Pelikan Puzzling Continued

Cabinet - a Pelikan design

Yes, it's time to continue the reviews of the upcoming Pelikan release. I have been playing all week and have just finished them this morning. 

Cabinet

Every now and then Jakub releases a Pelikan in-house design. They are usually boxes with clever mechanisms and you really won't be disappointed by this. At yesterday's MPP, one of the topics of comnsversation that I had was about the Karakuri puzzle boxes and how beautiful they are with simple(ish) short but very elegant solutions. I lamented that I didn't dare get into Karakuri collecting as it would be the death of my marriage and my bank balance but I agreed with the elegance and simplicity. I have to say that the Cabinet puzzle by the Pelikan team is worthy of this same admiration.

It is beautifully made - and wonderfully tactile. There are 2 drawers and one knob. As it arrives, there is a good bit of rattling from inside. The challenge is to open the drawers of the cabinet and find the gold bars and the jewel inside (plus an extra treat). Nothing moves at all at first but it won't take very many of you long to get the first drawer open to find a treat inside. After that a little exploration will reveal the first of the prizes. Aha! Real care and attention in every part. At this point you have what looks like it can be used as a tool...you will have done it countless times before on other puzzles and been able to manipulate the mechanism. I tried this repeatedly and had no luck. I began to think that maybe the mechanism was stuck. I tried variants of my manipulation many many times with alterations in the orientation of the puzzle and got absolutely nowhere. I tried this again and again and again. Nope! Nuffink! I then had another thought and tried that but still no luck. I tried for a whole week. Eventually, I contacted Ivan Danik to ask for a hint. He didn't say much but did manage to tell me that my original thought which I had been trying for a whole week had been wrong. Grrrr! I am not very bright. Having abandoned that completely I had a little feel about and had a wonderful Aha! moment. I had actually used the correct move but needed to do it properly. After another try my treasure was all available. 

The Cabinet is just like a Karakuri - it is beautifully made with perfect tolerances and a simple but very elegant mechanism. All of you collectors out there will need this.

Teapot

Teapot by Lucie Pauwels

Another tray packing puzzle by the incredible Lucie Pauwels! There is no limit to Lucie's skills! I reviewed an interlocking puzzle coming from her and Pelikan last week which was fascinating and here she turns her hand to a rather lovely and clever tray puzzle. This is very ingenious and a good bit harder than it looks. What goes in a teapot ? Tea of course! What goes in tea? Sugar lumps! Here we have a pot and 8 different varieties of tea (T) made from Pink Oak to be placed inside the pot. Two other variants will be on sale: Wenge/Maple and Purpleheart/Ash. There are 4 single voxel holes left after all the teas are inside and these can be filled by sugar made from Maple. Normally you'd put your sugar in your cup but here it gets added to the pot.

This is a deceptive puzzle - it really doesn't look that tough but the lengths of the stems of the T's make it difficult to pack the cavity efficiently leaving only small few gaps. I worked for a long time (hours) to find the solution and it was very gratifying to eventually manage it. I dare say it can be solved by brute force but the best approach is to experiment with how the T crosses and stems can interact with each other and then plan what you need to do to keep the gaps to a minimum. There is only one solution to this and it might take you quite some time to find it. Perfect for all levels of puzzler.

Olympic Rings

Olympic Rings by Lucie Pauwels

Yes, another tray packing puzzle by Lucie. This follows a totally different premise than the Teapot puzzle. Instead of having to fill a cavity with shapes that get in each other's way, the aim is to fill a pathway with relatively simple pieces but a very limited length to the paths. The complexity and the logic comes from the constraint formed by the intersection of the paths. This one has pieces made from Pink Oak but it will also be available in Merbau.

I started placing the larger pieces in the lengths of the paths and then trying to fill the smaller gaps that were left after that.This seemed like a really good idea but it did not lead me even close to a solution. My next approach was to take the  3 more complex pieces and place those at the path intersections and then work from there. This definitely improved the situation but did not get me all the way. I ended up resorting to Burrtools and just peeking at the position of those complex pieces. Once I had them placed properly, I was able to progress quite logically with the rest of the puzzle. If I had not been time constrained then I might have managed this without cheating. It is a very challenging but logical puzzle which should only need a little trial and error. It is very attractive when complete and looks great on display.

