the digits of two hands and then a foot (having taken my shoes and socks off) there were 12⅓ voxels on the pieces to be packed. Huh! Well, that's odd. Is there a hidden dimension or a portal to somewhere else? I quickly made two vital discoveries but they didn't seem to help with this puzzles at all. BT definitely wasn't going to help with this one! 

Damn you Tye! Is this another one that will be traveling with me for years to come? Sob!

If you want to try and succeed where I failed then it is still available from NothingYetDesigns.

Frederic, Tye And Josh Try To Kill Me...

But They Do It With a Jolly Good Puzzle

Res Q version 2

Happy New Year fellow puzzle sufferers! I hope that this will be a happy healthy one with lots of fabulous challenges ahead.

A few years ago I had missed out on the late Eric Fuller's collaboration with the amazing Frederic Boucher producing the beautiful Res Q sequential discovery puzzle. A very trusting friend, Andrew Coles lent me his copy and it took me months and months to solve it. In the meantime Frederic himself made me a special edition which he called Visitor Q+ with an extra step just for me. I loved it (even if it took me an unbelievable amount of time to solve. 

Needless to say, I recalled playing with the puzzles but had absolutely no recollection of the solve process. I didn't even remember the first step! Mrs S would view this as a reason to only own 4 or 5 puzzles and keep solving them in rotation with no memory of when I did it the previous time. Tye Stahly of NothingYetDesigns had collaborated with Joshua Clouser to reproduce and expand the Res Q puzzle. They offered a pre-order and having missed out on the original, I pitched in without even thinking about it. The puzzle arrived a few weeks ago and I had to put it aside whilst I worked every weekend for two months! In fact, I am working again this weekend - no rest for the wicked! I finally decided to start work on it on New Years Day! I had a day off and "she who must be feared" did not have a list of chores for me to carry out. I had a whole day to work on it.

Comprehensive instructions but no clues

The alien is trapped in the vortex 

The puzzle has been beautifully 3D printed with a heavy infill and is quite weighty as a result. 

It comes with a page of instructions. The most important part at the beginning is to retrieve the spaceship whilst avoiding rotations of the vortex parts and also the ship itself. 

That sounds great but in the start position nothing can move at all! Great! I was stumped immediately. Sigh, not terribly bright. 

There is a clue - the Guitar pick on the top. This had not been on any of the original puzzles and I had to ask Tye whether the pick was removable as it was held on the green lump quite hard. Having gotten permission to use a bit of force to retrieve the pick, I had to work out what to do with it. 

You would think that I might have some recollection of one or two of the moves from my previous experience but nope, I am completely blank! Just ask Mrs S about what is in my head...I am a proper bloke and my head is completely empty almost all the time. I have quite severe insomnia and the ladies I work with always ask whether I lie awake thinking of "stuff" when I wake in the middle of the night. They are literally amazed to hear that when I am conscious, my head is completely devoid of anything resembling thought! As a result of this emptiness, I had no idea what to do with my immovable puzzle. I had a guitar pick and a few places to try and slide it so I guess it's time to see what happens when I do.

I found a few places it would go and after a few minutes had my first Aha! moment. I found something new and the possibility to retrieve a new item. Nowhere for it to be used yet but progress was being made. At this point the vortex was mobile, really, REALLY mobile! This thing anted to rotate but care was needed to not allow rotations. The spaceship becomes visible and can be moved around with the vortex spinning around it. The spaceship cannot be removed easily as the holes are all too small or require an impossible rotation to achieve. The exit is pretty obvious but needs a lot of moves to be reached.

At some point, I must have inadvertently rotated a piece and then got stuck. The rocket would not advance or return and I couldn't work out how to undo the rotation. Aargh! Chest pain number 1 took a good while to settle as I worked feverishly to return to the start. After about an hour of swearing and clutching my chest, I was back at the beginning and determined not to do that again! After a bit of a breather I started again with better concentration and control. It only took me an hour or 3 to retrieve the spaceship.

