Never Underestimate Yavuz

Kubro in pieces

Step by step (photo from competition site)

I was absolutely delighted to chat with Yavuz again in Italy in June. He is such a delight to talk to - about puzzles, about business, about family... he's absolutely wonderful and, as I have said before, very very talented both as a designer and as a craftsman. His Step by Step was the very winner of a very well deserved Honourable mention award from the Design Competition jury and it also received one of my 5 votes as well. It is an incredible piece of puzzle design and amazing woodworking technique to manufacture something so complex in its movement. I spent quite a lot of time on it during the IPP and actually managed to solve it. I suspect it did not win an award from the puzzlers because it is really quite a complex difficult solve.

Cube dropped out of the frame

When it came to time to buy Yavuz' puzzles, I had already spent most of my free cash and had to decide whether I purchase the Step by Step which I had solved or go for another new challenge. In the end I decided on a new attractive puzzle which Yavuz had released earlier in the year. I went for the Kubro which is a mixture of Oak, Wenge with steel posts and acrylic framing. It was packaged in the solved state and Yavuz suggested that I undo the top mirror screws to release the upper acrylic plate and drop out the pieces.

Having done that I scrambled the pieces and set to trying to put them back in the reassembled frame. Oh boy - This is not for the faint of heart! Creating the 3x3x3 cube outside the frame is not terribly difficult and Burrtools tells me that there is only one assembly. This means that you will have 6 orientations to try to place them in the frame.

Initially I thought that it might require sliding pieces in from the sides but realised that the genius of Yavuz has made that impossible because the cube is 3x3x3 but the middle layer of the frame is at the halfway point. This means that pieces can poke through it but not actually enter or exit that route. Only the top hole can be the entry and this is restricted. Interestingly, it's not restricted by much with only 1 voxels covered at two diagonally opposite corners. I initially thought this might be relatively simple - I always try and solve these in reverse by making the shape and working out how to take it out of the frame by moving the pieces around next to the frame but outside of it. With this puzzle, I found the way the frame blocked at the half-way point made it very difficult for me to visualise the interaction. Several orientations of the cube could be discarded very easily but there was one that had me absolutely convinced I had found the correct orientation. I was completely fixated on it but at the last 2 piecesI just could not place them. To my huge embarrassment, I got stuck here for ages and even contemplated rotational moves. After a day or so I slapped myself and told my self that Yavuz would never do such a blasphemous thing! I was forced to try an alternative. I did eventually find an interesting sequence that should work. I was able to do it outside the frame and carefully placed the pieces in the right orientation and order to keep my memory working. When it came to repeating it in the frame, it is quite fiddly because the pieces at times are widely separated from each other and the frame tends to tip them over inside - this requires a bit of dexterity to control. I watched in awe as the pieces were forced to dance around each other a couple of times before every piece was inserted. A very excited shout of success from me made the cats actually look up from their resting positions. Picture of the solved puzzle behind a spoiler button:

My goodness - that is very clever!

Whilst I am ever so slightly wistful that I didn't go home with the Step by Step which is a masterpiece of design and woodwork, I am very pleased that I went with Kubro as it will look fabulous on display and was a very fun solve which took me an embarrassingly long time to solve. 

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Squary Pack 1

Yavuz kindly also insisted on giving me a gift to go home with me - he handed me a small box with one of his earlier packing puzzles - this one is Squary pack 1. The aim being to put the 4 square pieces inside the 2 layer square box. There's a big hole to place them through! Should be easy? Yeah! Maybe not. It's easy to put 3 pieces inside but they then block any 4th piece you try.

I always got stuck in this sort of scenario

This is quite a diminutive puzzle and very fun to play with. I kept doing the same thing over and over again and then trying it in different directions to no avail. Eventually I had wonderful aha! moment and got the 4th piece placed inside. Where Kubro is probably too difficult for a casual puzzler, this is perfect to torture your friends with or to take to work - I plan on doing this very soon. Squary pack 1 is the first in a huge series of similar packing puzzles which look incredibly fun. The full set can be seen here. I probably need to get the rest of them some time if I can sneak them pasty Mrs S.

If you want to buy Yavuz' designs then there are a lot of his puzzles made by himself as well as PuzzleMaster on the PuzzleMaster site. If you want to buy from him direct then you can contact him by email (contact me if you want his address) or via Instagram (yd_puzzles).