Fatino

Fatino by Dr Volker Latussek

Another masterpiece from the master of the packing puzzle! Dr Latussek has been challenging us with restricted entry packing puzzles for years now and every time a new one is released, I think that he cannot have found something new but he has. This one has been beautifully made with a Mahogany box and Wenge pieces.

This time it looks like the puzzle should be possible without rotations because the limited entry hole is still a whole number of voxels in each dimension. BUT don't let that fool you. The pieces are all pentominoes and hence quite long. Any of them that have to go sideways perpendicular to the hole will need rotating into place once inside or tilting slightly through the gap. The hole to be filled is a 4x4x2 space and we have a total of 30 leaving 2 gaps to be hidden somewhere inside. This is going to be fun and VERY difficult!

Volker said this about the development of the puzzle:

In the past, I’ve combined some of the 12 flat pentacubes with other polycubes to design packing problems. In addition to the well-known pieces of the SOMA CUBE, I’ve also used spatial pentacubes - which are described by a 3x2x2 envelope - in a rather unobtrusive way. There are 15 different shapes of these, based on a rather casual remark by George Miller I’ll call them Fats. The Fats possess a harmony that is indescribable to me when they are combined. I will present my special discoveries to you at Pelikan. 

I’ll start with FATINO, six Fats in the box so familiar to me with a centered slit opening. In fact, I already had this CASINO-like box and, with FATINO, the name of the puzzle for the first time before I began finding the six matching Fats that describe a unique solution. The Fats are really bulky, as if they didn’t want to fit into the box. Ultimately, however, six of them took pity on me and gave me a truly beautiful solution. I really hope you enjoy the game of the Fats so much that you look forward to the discoveries to come.

I had to use Burrtools to find me some assemblies and then experiment with them to try and get one of them inside the box. Even using BT this way, isn't a panacea as each shape that is found (there are 6 of them) will have 8 possible orientations to try and of course, then you will need to see whether the disassembly is possible through the slot in the top of the box. Once I found a possible assembly it was a lovely dexterity and sliding problem to get the solution.

Damn! That is tough!

This is a stupendously good challenge. It is definitely possible by normal human beings (many of you might need BT to systematically find the possible assemblies and try them) but after that the puzzling is wonderful.

Yasya-Flop

Yasya-Flop by Dr Volker Latussek

Another puzzle in the "Flop" series is one that is not to be missed. There have been quite a few so far and this one is by far the most difficult. Jakub and team have made this from a wonderful Saman wood (aka Monkeypod) and Purpleheart. It arrives with all but one of the pieces packed in the box and took me quite a bit of fiddling to actually remove the pieces. This bodes for a very difficult solution to get all of them back inside.

The box has a 3x3x3 cavity and a 1½ voxel wide slot in the top through which all the pieces of a standard Soma cube need to be placed. I have mentioned many times that I am terrible at assembly puzzles. My appreciation of this occurred many years ago when I bought my first Soma cube. So here, I need to find one particular assembly of the Soma cube and then work out which orientation to try and then how to get the damn thing into a box through a small hole using rotational moves! Does this sound like fun to you? Yes, it does to me too.

Volker wrote this about it:

Fritz Pingl (FRITZ-FLOP) and Dick Fosbury (DICK-FLOP) are the namesakes of my FLOP SERIES. The rotation of individual pieces in these unique packing puzzles is reminiscent of their high jump techniques.

While I was recently playing with my STEFKA-FLOP, named after Stefka Kostadinova, I unexpectedly found a new solution. This is, of course, terrible, since every FLOP is supposed to have exactly one solution. But this new solution is so beautiful - not least because, just like with the FRITZ-FLOP, the opening can be compressed to exactly half of one of the square sides - that I don’t want to keep this experience from you. A production by Pelikan was a must. 

While searching for a suitable name, I learned that Stefka Kostadinova’s long-standing world record in the high jump from 1987 was surpassed in 2024 by Yaroslava Mahuchikh with a jump of 2.10 meters. So I dedicate my YASYA-FLOP to this exceptional Ukrainian athlete, who is affectionately called Yasya by her friends.  While solving the YASYA-FLOP won’t let you set a new world record, I hope you understand why this solution has remained undiscovered until now.

There is an immediate way to cut down the possible assemblies as the final pieces to be placed have to be able to drop straight in through the opening as there will be no room for rotations at that stage. This helps considerably but if I was you, I'd have a BT set of Soma solutions available to search through.

