On Monday, February 2nd, 2:00pm CET, Jakub and team will be releasing the
first set of wonderful toys for 2026. This release has some truly incredible
puzzles to keep you busy for a while. As always, they have been made from
glorious woods with incredible precision. The choices of challenge are all
superb,
Minima-Flop by Dr. Volker Latussek
I have had these puzzles for a couple of weeks and have been hard at work
solving them so I can review them in time and help you make a choice. Whatever
you choose, you cannot really go wrong here.
Conundrum
Here we have another fascinating burr by Benjamin Heidt. The box from
Pelikan says "mixed woods" but the pre-release gave more information - it
has a beautiful set of dark woods (Bubinga, American Walnut, Purpleheart,
Wenge and Padauk) arranged into a caged burr containing 4 sticks held
vertically alongside each other in a frame. Initially it looks like the
frame can split into several more pieces. As usual, Benjamin has created a
fun logical sequence of moves that follow each other very nicely without
leading you too far into long dark pathways. as you explore, these pieces
dance around each other in a circle and go back and forth. After a decent
sequence the dance stops dead and there seems to be no way forward and it
looks like you need to go back and explore the side paths further. This
won't get you anywhere so after a little while of returning all the way back
to the beginning and trying alternative starts you realise that there must
have been a hidden move at the end of that dance. There is a lovely Aha!
moment when you find the cleverly hidden move and then suddenly the dance
can continue to the removal of the first piece. The removal of the remaining
pieces is now a nice logical sequence that you can work out by looking
inside the space left after the initial removal. At level 21.3.3.2 this is a
fabulous fun challenge with a lovely Aha! moment to keep any burr solver
happy.
The reassembly would be impossible from scratch for all but the best burr
solvers but having gone back and forth multiple times, I was able to put it
back together straight away from memory with only a bit of experimentation.
Fabulous!
Prison
There is something compulsive about the packing puzzle designs from Lucie
Pauwels! This wonderful little challenge has been beautifully created by
Pelikan with a wonderfully contrasting Bubinga frame (prison) and white
Maple pieces. The prison consists of a simple 3x3x3 cube but is made much
more complex by the addition of a single voxel hole in the floor and ceiling
which also have to be filled - on top of that the openings to be fed through
are partially obscured on all sides leaving a 2x3 gap on each face. The
pieces are a variety of small simple shapes - there are 7 pieces in all to
be placed in the prison. I thought initially that this should not be
terribly difficult but the slightly limited entry and the need to fill
ceiling and floor holes turns this into a proper challenge. Burrtools tells
me that there are 151 possible assemblies and I struggled to find even one
of them! I think it must have taken me a good 30-45 minutes to get my first
one. Working outside the box as is traditional was not helpful as it is
really hard to hold the pieces in place as you progressively add more of
them. I was forced to work in the prison to use the prison bars to hold the
pieces as I added extras. I frequently seemed to be making progress only to
either have a final shape impossible to add into the puzzle due to blocking
walls or the final gaps were split into several shapes. I had to use a bit
of thought to work out an initial approach and then a lot of trial and error
to get the first assembly. There is plenty of repeatability here to look for
different assemblies.
Late update!!!!
Having posted this article, I was contacted by Lucie this morning to tell me that I had completely misunderstood the nature of the puzzle! Jakub and Simona don't give me the instructions. I had assumed that this was a packing puzzle but I can now tell you that the packing element is a secondary challenge (and not even the toughest challenge). It would appear that the top surface of the prison is held on with rather strong magnets and it can be lifted off to give very good access to the cavity of the prison. The true aim is to place all the inmates inside the prison and then replace the roof. This sounds easy and it really is BUT the pieces need to be placed in such a way that once the roof is back on, the pieces cannot slide out. Yes this is an anti-slide puzzle and looks like a very difficult one. I will need to go back to it soon.