A Well-earned Special Winner

Elbow Room by Goh Pit Khiam

Goh Pit Khiam has figured quite a bit on this site over the years. He's very prolific but not just someone who exhaustively creates Burrtools assembly puzzles. He has a very odd brain that finds things that are clever and interesting. This week's puzzle is something very special.

Elbow room was a huge hit in the IPP design competition. In fact, it was considered so so good that it won a special award - something I have never seen before. The Jury gave it their Grand Prize and the Puzzlers voted it as their favourite from all the puzzles in the design competition. Together, this meant that it was awarded the "Puzzle of the Year" award - this is something I have never seen before and it is absolutely well deserved. It was my number one puzzle which I voted for and that is quite something because the field was so strong. I have already seen that several people liked it so much that they have created their own 3D printed versions. I really wanted to get it in wood - that way I would have a fantastic puzzle to torture people with and a wonderful wood object to go on display.

I had my suspicions about who had made it but wasn't certain until the day of the announcement of the winners. and literally as soon as it was confirmed as the winner and the craftsman revealed, I sent an email to Tom Lensch from the IPP dinner. It was so good that I couldn't even wait until after the dinner had finished! Tom responded pretty quickly and put me on the list for when he had made them. I must have reached the front of a long queue last week as I got an email asking to confirm my address and requesting a little PayPal transfer. The hop over the pond seemed to be exceptionally fast this time and just a few days later Mrs S was frowning at me for yet another delivery. She really shouldn't complain - I have slowed down my buying considerably this year!

The puzzle was nicely packed and I quickly revealed a nice chunky box made from Cherry with a single Voxel hole in the corner and Tom's mark on the inside. The blocks are a beautifully grained Sapele. There are 2 pieces with an extension on one side and a slot to take the extension and 2 pieces with just slots only. Finally there is a single square cotton-reel type piece which can join two slots. The aim, clearly is to place all the 4 pieces together inside the box as a 2x2x2 cube. However this is only possible if it is done as a sliding pre-linked snake assembly that transforms into a cube during the insertion.

Make an assembly to slide in - NOT like this!

Just the very idea of doing that is something that kept me going in the competition area. There is something very tactile about these pieces and making different shaped snakes of linked pieces that keep failing to be able to be inserted through the orifice was quite compulsive.

I think I must have spent a good 30-45 minutes being laughed at by various puzzlers when I kept failing but they also encouraged me to keep going.

Initially, I was just creating random assemblies and failing but after a while, I actually had to start think©ing about what I was trying and the logic gradually dawned on me. Finally I had my assembly and received a small cheer from puzzlers nearby. The IPP is great (just like the MPP) for having fun poked at you, receiving support when needed as well as cheers when earned. It felt great and due to the elegance of it, I had to keep it as my number one. My number two was the Step by Step by Yavuz Demirrhan because it was also a clever packing puzzle with an unusual twist to it. Elbow room won out for me because of its sheer elegance.

When I received my own copy, I had to play straight away and it was just as difficult several months later despite having been solved by me in the past. I spent a little while trying random things before my logical thoughts from June came back and I proceeded to work on it systematically. It didn't take quite as long this second time but was just as enjoyable.

This was sooooo good!

If you get a chance to work on this then jump at it - it is literally one of the best puzzles of the year. It is so simple in idea and yet so tough and logical to solve. The wood version is certainly the best but even a 3D printed one should be fun.

Thank you Tom.

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It's arrived! Hooray.

Safe 2 from Pelikan design

Jakub and team had not managed to get the Safe 2 SD puzzle ready in time for the last release. Mine arrived on Thursday and so far I have found my first tool and managed to use it make things happen inside. I have no idea what it has done but there's some significant movement going on. I can also undo what I move but then gotten no further. 

It is still not yet up for sale but preorders are open if you contact Jakub. 

From my previous posts, the Frau L. and one version of Loach Bed is sold out but the rest are still available as I type so you should have a look before they sell out.

Mrs S Meets Frau L.

Upcoming puzzles from Pelikan

Last week I reviewed the "easier" of the puzzles from the upcoming release from Jakub and Jaroslav's Pelikan puzzles. That was despite one of Lucie's puzzles being anything but easy! Today I focus on a week of fiddling with the results of Dr Volker Latussek's warped mind. These are really not easy!

Frau L.

Frau L. arrives with all but one piece in the hinged box

This incredible puzzle is yet another follow up to Hajime Katsumoto's Penta in a box. In the summer Volker continued Hajime-san's amazing thoughts about packing pieces into a hinged box by making the pieces 3D and a subset of the Fatomino group with his very fun puzzle that he named Fatomino. It was a hugely fun puzzle and really makes you think about what adding a rotational entry into a 3x3x3 box does. I loved it!