Colourful spaceship

The curved top of the rocket was part of the reason I struggled to control rotations. IT almost insists on turning sideways in the vortex. I was hopeful that the tool I had retrieved earlier could be used on the rocket. The tool has a very tiny thread on it and there seems to be a hole for it on the side of the rocket. I must have spent a good 30-45 minutes trying to get it to do something with no success. The trouble with being a man of a certain age is that you cannot see small things very easily. Using the magnifier on the phone proved to be a dexterity issue as I didn't have enough hands and Mrs S was not going to assist me in my madness. eventually I got a bright light, my phone on a tripod with magnifier activated and still failed to get anything to happen. At this point I had to conclude that I was attempting the wrong step with the wrong tool in the wrong direction and using a non-functional bwain! sigh. Back to the drawing board aka the vortex. 

Time to fiddle with the vortex and peer inside. Another Aha! moment occurred. I had seen something that might be useful. Time to manipulate the vortex and get to use my tool. Erm! That was the theory. Nothing would allow the vortex to reach the correct state to allow the next step. I had to contact Tye at some point to ask about rotations. he said they were required but could not remember which ones - that is helpful! At least I had permission to spin stuff but I recalled the earlier chest pain/heart attack caused by spinning a piece and not being able to undo it. I decided to take notes on what I had done in which direction.

Suddenly, I had a specific goal and the ability to move things however I wanted. It took a while but I was able to retrieve the first of the antenna rods to release another tool and then using this, the second antenna rod. I now had another tool. From here on it was a matter of gradually releasing tools from various parts of the vortex. It needed the vortex to be manipulated appropriately. Almost all of the tools are magnetic and snap together with a satisfying but rather alarming click. At one point, I had inserted one tool into a hole where it stuck to the next and then wouldn't come out. Time for my third episode of chest tightness (no radiation to arm or jaw luckily) and some more thought. That was painful too.

I was able to dislodge the magnet and the next tool by slapping the puzzle into my palm. It didn't feel right so, again, I asked Tye and he more or less told me off by asking whether Eric would ever implement something like that? Of course, the answer to that would be a firm no and, suitably chastised, I returned the pieces from whence they had been released and had another little think©. At this point point I had quite a lot of pieces, most of which were magnetic and a reasonable amount of space in the vortex to manipulate them. More pieces came out until I had all of them with the exception of releasing the alien and finding my puzzle number. 

I knew where it was, I could achieve it using an illegal move and I knew how to achieve it the "correct" way but I could not get my external magnet close enough to achieve what was required. I spent about 3-4 hours trying every rotation of the vortex pieces I could find with no progress. Nothing I could find would allow the vortex to get to a position that was useful. New Years Day was over with a headache and chest pain not caused by booze. I was having a "fun" time.......I think!

The following evening after work I got back to it - desperation was setting in as I had nothing else for the blog and I am working on Sunday. I HAD to solve it on Friday or Saturday. I had learned a lot with all the manipulations I had carried out and luckily had kept good notes of what I had moved. At this point I thought "in the box" and used both light source and fingers to investigate. 

OMG! That is really sneaky - why did I have no recollection of it?

I now knew what was required but needed to make a LOT of room to achieve it. Again, this sequence nearly gave me a heart attack as I could only ever get two pieces of the vortex into position at any time and each time I tried to backtrack, I would get stuck. After another few hours, I finally worked it out, manipulated the vortex in 4 dimensions and was able to use a combination of multiple tools at once to rescue the alien and find my number. OMG what a relief.

Two antenna rods, silver fuel disk, gold rector orb and radioactive fuel
My number is my age - 43 🤣

Now, having admired what I had, I could take my photos. There were a lot of pieces and I actually couldn't remember where they all had come from or where they all went. I also only had a vague idea how to undo all my vortex moves to return to the beginning. Luckily the reset is only a small subset of the moves to solve it. Most pieces can be returned to their places without complex manipulations once you have worked out where they should be. The hardest part is undoing the vortex moves. I was slightly horrified to realise that my notes were quite good for repeating the solution at a future date but absolutely awful in helping undo the moves to return to the beginning. I had to work it all out all over again in reverse.

If you cannot work out how to reset the vortex then Josh has designed this with an easy cheat. There are two very fine hex screws on the top which allow the memory challenged puzzler to unscrew the lid and reset from above:

Two screws make an easy reset

Needless to say, I am a sucker for punishment and have started to enjoy the chest pain so I worked on solving the puzzle in reverse. It took another ½ hour but I was able to startle Mrs S and the kitties with my shout of final completion. I did prove to myself that my notes worked for a forward solve as I repeated it again straight away. I took a photo of all the pieces which is not an easy thing to do as the strong magnets all want to snap together. 