Not for the faint-hearted!

In the end, due to time constraints, I had to get the solution from Pelikan to give me the intended assembly and orientation and then work out how to get it inside the box. The movements are very complex and require considerable dexterity as well as judicious use of gravity to place pieces. Make sure that you know what you have done as taking the pieces out will be almost impossible. This is an amazing challenge but definitely only for the most expert of puzzlers.

Less is More

Less is more by Dr Volker Latussek

This gorgeous puzzle from Volker has been beautifully made from Wenge and American Cherry. It is stunning to look at and beautifully made. I thought that it had been sent out in the solved position but reviewing the instructions revealed that there is much more to this puzzle than meets the eye. Yes, it is a tray packing puzzle with a 7x7 tray and there are quite a few assemblies in the tray.

Having taken the pieces out for the photo, I found even packing them back in the tray very difficult. Finding the one that left me that nice square gap was almost impossible for me. But, for all of you who want something more interesting than a simple square tray packer, there is a LOT more to do - this is also an anti-slide puzzle. In fact, it is a multi level anti-slide puzzle. This will keep you challenged for a VERY long time.

Volker said this about it:

Nine pentominoes in a square grid (7x7). So what. The idea behind this particular anti-slide puzzle - simple in concept - kept me occupied for several years, and its implementation proved too challenging for me. I had to seek advice from Andreas Roever and Peter Müller, an algebra professor at my university in Würzburg. In the end, Peter Müller calculated the solution sequences. Unfortunately, my knowledge of Fortran wasn’t sufficient. But now, after an initial prototype with 6 pentominoes instead of nine for the Nob-Yoshigahara Design Competition 2025, Pelikan can release a small series for enthusiasts of such puzzles, and I’ve met a mathematics professor whom I can now call Peter. Peter, thank you so much for your great support, which allowed LESS IS MORE to come to life. 

LESS IS MORE contains various challenges, but in particular sequences of stable arrangements: Pack the nine pentominoes into the frame so that they do not slide. Remove one piece - the remaining eight pieces still cannot slide. Repeat this step until there are only three pieces left that cannot slide. 

When I play LESS IS MORE today, I am still amazed by the interplay of the pentominoes in the sequence from nine to three pieces, which still surprises me with its length.

Another goal of LESS IS MORE: Select three or more pieces so that they do not slip, and no further piece can be added without slipping, and no piece can be removed without the remaining pieces slipping.

I preferred to do the puzzle in the reverse order to the suggested one by Volker. Take 3 pieces and create an anti-slide placement with them (that isn't terribly difficult to do). Then add another piece from the unpaved ones and just add it to the shape already made in such a way that the new shape also cannot slide (this took me a little while). You will probably need to experiment with a whole bunch of 3-piece placements before you find one that works when adding a fourth piece. It was quite gratifying to find a four piece anti-slide assembly. Next, try to add another piece in and still have it not slide. keep doing this until all 9 pieces are placed. This will be a huge challenge! I am not entirely sure that a human can achieve this. I did manage to create a 5 piece non-sliding assembly but that is as far as I got. The computer programmers amongst you might manage to create a program to do this. If anyone is actually able to do it all without computer assistance then I would love for you to tell me.

If you manage the primary puzzle then there is a secondary challenge: Find 3 pieces to create an anti-slide assembly but in such a way that it is not possible to add any more pieces that are anti-slide. This is not terribly tough but having done that, do it again with 4 pieces - none of the 4 can slide but it's impossible to add a 5th piece that doesn't slide. Keep doing this up to 9. So many challenges in one beautiful tray puzzle.

All of these are amazing puzzles! They should hopefully be going on sale later this week. My picks from them are Cabinet (who can resist a Pelikan design puzzle and this has a very ingenious mechanism), Swan cube (it's just beautiful logic) and Fantino for the elegance. But you cannot go wrong with any of them. 

A Jigsaw So Good That It Soothes The Soul

Avocets by Mike & Gill Hayduk

As a rule most of us serious puzzlers tend to look askance at jigsaw puzzles. I have reviewed only a few of many years now but there are some that are definitely worth playing with either for the huge challenge or, as in this case, for the sheer beauty and soothing nature of the puzzle.