5 rather large pieces to be placed

Of course, Volker cannot leave a good thought alone and always explores any of his ideas until he reaches a limit of puzzling possibility. This time he decided that ALL of the pieces need to be 3D and none of them planar. This particular puzzle is absolutely gorgeous with a Mahogany box and each of the pieces made from multiple different wood cubes (Acacia, Garapa, Maple, Padauk and Purpleheart). It must have been a real pain for the Pelikan team to manufacture these but the end result is very worthwhile. Volker said this about the design process:

When I first tried to fit five FATS into a box with a hinged lid and briefly thought, ‘That’s impossible’, only to then use FATOMINO to demonstrate the wonderful properties the FATS display when combined with the hinged-lid box, I had discovered something astonishing for myself, without being able to put it to use for FATOMINO.

So I had to say goodbye to the FATS and instead fill the 3x3x3 box with any polycubes. I hadn't imagined quite how much of the familiar would remain in the end. For me, it was an exciting journey through the world of polycubes, only to end up packing five pieces back into the box, with a unique solution and a surprisingly low fill rate of less than ninety per cent.

Mrs L. often watched me as I moved the little blocks back and forth on the screen, and on more than one occasion, years later, she opened the corresponding parcel from Pelikan and saw the results. She always shares my delight when something intangible turns into something tangible.

With FATOMINO, it was the box with the hinged lid that she kept opening and closing. Perhaps it was the memory of her childhood jewellery box that made her so happy. It certainly wasn’t the FATS. For FRAU L., I’d only asked her briefly what sort of wood a jewellery box ought to be made of. Mahogany, obviously. With the polycubes for FRAU L., Pelikan had enquired whether the individual voxels really did need to be made from different types of wood. Yes, absolutely. Perhaps the colourful pieces in FRAU L. will help her get over the fact that, apart from LE COLLIER DE TANTE LIESEL and her wedding ring, no jewellery could have filled a jewellery box.

I dedicate FRAU L. to my wife Magdalene, whom I have called Mrs Latussek for almost four decades now, because she finds the name so ugly. It’s lovely that she has stayed with me all the same, and I so very much hope that the name Latussek sounds at least a little pleasant in the world of puzzles.

With FRAU L., I wish all members of the puzzle community a supportive companion for their passion. In particular, from Mrs S..

When I mentioned to Mrs S that this puzzle had been named after Mrs (Frau) L, she thoroughly approved and was amazed that anyone from the community would know enough about her to mention her. Needless to say, Mrs S never ever reads my blog and has absolutely no idea how much she appears in it (if she did there  would be a lot more than a Whack! Ouch!) Mrs S does admire the beauty of the wooden ones but has never had any urge to play with them which is a shame.

The Frau L. puzzle has 24 voxels to fit inside a 27 voxel cube. I initially thought that this might make the puzzle easier with having extra space but in reality this is not the case. The absence of a planar piece really adds to the complexity. I tried creating cubes and then looking at how to recreate the hinge movement that is so delightful with the Fatomino puzzle. There is a requirement to partially fill the main body of the box and leave enough space in the middle layer to allow the top parts to rotate down. The 3Dness of all the pieces caused me a lot of difficulty. I found a couple of nice cube assemblies and looked at all the possible orientations of them to see how they could be dissected into a top and bottom half. Every single one of them either had spaces that were blocked by cubies in front or the front lip of the box. In desperation, I went to Burrtools and realised that this was going to be much more difficult than I thought - there are 26 possible cubic assemblies! OMG!

I spent a whole week exploring them systematically and was getting nowhere at all. In the end I found myself sliding back and forth on the screen amongst the 26 solutions when I noticed a gap adjacent to a piece that I had not been really concentrating on. It was a gap in a very peculiar direction and in retrospect I should have realised that this would be something that Volker's warped mind would seize upon. I duly assembled the cube out of the pieces and explored what movements the special gap might allow - the Aha! moment was amazing! This assembly is similar to the assembly in the Fatomino puzzle but MUCH more! When you see it, you will know what I mean.

This is a glorious puzzle and a very fine extension to the Penta in a box line. Being named after Frau L herself is very fitting - she should be very proud.