It is a tiny bit of a spoiler which I have hidden behind a button - you don't have to look at unless you really want to. 

OMG! Look at all of those pieces. The position of the vortex at the end is shown too.

OMG! It is soooooo good! My first puzzle of 2026 is straight in as a candidate for my top ten(ish) of 2026. Unbelievable! It's not wood but it has been beautiful made and doesn't feel plastic/flimsy in any way. I hope the year continues like this. Don't tell Mrs S but there might be a few puzzles on order already.

If you get the chance to play with, or even better, buy this puzzle then don't hesitate. This is probably an essential purchase for any serious collector or puzzler. Thank you Frederic, Josh and Tye for a great start to the year even if it did cause 3 small myocardial infarctions!

The Half Voxel Confuses Me!

Marble Cake +

The last few weeks have been rather poor puzzling weeks for me. The case mix at work has become rather challenging as I have been presented with quite a lot of really challenging cases. For 3 weeks in a row, I have been up to my eyeballs in blood which has a marked tendency to leave you just a little fatigued by the time you get home. At one point, was also a connection on a pice of equipment that had not been tightened adequately and when some salvaged blood was connected, there was a ...erm... leak. I have to tell you that a little blood goes a long way! Especially when it trickles up your arm inside your clothing! Aargh! 

One puzzle that I have been carrying around with me for a few weeks has been another packing puzzle from Frederic Boucher, produced by the amazing Tye Stahly, is the Marble Cake+. It is currently sold out but, again, if enough of you make enquiries, Tye might be convinced to make it again. In this one, Frederic proves his mastery of 3D puzzle design - he abandons the usual 2x2x3 container to be packed and uses a 2x4x4 box which has a giant 2x2 hole in the top (plus a small 1 voxel hole in the front. No rotations are allowed. So what makes it a challenge? 3 of the pieces have ½ voxel overlaps which effectively means that it is not a 2x4x4 packing puzzle - it is, in reality a 2x8x8 puzzle and my brain doesn't work well at that scale.

I have spent at least a month searching for a way to assemble the pieces that fit the space (there were going to be gaps) and I really struggled. Having the ½ voxel pieces messed with my head. In fear that I would need to work my way through dozens of assemblies to pack, I entered the pieces into Burrtools and, much to my relief, I saw that there was only one way to assemble the pieces in the 2x4x4 space. All that I needed to do was find it and then work through 16 possible orientations with the box to find one that worked and finally, work out the order and move sequence of the pieces. I deliberately did not memorise the position of all the pieces but had a vague memory of where 3 of them went with respect to each other. I know it is sort of cheating but I was getting desperate for some success. 

Even knowing the start positions of these pieces did not make it easy. I really struggled to assemble my shape and after a month, I finally found it. Next, place it inside the box. Easy peasy? Nope! I always start by trying to see whether I can remove the pieces from the box rather than put them in. Here this was made a little easier by the fact that the front wall of the box was detachable. I don't know whether this was deliberate but it really helped me! I pulled off the front and stuffed the assembly inside and attempted to take the pieces out.

Make sure you take your photo of the assembly because you will forget it almost immediately after you take it apart to place individual pieces in the box! Quite a few of the orientations of the shape can immediately be discarded because there is absolutely no way to get even a single piece out.

I spent all morning today with my assembled cuboid and systematically worked until I found which one was possible and with great relief, just before it was time to write a blog post I had my solved puzzle. Talk about cutting it to the wire! It's a brilliant design by the absolute master of packing puzzles. A slight spoiler in the next picture so I have hidden it behind a button.

Finally after a month!

This is a huge challenge for such a simple idea and with no rotations. The half voxel pieces seemed to confuse me so much. Maybe you will be better at it than me? Ask Tye about making more and hopefully you can try it yourself.