Donjon
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Donjon (delivery positions) by Lucie Pauwels
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Donjon (or dungeon) is yet another very VERY difficult puzzle from the
warped mind (we have one prison and one dungeon in this release!) of Lucie
Pauwels. Made from beautifully contrasting Ash and Wenge, the first
challenge is to remove all the pieces from the transport positioning. This
in itself was a major feat due to the very limited access! The aim is to
place all the "prisoners" through the entry down below the surface into the
dungeon and lock them in. The dungeon itself is just a 3x3x3 cube but the
entry is ferociously blocked by a complex crowning door leaving only a 1x3
entry gap on each side. It is made even tougher by the fact that the entry
gap is very narrow (smaller than a finger) - controlling the orientation of
the pieces is going to require considerable dexterity. Having eventually
taken all the pieces out, I was seriously worried about my ability to get
enough back in even for storage, let alone solving it. I started assembling
my 3x3x3 cube and quickly realised that could not be the sole aim - the
presence of a 1x1x5 piece made me realise that the aim was to create a 3x3x3
shape filling the box and then lock them in with a crosspiece. The use of
gravity to move pieces around inside adds to the fun - The Pelikan team have
made the pieces with such precision that everything slides beautifully by
tilting the box in whatever direction that you need.
There are 213 ways to use the pieces to make a cube so the use of the
limited entry to narrow it down is crucial. There are 3 pieces with 90º
corners in their shapes which very much constrain the orientation and
movement once placed through the very limited entry hole. Finding the
orientation of these and an order that they can be inserted without blocking
each other is key to the solution here. This puzzle took me many hours and a
little help from Burrtools as well. The end result is very satisfying - once
the locking piece has been placed, the pieces are all locked inside.
Inverting the puzzle will not let anything drop out. This is a huge
challenge for any puzzler!
Grid
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Grid by Lucie Pauwels
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Grid is the third design by Lucie Pauwels in this release by Pelikan. It has
complex pieces made from Wenge to be fitted into 5x5 grid constructed from
an acrylic plate which has been beautifully frosted. We are accustomed to
amazing wood from the Pelikan team but even their plastic work is perfect.
My initial approach was the usual random placement of pieces onto the grid
which always progressed very nicely until I realised that I had isolated one
small section of the grid and could not place a piece to fill it. Maybe
starting with the more complex pieces would help? It did up to a point but
then I always got trapped with a couple of pieces unplaceable. This was
going to need planning - not only are there 3 complex pieces but there are
also a couple of simpler pieces that have missing side voxels. My head was
starting to hurt and I was on a deadline. I decided to use Burrtools to give
me the position of just one piece and this was miraculous. After finding the
position of just one of the complex pieces, the remainder of the assembly
was wonderfully logical with literally only a few possible piece placements
making the final assembly a lovely exploration. Maybe you talented puzzlers
out there can solve it without help? If you can't, then making the BT file
is fun and just makes the puzzle all the more satisfying.
Yoga 1
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Yoga 1 by Benjamin Heidt
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4 possible tetrominoes
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This unbelievably complex design by Benjamin Heidt has been made by Pelikan
to look incredibly beautiful using stunningly marked Leopardwood for the
panels of the box and Garapa for the pieces as well as the corners of the
box. Benjamin has picked 4 of the possible tetrominoes to be placed in the
box which already has 4 voxels stuck in place inside and then deliberately
not told us which tetrominoes he has chosen - he (and Pelikan) have
obfuscated the puzzle even further by creating a hinge across each pair of
dominoes and allowing the poor challenged puzzler to rotate the pieces into
any of the 4 possible shapes. My goodness! This is hard enough if we were
given all the correct pieces in the correct shapes to be inserted. By adding
the hinges the puzzle has been made
MUCH tougher! This is not for the
faint-hearted.
Creating a Burrtools file for this puzzle is a challenge in itself - it will
require you to know about how to use variable numbers of pieces (it is
actually a great way to educate yourself into the more complex aspects of
the program). Once this has been done it can be seen that there are 268 ways
to insert these different combinations of these tetrominoes inside the box
but only 1 is actually possible to create as a true solution. Amazingly it
requires at least 1 of every type of tetromino (I'm not telling you how many
of which ones). I have been working on this for many hours and have so far
not managed to get anywhere at all. I suspect that I will need to go back to
BT and find out how many of each piece type is required and try with that
knowledge.