Albert

Albert arrives with one piece outside the box

I vividly remember the incredible challenge that was Petit Albert from this time last year! I received a fair bit of correspondence about it. It was an amazing challenge to fit. That puzzle had an L shaped hole in the side of a 3x3x2 box and a bunch of Tetrominos to fit inside. The catch was that rotations were going to be required and the only way to facilitate them was to have curved edges along one side on each of them. Just like the Penta in a box, Volker is unable to let something go - he always explores the very limits of what is possible with any idea that he has - he always wants to make it better or more difficult. He did it this time by increasing the size of the box to a 4x4x2 cavity but having the same L shaped hole on one edge and lengthened most of the tetrominos into pentominos whilst continuing to have the single very tactile curve along the edges. My initial response was horror - I remembered just how tough the precedent puzzle had been and was frightened that this might prove impossible.

Just like the Petit Albert, this puzzle is beautifully made from Oak and Wenge. They will look great on display together. As with most of Volker's creations there is a very particular transport assembly which leaves one piece outside the box. I actually struggled to get the pieces out of the box as they started to rotate and slide about. On top of that there is very little room to get your finger in to direct them. I eventually had the pieces ready for the obligatory photo: 

A triomino, tetromino and 5 pentominos

Looking at the pieces, there appears to be 3 identical shapes and 4 others. The design philosophy behind it was described by Volker:

Some time ago, a sculpture by the Spanish artist Carlos Albert reminded me of a distorted Tetracube. Perhaps that’s not so surprising, considering that Carlos Albert forges his sculptures from solid square steel. I had set myself the task for PETIT ALBERT of integrating as many rotations as possible into a 3x3x2 box - when playing with the distorted Tetracubes, it quickly becomes clear that the absence of some edges enables new rotations - the challenge with ALBERT was to combine the opening of PETIT ALBERT with the 4x4x2 box from my TWISTED-TETRA. I’m always delighted when something new emerges from the interplay of the familiar and new observations, but I’m especially happy when you, like me, discover and enjoy the sometimes-wondrous properties of the pieces as you play with ALBERT - perhaps PETIT ALBERT’s big brother. Of course, using some of my new favourite Pentacubes: The Fats.

As always, the trick is to assemble the packing shape outside the box and see how easy it is to remove the pieces through the required hole. I quickly found a couple of assemblies - the cavity is 32 voxels in volume and there are 32 voxels in the pieces. This is very important as it means that the first pieces to be removed will need to be direct with no rotations. My first shape had no way to remove any pieces at all direct and I quickly moved onto searching for another. It didn't take long - the pieces are all a really nice size and are lovely to play with on a table. I was very encouraged to see that my second shape had the ability to slide 2 pieces straight out through the hole:

Two pieces will come out but so near and yet so far!

Having done this, I looked for the next moves and found that nothing was possible. It was stuck! I was slightly concerned that if there was going to be a huge number of possible assemblies, I might struggle to remember what I had tried. A third assembly allowed the removal of another piece after the first 2 but again I got stuck. I went back to Burrtools to check on how many possible assemblies there might be and was very reassured to see only 7. Time to be systematic...

I quickly found an assembly that would allow me to easily remove 4 pieces and then a fifth with some relatively simple rotations. After that, there were only 2 pieces left to play with - this MUST be the correct assembly so it was time to try it in the box. Oh boy! Working out how to rotate these first 2 pieces into position was a massive challenge. One piece in particular was a huge problem - controlling the movements was very difficult but eventually I managed it with a rather clever and unexpected rotational move. I have never seen a move quite like that one in one of these packing puzzles - very very clever. I finally had my pieces inside and a feeling of huge achievement.

How does this compare with its' little brother? Interestingly, with this one having larger pieces and a larger cavity, the puzzle is more constrained which actually makes it easier to solve but also a LOT more interesting and fun. It is very clever and more accessible than Petit Albert which was extremely tough. If you have the original then you must get this. If you want to try a rotational packing puzzle then this is one of the best of them. Absolutely superb.

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Safe 2 coming soon

I mentioned last week that Safe 2 was going to be released soon - it is a sequential discovery puzzle which should interest many of you. The original Safe 1 is still available from Pelikan here and my review is here. You can pre-order the Safe 2 by contacting Jakub by email at info@pelikanpuzzles.eu or using the Contact page on their site

There's A Loach In The Upcoming Release!

New Releases Coming From Jakub and Jaroslav's Pelikan Puzzles

I have had a little annual leave recently and had to use a lot of it for stuff around the house but was very delighted to receive a new big box o' puzzles from Jakub containing 6 new beauties. I even had some time to start proper work on them. 