Pelikan Summer Release 2025

Upcoming Puzzles From Pelikan

Yes, if you have been watching my new stuff page or my FB page then you will have seen that quite a few new toys have arrived at PuzzleMad HQ over the last month or so and Mrs S has become increasingly irritated with me. The camel's back very nearly snapped at the end of last week when I had to admit to her that there might be another delivery from Jakub, Jaroslav and team whilst I was at work last week. My incipient murder was delayed by a plane malfunction in Germany and the promised big box didn't arrive on time. The end result was that it was delayed until last Monday and I was working from home - no there were no knee replacements on the kitchen table! I was doing committee work on the dreaded MS Teams - 😱. The arrival of the box was beautifully timed between meetings and I managed to intercept it and secrete it away before there was an explosion! Phew.

The downside of the delayed flight was that I had much less time to play. I have only managed to solve 4 of the 8 arrivals so far. Hopefully the rest will be ready for next Sunday.

The Bunch 2.2

The Bunch 2.2 by Alfons Eyckmans

This gorgeous cube is another of a long line of amazing interlocking puzzles from the Master, Alfons Eyckmans. I have quite a few of these now, both direct from him, as well as versions from Pelikan and they are always great fun to play with as well as looking fabulous on display. This one is very attractive made from Wenge, Maple and Purpleheart. It is a simpler design than many of the others but this makes for a rather nice exploration and solve. 

My first time dismantling it I found a rather nice rotational shortcut but quickly put the piece that is removed back in the puzzle as I know that Alfons tends not to like rotational solutions. The first piece comes out nice and logically and opens up quite a lot of movement but for a while I was missing the key move that would allow me to progress. It was a nice surprise when I found it and even then the next part was not obvious. The puzzle does reveal the inner locking mechanism and that helps you plan the next few moves. 

It's going to be fun putting this back together

Having disassembled it, then is definitely a fun challenge to scramble the pieces and then reassemble after the memory of the disassembly has faded. Great fun! If you love cuboid interlocking puzzles and Alfons' work interests you then this is a brilliant one for your collection.

Rising Peaks - Everest

Rising Peaks - Everest by Girish Sharma

This is another of Girish Sharma's amazing interlocking cube creations.  Judging from the name Rising Peaks hyphenated with a mountain name, I suspect this is the first in a whole series of these puzzles - I certainly hope so! Beautifully made using Padauk, Wenge, Acacia and Maple, the initial challenge is to separate the pieces from their travel assembly. Maybe I'm not very good at puzzles (it does say that all over my website) but I actually took a good 5 minutes taking it apart. Then obviously you have to assemble them into a 4x4x4 cube using linear moves only. Many puzzlers have moved away from solely linear interlocking puzzles but I still love the standard interlocking puzzles that I first learned about so many years ago from Richard Gain. They provide a wonderful challenge and can be quite tough. This one is absolutely superb. 

From the beginning it is very easy to establish the positions of the 4 pieces but actually assembling them is a tremendous fun challenge. Working out which pieces to use first and which subsequently get inserted is part of the difficulty. There is no obvious order when looking at the shapes and in fact the required order was a bit of a surprise to me. At first it's possible to place any 3 pieces in a promising arrangement but the final one ain't going nowhere! I spent a good 45 minutes trying various arrangements of the first 2/3 pieces before I found a sequence that looked promising - something worthy of Girish' design skills. Once I'd found this start, I thought I was making progress until miraculously a piece fell out unexpectedly - I sort of lost track of what I was doing and ended up back at the beginning. Start again...

Continuing in my search I noticed a possible move that I had missed the first time and that opened up a whole set of dance moves of the pieces in an out around each other. The Pelikan team have made this beautifully tight so the pieces don't flop about and each move has to be made deliberately with the occasional "thwack" as they settle in to place. I had my cube assembled in about an hour. 

There is NO spoiler here - the relative positions of the pieces are really obvious

Having taken my photos, I then struggled to dismantle the puzzle and put it back into the storage/travel position. It's a disassembly challenge as well as an assembly one. I redid it a few hours later and even though I remembered the vague order of the pieces, it still took me quite a while to repeat the process. 

This is another masterpiece of design and manufacture by Girish and Pelikan. If you like interlocking puzzles then this should be high on your shopping list.