Minima 13
I have reviewed many
Minima puzzles
over the last few years. The original idea by Frederic Boucher was to fit
various pieces into a 2x2x3 space through a limited opening and requiring
various rotational moves which are facilitated by odd holes in the sides of
the box. The series has been continued by him and also taken up by many of
the best puzzle designers in the world - I have lots of them and love the
variety of challenges. I now have several versions of the Minima 13 and
reviewed it in June 2025
having taken 4 years to solve it. When I finally managed to review it last
year, I said that this 13th challenge in the Minima series was the utter
pinnacle of the series - it is quite literally the very best of them all. It
takes the original premise to pack the pieces inside and adds extra stuff:
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It is trivial to place all the pieces in the box without rotations but
this is clearly not the solution because...
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There is a single coloured voxel which must not be visible from the
outside
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Several of the pieces have been cut at odd angles to allow some rather
fancy rotations.
This is a seriously tough challenge and the Aha! moments are multiple and
difficult to find. I had almost no recollection of the last solve and it
took me quite some time to get it again this time. The crucial moves are
very well hidden.
If you own the rest of the Pelikan wooden Minima series then this is a MUST
BUY. If you don't have a copy of the 13th challenge at all then this is a
MUST BUY! The Minima 13 was one reason the whole series made it to my
Top ten(ish) for 2025.
Minima Flop
Yes, we cannot have a Pelikan release without an incredible challenge from
Dr Volker Latussek! This one takes the amazing Minima designs from Frederic
Boucher and adds a certain Latussek flair to it. The Minima Flop has been
gorgeously created using Purpleheart and Saman (also known as
Monkeypod). It is simply stunning. The puzzle arrives in a specific transport
configuration that Volker always designs and the initial challenge is to
take the pieces out - this will give you at least an idea of the types of
moves that are possible with this box and pieces. There are 4 cornered
triominoes to fit into the usual 2x2x3 space. It looks like it should be a
simple challenge - Volker has even given us 4 really quite large holes in 4
of the faces. One of those holes is huge but not big enough to place a piece
inside on its side. Volker said this about the puzzle:
"Frederic Boucher said to me in the summer of 2024, asking if I would
like to contribute a puzzle to his MINIMA SERIES. At the time, I was
deeply immersed in working on my FLOP SERIES, so I suggested a MINIMA
FLOP. I was confident that I would come up with something suitable
despite the strict requirement of a 2x2x3 box. It quickly became clear
to me that it had to be a four-piece puzzle consisting of identical
pieces. The pieces could only be V-shaped. Now, the task remained of
finding the right openings. And, to suit a FLOP, as many openings as
possible with dimensions of 1.5x1. To my surprise, there were five of
these openings, two of which I had to combine. This was the only way I
could meet the requirements. MINIMA-FLOP is a nice experiment within
MINIMA and FLOP. Frederic wrote to me that he had a lot of fun with it.
I wish the same for you."
The name gives us a clue about part of the challenge - Minima Flop will have
rotational moves like the
other Flop puzzles multiple times during the solution. This gives the puzzler a few
obvious things to try having some memory of what has been done before but
there really isn't much space inside and as soon as one other piece has been
placed, the flop move that you really want to try gets blocked almost
immediately. This is time to think© and work out what is needed. The name
and the simplicity of the pieces leads you astray and you need to discard
your preconceptions and start from scratch. I spent a long time trying to do
what I had learned in previous releases and failed before I was forced to
think again. Unlike Frederic, Volker doesn't give you any useful bevels or
angles on the pieces. There are no small holes in the box panels. It
requires multiple rotational moves to get the pieces inside and the solution
is just beautiful.
The Cubi Series
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Four amazing Cubi challenges by Frederic Boucher
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There seems to be no end to Frederic Boucher's talents! Not only do we have
the incredible Minima series, the Jammed series (two of which I still
haven't managed to solve) as well as numerous tray packing puzzles, he also
has created a series of cubic packing puzzles here that have an enormous
challenge to them due to very irregularly shaped pieces, blocks attached to
the inside of the boxes, as well as rotational moves. Effectively, these
seem to be the combination of a Turning Interlocking Cube (TIC) at the same
time as a packing puzzle. This series has been fabulously recreated by
Pelikan using beautifully contrasting woods.