We have:

Loach Bed by Osanori Yamamoto (Top 10 Vote getter in the 2026 IPP design competition)

Mirror Tetra X2 by Oasnori Yamamoto

Window 444 by Lucie Pauwels 

Family Puzzle by Lucie Pauwels

Albert by Dr Volker Latussek

Frau L. by Dr Volker Latussek

This week I have solved the first 4 and will be writing about them.

Loach Bed

Loach Bed by Osanori Yamamoto

This wonderful diminutive puzzle was a Top Ten Vote getter in the IPP design competition for a very very good reason. In fact, it was one of the puzzles I voted for myself. A supposedly simple packing puzzle with a limited entry (single voxel) made from leopard wood and 3 bright yellow pieces made from Movingui (it will also be available made from Acacia and Walnut). There are 2 simple rods and an S-shaped piece to be fitted inside the 2x2x3 box so that the entry is left filled.

I remember playing with this in Italy. I remember the beauty, the perfect logic and the marvellous Aha! moment. I then also remember the Oh $3*t moment when I realised that it needed to be solved outside the box in your head first and then the sequence produced from memory completely blind. This makes this puzzle ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT! The first challenge outside the box is to work out how the S-shaped piece can be inserted and then where the two rods can be placed alongside it and still allow some movement. Then work out a sequence that can allow removal of the pieces. Great! You know what is needed. That took me about 10-15 minutes (I am not terribly bright - I am sure that you will be quicker than that). Then once you know this then insert the pieces inside in the correct order and within a single move of inserting the third piece nothing more can be seen and the rest is done from memory and blind. At this point the careful sequence that you have worked out becomes less obvious and finally you will realise that you need to use gravity for the moves. So rotating the whole puzzle up and down backwards and forwards suddenly makes you question whether you a. can remember where everything is and b. what direction things need to move when the orientation is different to the one that you worked out the sequence.

This picture is not helpful!

The feeling of success is fabulous. Enjoy it...then leave the puzzle for about an hour or so and then with what you know in your head and no real muscle memory left, try and take the pieces out. This again needs to be done blind and can lead to some heart-stopping moments when you have turned it over and about and hoped the required moves have happened but find that a crucial move now won't happen. At this point you need to backtrack without knowing the state of the pieces inside. At one point I got rather badly lost and had to put it down for a bit in a panic. The disassembly is just as challenging as the assembly - there's a reason it won a prize - BRILLIANT!

I would suggest that you do not give this to newbie puzzlers without keeping a close eye on what they do. You could end up with a locked puzzle because you can't see what's going on inside.

Mirror Tetra X2

Mirror Tetra X2 by Osanori-san

This delightful challenge made from Acacia and Padauk arrives as a loosely assembled brick. The aim is to assemble all the attractively symmetrical pieces into a solid 4x4x4 cube with the extra constraint that the cube is formed from 2 mirror coloured halves. 

The puzzle is not hugely difficult but is very compelling to play with. The pieces mostly have tongues or grooves in them (or both) as well as a single 1x2x4 plate and a 2x2x2 cube. Making space for these is both helpful and a hindrance. The most confusing part is the inclusion of two pieces that have a side length of 3 voxels which, for me, made them quite hard to place. Burrtools tells me that there is only one assembly and knowing this, the colour requirement is actually a nice clue as to what you can and cannot do.

It's definitely not a trivial puzzle and actually took me the best part of an hour to assemble it. This is perfect for all levels of puzzler.

Window 444

Window 444 by Lucie Pauwels

Lucie Pauwels always comes up with very interesting challenges and this is no exception. It's a sort of framed jigsaw/packing puzzle made from a whole bunch of gorgeous woods. It arrived like this with all but 2 long pieces in the tray. Once you have tipped all the pieces out you realise that there are 3 different size groups to be inserted - 4 long ones at 5x1 units in size, 4 medium ones at 3x1 units in size and then also four 1x1 pieces. In terms of voxels, with the protrusions and cavities the pieces are considerably more complex and if you were going to put this into Burrtools then you would need a 18x18 voxel grid to do it. But I would advise you - DON'T use Burrtools! There is absolutely no need to do so. This puzzle is wonderfully logical and needs only a little exploration to notice a few critical features which will make you think©. Once you have thunk then the solution needs only a little trial and error and progression happens very quickly. It is very satisfying when you find where pieces need to go. If you make a mistake, it takes a bit of doing to remove the incorrect pieces as they fit together so perfectly (as you'd expect from the Pelikan team) - a small suction cup tool would be very helpful.