Minima Magnetik

Minima Magnetik by Frederic Boucher

My goodness! Is there no end to Frederic's design skills and ideas?? Here we have yet another wonderful puzzle in the now enormous Minima series. I have written extensive reviews of Minima puzzles over the last couple of years and have to admit that this series is one of the single most compelling series I have ever played with. I had thought that Frederic might run out of ideas but there seems to be no sign of it so far. The Pelikan team have made this version using Jatoba and Acacia woods with a bunch of magnets. This amazing design looks so simple until you casually have a play. The usual 2x2x3 box has two entry holes to it and what looks like some finger-holes as well. Anyone looking at these shapes (1x1x2 sticks) with a hole in one end and another at the front will be able to think of quite a few ways to get the pieces inside and think this is simplicity itself. I sort of thought so too until I received the instructions.

"First place the box on a flat surface.

Pack the pieces inside su that no magnets are visible through any holes in the box.

Once a piece has been placed in the box, you can not touch or move the pieces with your fingers or move the box"

Ah! Now we have an entirely new challenge! It is a simple packing but made challenging by the constraints. The magnets are obviously the key to manipulating the pieces. To add to the challenge the embedded magnets have their polarity arranged such that 4 of the pieces have one orientation, another the opposite way around and one piece has no magnet. First challenge is to decide which way around the box needs to be placed and then it will be necessary to use both repulsion and attraction to move the pieces around. If the pieces are placed through one hole and another piece placed through the other, then it is quite possible for a diagonal repulsion to occur and another piece placed to prevent this. There is a whole lot of challenge to this one.

I worked out an approach after about half an hour of fiddling out of the box and attempted to do it inside. This taught me that I needed to be very careful with the exact order that pieces need to be placed. I thought I had my solution and took this photo:

No magnets visible but....

Having been unaware that this design was being made by Jakub, I had ordered the same puzzle from Tye Stahly's Nothing Yet Designs store and had actually received his copy a few days earlier (thanks Allard, for forwarding it on to me). 

Minima Magnetik from Tye

I set about doing the same thing with the 3D printed version and, to my horror, it would not work! The repulsion of the magnets was not quite strong enough to achieve one of the crucial moves. This could only mean that my initial solution was not the intended one. It also means that you have two solutions to find if you buy the Pelikan version of this puzzle. I went back to the drawing board and have to shamefully admit that it took me another 2 days to find a solution that would work with both versions. The actual sequence of moves is really quite involved requiring multiple steps. This is a must have puzzle!

Minima Drawer

Minima Drawer by Frederic Boucher

This gorgeous creation is yet another Minima design by Frederic. It is also another of those must have puzzles. This version has been created using a very beautiful Leopard wood and Maple and is stunning. It arrives with the box completely closed and one L shaped piece outside. The drawer of the box can slide in either direction, although on arrival it can will only go one way and reveals a number of pieces inside. It's not straightforward removing all the pieces and requires the drawer to be moved in both directions to progressively release the pieces. Be careful! It's easy to get stuck!

Dowels galore!

Once you have all the pieces, the extent of the challenge becomes clear! There drawer is prevented from coming out by a one voxel dowel attached to the roof of the puzzle inside. There is also another one voxel dowel pointing horizontally inside the drawer. The pieces and extra dowels need to be placed inside the 2x2x3 cavity as usual. Having experienced the minor challenge of removing the pieces from the transport position, I knew that multiple moves would be required and sliding the drawer back and forth. Gravity was going to be a key consideration here. There are a few arrangements that will fit the space given but it is clear that most are not physically possible. The approach here has to be to find an assembly and then work backwards to see whether it can be removed from the box. 

No spoiler - it is solved!

I think I got somewhat lucky and found the solution after only a whole day of trying but on the way I nearly had a heart attack several times. The limited opening means that some of the pieces need to be rotated into the box and if they are not right or in the right order, they must be removed using the same rotation. Sometimes this can be very hard to achieve and leave you with a huge challenge and worry that you have trapped them inside permanently.

This one is a minima for true puzzle professionals - it is fabulous!

I will be working on the remaining 4 puzzles over the upcoming week and will finish the reviews next Sunday.

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!