Big Steve collects pretty much everything under the sun and his wife must be even more angry than mine! Just over a week ago there was an auction in the Sheffield auction house and Steve saw something that he fancied adding to his collection. He duly asked whether I would mind collecting it rather than them posting it to him for an exorbitant price. I was only working a half day on Monday and had some time to head into town and pick up the result of his winning bid. I was rather surprised at the size and weight of it. I immediately saw why he wanted it.

We have the Avocets Jigsaw puzzle made by Mike and Gill Hayduk. Apparently this husband and wife team had been producing gorgeous wooden creations in the 1980s (their website no longer exists but was active up to at least 2021 according to the wayback machine). I guess they must have stopped producing these works of art relatively recently. This is a shame as, had I known about them, I might well have ordered something from them. Steve has been buying their puzzles for years having bought directly from them and more recently finding them in auctions. His collection is very extensive and I have spent quite a while drooling over the gorgeous wood. This particular puzzle is made with quite an assortment of woods: The Avocets from Sycamore, Walnut, Zebrano and Ebony. The background from two shades of Tulipwood and the bowl with stand from Iroko. It is truly gorgeous and rather frightening in its complexity.

Having picked it up I was encouraged to just invert the bowl to drop out the pieces and get playing. I was not sure that I could reassemble it if I did but having had so many of my own puzzles irrevocably scrambled by Steve and Rich at MPPs, I decided that if I gave it to him in pieces then I couldn't be held responsible. Here goes:

Oh boy! This might be impossible!

I set to work on it as and when I could find time and luckily I had taken a picture of the fully assembled version because there is no way that I would be able to do it without that as a hint. 

I began with the birds and true to form, a certain little demon was very interested in joining in and maybe even running off with some pieces of birdie.

I want that piece

Watching that the birds don't fly away

I worked on this gorgeous creation for a good few hours in total and have to admit that whilst I am not generally interested in jigsaws, I found this one very very soothing. It is beautifully made and very tactile. The pieces fit together like a dream.

I suspect I might be competing with Steve if any more come up for sale in the future.

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The Secret of Two Friends

I need to post an update from the last time I reviewed this wonderful little puzzle chest from Pelikan. When it was first sent out the lock and keys were too small and fragile but after both myself and Ivan had pointed it out, they corrected it and sent out new versions. I needed to spend more than a week working on it with the new lock and keys before I was finally able to solve it.

I found the first small part of the mechanism after a little exploration and got stuck there. I would like to say that it was the faulty lock and keys that were the reason but that would not be right. Even with the new version I struggled to find the next step. I shone a torch all over and could not see anywhere I could use the tools I had been given. The disguise of the next step is just superb! I tried using all the pieces I had in ever more creative ways but could not seem to unlock the chest. I had worked out how it should open but I kept missing the crucial step in the solution. After a weekend of failure, I forced myself to think© and tried something completely new. The Aha! moment is wonderful. Inside there is a whole lot of treasure – keep it away from any small children or pets or it’s going to be swallowed! This is definitely a lovely puzzle for anyone’s collection and as a rare Pelikan design it is well worth getting hold of.

This wonderful Pelikan design is still available to buy (the fancy version with sub fossil oak has sold out). It is very worthwhile getting hold of a copy. the mechanism is clever and very well disguised.

Ze Next Ones From Pelikan Are Just As Much Fun

Diasafe by Lucie Pauwels

Last week I reviewed the amazing Minima-Ze series about to be released by Pelikan and saved the others for this week (yes, I didn't have time or ability to solve them all in a single week). I managed to get to the remaining wonderful puzzles this week and even solved some of them.

Starting with the rather unusual looking Diasafe by Lucie Pauwels, I couldn't work out whether it was a maze puzzle or a packing puzzle and eventually settled on the latter. We have a rather attractive set of Wenge pieces each of which has a rather colourful jewel on the top and a box made of Pink Oak which has an S-shaped path in the top surface. Clearly the aim is to fit the pieces in one layer inside the box via the 3 voxel opening in one side. The interior of the box forms a 7x7 square and the jewels are expected to protrude into the path. 

I started by just forming squares with the pieces and quickly realised that my usual approach with packing puzzles of starting outside the box was not going to work. I found rather a lot of square assemblies very quickly and a quick play with Burrtools revealed that there are 2004 possible squares. Time to make squares in the box using the pathway in the top and you will quickly realise that there is quite a lot of thought going to be required. I started randomly and found that it is possible to place many of the pieces somewhere inside quite easily but the larger ones are either very rapidly blocked from moving along the path and two of the shapes cannot physically be placed with out rotating them at some point whilst in the box. This forces the perplexed puzzler to think about the order of placement. These pieces that need rotation need space to do so. Maybe they need to be placed early before the pathways gets too blocked up?