This lovely puzzle is another that is perfect for all levels of puzzler - It encourages thought and planning rather than too much trial and error.

Family Puzzle 

Family Puzzle by Lucie Pauwels

Here we have a rather beautiful and very very challenging tray packing puzzle by Lucie Pauwels. It looks much easier than the Window 444 but is a much more difficult puzzle. We have a nice small tray with a cavity measuring 8 voxels high and 15 across. There are 8 rectangular pieces of varying sizes to be placed in the tray and each of them has a single voxel notch punched out of one edge. All the pieces are made from a different rather lovely wood making this a very attractive puzzle to play with. So far so easy - place all these pieces in the tray. There should be plenty of space. 

However, the puzzle is not going to be that easy - Lucie would never let you be that easily successful! On top of the larger pieces there are four 1x2 voxel pieces (mine are a rather lovely Zebrano) which also need to be inserted into the space alongside the bigger pieces. Once all the pieces are in, there will be no holes left. It seemed to me that the obvious thing to do was to insert the bigger pieces and pair up the notches is 4 of them to make space for the small rods. easier said than done. After an hour or so of attempting that, I gave up and just fell back to trying to insert all of the large pieces and ignoring the rods. Even doing that is a challenge as they always seem to fit easily up to the last one:

Not even close on the simple challenge!

After a lot of trial and error I had a crucial Aha! moment which I am sure would occur to you much earlier. After that I was able to get all the large pieces inside but I was a very long way off from getting all the notches lined up. I found quite a lot of possible simpler packings but none allowed me to place all of the rods. I did make a BT file and found that there are 96,608 possible ways to place the large pieces. Time for more thought and more trial and error. I have so far been unable to solve this one so far. BT tells me that there is just a single solution and I have no idea how to go about finding it. 

I think that the better puzzlers out there amongst you will be able to logically approach this and find the solution. Good luck - it's a massive challenge.

Also Coming Very Soon...

Safe 2 by Pelikan Design

Jakub has informed me that he will also be releasing the Safe 2 puzzle soon - I reviewed the Safe 1 here and adored it. This new version is also a sequential discovery puzzle designed by Jakub and team. It is apparently very difficult - Ivan has been working on it for a while and the "Master of puzzle boxes", Peter Hajek, has rated the puzzle box as "good" which is very high praise from him.

There will be 2 versions. The standard version will be €420 and a special version made from Fossil oak (5 copies only) will be €600. If you wish to pre-order then this can be done right now by emailing Jakub and paying a deposit. 

Contact him at https://www.pelikanpuzzles.eu/contact/ or email info@pelikanpuzzles.eu

Very Nearly An Idiot!

PIL Box

PIL Box by Richard Williams

I very nearly didn't have anything for you today. I have had a rather busy week and am actually going to be working as this posts. I have furiously been trying to solve something all week and until about 2 hours ago had nothing to write about. I went back to another of the IPP exchange puzzles that I have been trying to work out off and on since I got it in June.

I had been encouraged by the fact that Fraser had assured everyone that even an "idiot can solve it". I suspect he is doing himself a disservice - he seems to be pretty good at solving puzzles - especially compared to me - but then you all know that I am not terribly bright. 

Pack 3 pieces

This creation from Richard Williams was his exchange puzzle at the IPP which he was kind enough to give to me despite me not being an exchanger. It promptly went into the pile to be solved (which is currently GIGANTIC) and due to the easy idea of packing 3 pieces through a limited entry hole into a box kept me coming back. Easy idea maybe but easy to do? Nope! But if the "idiot" can solve it then I didn't want to show myself to be worse than that (moron?)

It's very nice and tactile. The  pieces have to be placed through a hole at one corner that it eccentric and has an odd chamfer to one edge. The I and L shapes are easy to insert but the C shape has to be inserted with a fun rotational move which can only happen in one direction. Working out which order to place them is the start - it turns out that they get blocked up really fast! Other rotational moves once a piece is inside is very limited due to a single blocked voxel inside the box. 

I had been stuck for weeks. I kept going with my Einsteinian approach of trying the same thing and variants of it again and again! As usual this did not have the desired effect and I was forced to think©. Fraser said it was sneaky so I did one of my moves a few more times in the hope that it would be sneaky if I did it again. Nope! Eventually I tried something which shouldn't have worked and it didn't because I did it wrong but then thunk about how else I could do it. Aha! Damn, why didn't I think of that before? I'm not terribly bright. I finally had my pieces packed inside the box and felt very foolish. He's a sneaky bugger that Rich. Very fun puzzle to play with and great to show non-puzzlers. They will be very annoyed at you when you show them the secret. Thanks mate.