We have:
CUBI 12 - Ash and Wenge
CUBI 18 - Limba and American Walnut
CUBI 24 - Limba, American Walnut and Acacia
CUBI 25 - Mahogany and Zebrano
Cubi 12
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Cubi 12 by Frederic Boucher
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This initial slightly easier "taster" puzzle for the series consists of a
box with a rotational symmetry to the interior. and four identical Wenge
pieces made from 3 offset cubies. They need to be placed inside without
anything protruding above the top surface (it will obviously not be
completely filled when solved). I started with the 4 pieces and worked to
create a cubic shape that would interlock enough to be reduced to a 3x3x3
cube. This part of the challenge was actually not that difficult. There are
58 ways to create a shape that fits in a 3x3x3 box but most of them are not
symmetrical or pleasing to the eye. Searching through them to find something
that would fit amongst the pieces stuck to the walls of the box was a fun
exercise and quickly revealed a rather beautiful shape. Now time to place it
inside the box. At this point I realised I had a problem. Burrtools will not
solve this one - rotations are required. However, once I had realised this I
quickly saw what was needed and managed my assembly. This is really very
clever and definitely possible by any decent puzzler. I suspect the rest
will be MUCH more difficult!
Cubi 18
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Cubi 18 by Frederic Boucher
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The second level of the Cubi series consists of 4 rather complex shapes
created from cubes offset from each other. Two of them form rather fun
looking staircase shapes around corners. I started initially looking at
making a cube outside of the box but they were quite awkward to hold in
place and I swapped quickly to trying to place the pieces into the box past
the various obstructions attached to the walls. This was definitely the
right approach as insertion of these large pieces takes a bit of thought and
rotational ingenuity. Getting one in is easy but the second always seems to
be blocked. I tried the second shape first and then the other was blocked. I
was fixated on this for quite a while before exploring further. There is an
alternative way to place one of them and it only got me even more confused
until I went back to my initial thought. Trying the same thing again did not
get me anywhere until I looked at the pieces properly. Whilst one is
identical no matter which way it is inserted, the other can be reversed and
whilst it looks similar now there is no blockage. My advice to you of to
look at the pieces properly and experiment with everything that you can do.
After inserting those, it only took a little further exploration to work out
how to place the other two. The Aha! moment with this one is fabulous!
Cubi 25
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Cubi 25 by Frederic Boucher
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Whilst this is the 4th in the series if you take them in ascending numerical
order, it probably should be the third that you try. Jakub and team have
made this absolutely gorgeous from Zebrano with a Mahogany box. Again there
are a number of pieces to place inside the box which has a couple of
half-voxel pieces stuck to the walls. These half voxel interfere with your
ability to place the in the box and also will form part of the eventual cube
shape. To make it even more difficult this time, several of the pieces are
made with half voxel lengths on one or more places. This will make it
seriously tough to assemble the cube shape. After I failed for a while, I
counted the total number of voxels on the pieces and there are 25 in all
plus the 2 halves stuck on the walls (not much room to manoeuvre). I decide
to try and make a cube shape outside the box with half voxel gaps in the
crucial positions. I'm not very good at Soma cube puzzles and this is
similar but much harder. It took me over an hour to find a cube shape -
remember, the half voxel shapes make all the difference to your search.
Having made my cube it was a lovely, much smaller, challenge to reassemble
it in the box. Rotational moves and sliding is required. This is great fun
and a wonderful next step up in difficulty!
Cubi 24
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Cubi 24 by Frederic Boucher
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The fourth (and final?) puzzle in this wonderful Cubi series is a really
tough challenge! There are 3 beautiful grained woods. The box has a slightly
limited entry due to the attachment of a 1x2x½ voxel piece across one
corner. The pieces are rather complex with 2 ½ voxel pieces attached to each
one. There is also a disk with smiley face on it to be added inside. This is
another one where it would be best to assemble a cube outside the box and
the work out how to get it inside. Burrtools won't help you as a rotation is
required but it can help you search for cube assemblies. I needed this help
and found 57 possible cube shapes but as soon as you adjust it to leave the
1x2x½ voxel gap, it is reduced to a single possible solution. In the
interest of time, I used this to find the position of a single piece and
then worked from there. It still took me quite long time to find a solution
outside the box. Assembling it inside was a lovely sequence! I am sure that
all you fabulous puzzlers will manage this without resorting to Burrtools.
This is an incredible release of brilliant puzzles to start off the year.
There are challenges for all levels of puzzler. To me the absolute
essentials are:
Minima XIII - if you have the others then this is a must buy - it's the best
of the series.
Minima Flop - it's a Minima with the Latussek extra
The Cubi series - any will do but the set is incredible!