Lulled Into A False Sense Of Security By Frederic

...And Tye

Haeckel Sphere designed by Lee Krasnow

It seems like I place an order with Tye Stahly quite frequently. Mrs S certainly thinks so! In my recent delivery, I couldn't resist adding a new design that the amazing Lee Krasnow has come up with, the Haeckel Sphere. I let Tye choose the colour scheme and when it duly arrived I took a photo and put it on my puzzle tray. One evening we had a Teams meeting for our group of orthopaedic anaesthetists and during that meeting I couldn't resist picking it up much to the horror of people in the group.  It was not clear to me how it came apart so I grabbed it on opposite sides and pulled. It duly separated in two and then promptly fell to bits in my lap to the amusement of several onlookers.

12 identical pieces

It was hard to concentrate on the meeting whilst working out how this went back together. It's not terribly hard to decide how the pieces assemble but at several points it requires a bit of dexterity to recreate the two halves and align them correctly to get it back together. There are quite a lot of colour options suggested by Lee to create extra puzzle assembly challenges of different external patterns - if you order from Tye then I am sure that you can get various colour schemes.

Flushed with success, I couldn't resist moving on to one of the many puzzles designed by Frederic Boucher. Over the years I have bought, been given and reviewed many puzzles by Frederic and uniformly enjoyed and been bamboozled by them. Amongst my favourites (and Allard's) are the various Minima puzzles but Frederic does do other types. I have a few of his tray packing puzzles and have always struggled with them. I put it down to the fact that I am simply awful at them.

In the last delivery was a beautiful packer with wooden pieces made from colourful cubes (produced by Baz). Tye created the nice tray for them. It's called Artefacts.There are two sets of challenges:

Artefacts side A

The tray is 5x5 and the wooden pieces consist of paired cubies which are connected to each other at a half cubic overlap plus a peg which is effectively a 2x1 shape. The first challenge is to pack all the wooden pieces and the peg flat into the tray. There are 3 possible solutions.

Showing that I am an eejit with these, it took me 2 days to find the first packing pattern. The half voxel attachment really caused me issues. I ended up trying lots of random placements over and over again until something clicked and I had my "what if" thought©. Having found that one, I realised that the next was just a matter of flipping a couple of the pieces. Yay! Maybe I am less of an eejit? Then I went for the third assembly and I realised that I hadn't improved at all. It took me a whole day of play to find it!

The next challenge set by Frederic is to put the peg on its end in the hole in Tray A and then assemble the 5 wooden pieces in the tray around it (only one solution). I thought to myself that this should be an easy prospect. After all, the end on peg is just a single voxel in the centre rather than the 2 on its' side. I set to work and it proved to be a lot of work! OMG! Why is it so difficult? I spent several more days failing to solve this one. I got a bit desperate and even resorted to Burrtools. Much to my horror, Burrtools was unable to find a solution! This meant that Frederic had lulled me into a false sense of security with the initial challenge! I was going to have to place at least one of the pieces in the tray at an angle. So far after over a week of attempts, I have failed. Turning any of the pieces even slightly diagonally seems to block off a lot of space and makes it impossible to place the other pieces. I have tried to be systematic and try placing each of the pieces individually at an angle but to no avail. Frederic has beaten me - sob!

In desperation, I moved on to the third challenge with this puzzle. Side B of the tray has small half voxel bulges on each edge at odd positions. 

Artefacts side B

The offset position of the bulges leaves a 2 voxel gap on one side and a 1½ voxel gap on the other which prevents placement of a pice flat in that gap. The challenge here is to find a set of 4 of the wooden pieces that can be packed flat in the tray. It's not clear whether it is possible with all combinations of 4 or just one of the 5 sets of combinations. I have tried all of them several times and completely failed to find any packing method that can get them in. It's been days!!

Again, I created a BT file for this part of the challenge and not one of the combinations of 4 pieces can be fitted inside the tray orthogonally. I then attempted to search for tilted assemblies but the bulges completely bugger that up for me!

Yet again, I have been beaten by Frederic and Tye! I've given up for the moment but may well go back to it when I am feeling like being a sucker! Thanks guys for the lesson in humility! 😱😱😱

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

These Brought Real Happiness

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

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

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

Jigs4w by Haym Hirsh (made by Tye Stahly)

Poor Colin!

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

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

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

I think this is called Second Stellation Interlocking puzzle

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

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

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

That is two puzzles solved in a week!

Happiness cube #001

Happiness cube #006

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

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

Number 1 pieces

Number 6 pieces

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

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

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

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