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I have to blame Allard for this. I read his review and put myself on the waiting list for a few weeks when it suddenly came up for sale again. It's rather large and Mrs S was most unimpressed at the space it takes up. She was even less impressed at the enormous customs bill I had to pay!

Yes, it is the ECD-trilogy (Entity Containment Device Trilogy) puzzle set from Nothing puzzles in Australia. It is beautifully made, significantly heavy and looks like it might well be another puzzle I cannot solve (based on watching Rich and Dan fail to complete it at MPP). Lot's of fun coming up!

Perplexing Packing from Pelikan

Minima Ronde

333 & 444 cubes

Apteek

The pressure is on! I managed to dismantle 4 burrs by Alfons coming up soon from Pelikan last week and had 3 left to solve for this week's blog post. I knew this was going to be a hell of a challenge as 2 of them were by the amazing Dr Volker Latussek and one by Lucie Pauwels. Packing puzzles are definitely not my strong point and these two designers are particularly skilled.

Minima Ronde

Minima Ronde by Volker Latussek

I had to start with the Minima - I adore this whole series and actually think I have almost every one made. Considering Volker had not been certain about designing Minima puzzles initially, he has taken the idea to new heights with some incredible designs and this one is definitely one of the most fun ones I have ever played with. Jakub and team have made this one with a wonderful set of accurately cut Wenge pieces and a beautifully grained Oak box.

The basic premise of the Minima series is to have a 2x2x3 box to be packed with relatively simple pieces in such a way that the holes in the walls always end up filled. The interior may not be and the need for interesting rotations is often part of the fun but not always. Volker has taken this simple idea here with packing pieces that are just 2 voxels in volume but spread over a 3 voxel space with the use of diagonal cuts across one of them. Here is what Volker said about this design:

"MINIMA FOR FREDERIC was actually meant to mark the end of my foray into the world of MINIMAs. Over the last few months, I’ve been playing once again with one of my favourite building blocks: this is the complete set of fourteen building blocks, each consisting of a cube and a second cube that is cut diagonally into two parts, with each half glued across its entire surface to the cube. Accordingly, the building blocks in this set each have the volume of a bicube. Twelve of these blocks uniquely fill a 3x4x2 box (TOUR), nine fill a 3x3x2 box (GIRO) and six fill a MINIMA box (3x2x2). Years ago, I designed a ‘put-together’ puzzle for Pelikan’s RONDE using five pieces. Naturally, I now wanted to find out which building blocks could be used to fill a MINIMA box and provide it with suitable openings."

Oh boy! He has really provided us with a puzzle where the openings are crucial and used in different ways. It arrives in a special configuration (as almost all of his puzzles do) which gives a tiny hint of what might be coming up for the intrepid puzzler. Most of the pieces come out through the large 2x1½ voxel hole in the top surface but one of them is blocked and needs a bit of rotational fiddling to be released.

As usual, the initial challenge is to make the cuboid shape that will fit (this time the cavity will be completely filled. The handedness of the pieces means that you have to be careful which position they are placed in. I quickly realised that the arrival position had the 4 pieces with bevels at 90º to each other would form a cube and then the straight-line pieces would have to be used as a sort of length extender. 

The straight-line pieces lengthen the sides

Having realised this I made a cuboid of the correct size and then discovered that I could make 2 of them with mirror configurations. Time to pick one and then work out which of the 8 possible positions it could possibly be paced inside. I started with a brute force trial and error approach and very quickly realised that, due to the needed rotation(s) I was going to have to be more systematic and actually apply logic and thought©. The 4 single voxel holes in the box were going to have to be there for a purpose - Volker NEVER places anything unnecessarily - everything has a use. Working backwards, I Started with a shape that would allow the last(first) piece to be removed(placed). I searched for orientations of the cuboid that then had the possibility of either a second piece removal straight away or would utilise the holes for movements. At this point I had a fabulous Aha! moment and found a wonderful sequence that made lots of space inside the box. Now, it was time to work out how to place the pieces sequentially to allow that wonderful sequence to occur. Here is the challenge - the pieces don't just fit inside easily, there are multiple rotations involved (one in particular is absolutely incredible - Ronde means a round dance and that is exactly what you will have to do with this one. I don't think I have seen a Minima do that before. It took me an hour or so to find the required moves but eventually I reversed all my earlier moves and packed the pieces inside.

Absolutely incredible!

This is one of the most fun and rewarding Minima puzzles that I have ever worked on. The solution is completely unique, totally logical and beautiful to perform. A little dexterity is needed to control all the moves but it is fun. 

BUY IT! IT'S AMAZING!

333 & 444 Cubes

333 & 444 Cubes by Lucie Pauwels

This lovely little challenge by Lucie arrives as an interlocked set of pieces that form a cube with a lump on the top - obviously this is not the final placement of the pieces. This has been made using Maple and a brilliantly vibrant Jatoba. The precision is perfect. I removed the pieces to examine them and realised that the name of the puzzle came from the fact that the pieces could all fit together to form a 4x4x4 cube or the Maple pieces alone would form a 3x3x3 cube. I made the simpler assembly first and enjoyed that - a nice little warmup for the main puzzling.

4x4x4 and a 3x3x3

Creating the fully packed 4x4x4 is a clever challenge which reminded me a little of the Swan Cube from an earlier Pelikan release - the holes in the faces of the larger cube would need to be filled and this would need careful planning as they got blocked off quite quickly if the wrong piece was placed first. It's not too difficult and is a lot of fun. It could probably be solved by brute force but is better solved by noticing what the shapes will allow you to do and then thinking© about how this should be used in sequence to fill the void in the frame. Assembled shape hidden behind a spoiler button.

444 shape complete

Apteek

Apteek by Volker Latussek

Apteek and Farmacia

This incredible creation has been made from a deep Purpleheart wood for the box and an incredibly dark and fabulously grained Acacia. It is simply gorgeous. It arrives in a special configuration that Volker deliberately designed - the pieces seem to fit inside the 3x3x3 cavity but the central row is protruding above the surface. Obviously, this needs to be remedied and the pieces rearranged so that the pieces fit flush with the top surface. It's not going to be an easy process as the pieces (five L-triominoes and three L-tetrominoes) each have either a dowel protruding from one of the voxels and a reciprocal hole for accepting them. The box has a single dowel protruding into the top row of the puzzle. This reminded me a lot of a puzzle that I still haven't managed to solve from last year, Farmacia - this is still sitting on my desk waiting for me to complete it.

Volker wrote this about it:

"As promised, here it is APTEEK. When working with the usual v’s and developing FARMACIA, I had to learn that some very nice moves are not possible. However, from my experience with FILLING V, I know how powerful L’s are. So what could be more obvious than turning four v’s into three L’s and filling the 3x3x3 box together with the remaining five v’s? And suddenly, the previously impossible moves become possible. I really hope that you too will see that the price of losing the simple and clean construction principle of the 9 v’s of FARMACIA is not too high and that the beauty of the APTEEK solution - just as in APOTHECA - justifies the mixture of eight v’s and L’s."

Unlike the Farmacia there is no hole in the box to accept a dowel and with the dowel positioned in the top row, I had a funny feeling that this puzzle was going to require rotations to solve it. I spent a good few days trying to make at least a cube shape with the interlocking dowels and holes all fitting together. Interestingly, after many hours I had completely failed to find one. This didn't bode well for solving the puzzle in the box! 😱

Eventually, I resorted to Burrtools. Initially I looked for cube shapes and was slightly horrified to see that there were 7 cubic assemblies and 3 had a single hole that occurred in the correct place were it to be placed inside the box. I will need to assemble each of these cubes and then try the disassembly to see whether I can put one of them in the box. I did recreate the file with the box and found that there are 8 possible assemblies but no solutions. OMG! It will need rotational moves to assemble. Burrtools can only be used to give you a hint as to how it might possibly be assembled but not the actual solution.

I have spent several days on this and gotten nowhere so far and also to my horror, I cannot put it back into the transport position either.

This is an incredible challenge and best suited to the hardcore packing/interlocking puzzle solver amongst you.

Hopefully these will be going on sale within the next week or so.

Pelikan Summer Release Part II

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

Minima For Frederic

Minima for Frederic by Dr Volker Latussek

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

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

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

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

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

Six interesting pieces to be packed.

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

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

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

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

My Goodness! It's absolutely brilliant!

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

Fatomino

Fatomino by Dr Volker Latussek

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

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

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

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

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

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

A beautiful hinged box and 5 non-planar pentominoes

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

Not going to work

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

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

Flummox

Flummox by Benjamin Heidt

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

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

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

That was a massive challenge!

Fudou

Fudou by Frederic Boucher

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

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

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