I got stuck after 2 days of trying and was forced to go to BT to at least look at possible final square assemblies which ended having the jewels protruding into the pathway. Interestingly, there are only 3 possible ways to create a square with the jewels still in the S-shaped track. Of these 3 assemblies, just one can be physically completed. It is very clever and a fun puzzle to think about. This is perfect for advanced puzzlers and beginners alike.

Shrine

Shrine by Lucie Pauwels

Shrine shows off the breadth of Lucie's skills. Not only does she design amazing packing puzzles but she also can design very clever interlocking puzzles. The Shrine has been made from a vibrantly gorgeous Bubinga and an Acacia block which needs to be held securely inside the assembly. There are 6 pieces which are 1x3x7 voxels in size and each has a 1x3 voxel slot in it. They all have ½x1 voxel protuberances and cutouts at various points in them. Counting them reveals that there are just enough to have all holes filled. The end result shape is not terribly obvious and I thought that this might be a significant difficulty in the solution of the puzzle but in reality this is a really clever sequential assembly challenge. Finding which pieces cane interlock with each other shows that there are not many possible assemblies to try and it is just a matter of thought© to assemble one piece into another and progressively build up a pleasing shape. After a few have been put together the addition of a 4th or 5th (depending on which you start with) becomes impossible. Having met an impossible to finish position several times, it occurred to me that I might need to make two assemblies that fit together rather than each one after another. Once I had realised this, then the assembly is a fun exploration of which pieces fit together in which order. Another beauty by Pelikan which is suitable for all puzzlers.

I have put the final assembly behind a spoiler button:

This doesn't really tell you how to assemble it

Thyor

Thyor by Dr Volker Latussek

This rather stunning creation made from Wenge, Padauk and Maple by Dr Latussek is called Thyor. Was this something to do with the God of thunder? I was rather mystified at the name until I received an explanatory email from him with an explanation. This puzzle is a tribute to one of the original German puzzle manufacturers: THYOR is short for "Thirty Years Of Rombol". Volker wrote this:

"The Kröger family runs a small game publishing company in Paderborn, Germany. My friend Bernhard - whom I still addressed as Mr. Schweitzer back then - recommended my SOMA PACK for publication there. It was my first mechanical puzzle to go into series production at Rombol.

Recently, after the relaunch of rombol.de, I read that the Kröger family had already begun publishing designer puzzles in small series as early as 1996. With the company’s 30th anniversary this year and the handover to the next generation in the family, I also wanted to personally express my gratitude for the great collaboration. Since the Kröger family now also distributes Pelikan puzzles here in Germany, I asked Pelikan to publish my puzzle THYOR: Th-irty Y-ears O-f R-ombol.

For THYOR, I experimented with 1.5x1x1.5 instead of the usual 1x1x1 voxel. As always, even changing just one parameter opens a whole new world. In THYOR, I break down a 1.5x1x52.5 rod into 18 sections for the 6 pieces that need to be packed into the box. I’m very confident that the solution will be unique even after you’ve played THYOR; at least, some of my fellow metagrobologists have confirmed this."

Volker always defines a specific setup position for the transport of his puzzles and this alone can be a huge challenge. I removed just one piece for the initial photo and stopped there. The other pieces did not seem to want to come out terribly easily. I backed off for a while as I did not want lots of pieces lying around with me unable to put them back into the box again. 

When I did come to trying to solve this one, I was not disappointed! I managed to remove 3 of the 6 pieces without too much trouble but the remaining 3 just would not come out of the box. The lip of the box stopped them from just dropping out and it became clear that rotations were going to be needed just to get access to the pieces. I'm slightly ashamed to admit that it took me a good 30 minutes just to get access to the pieces and begin trying the full assembly.

This challenge is very different to most of Volker's previous puzzles. It does not require rotations to achieve the main aim (the rotations are only needed to get the pieces out). This one can be solved by Burrtools and creating the BT file after you have solved it will add to your fun. It's not an easy one to create (at least for me) - at one point it was going to take 860 millennia to find the solution! Maybe that will give you an idea of how tough this challenge is?

The Secret Of Two Friends

The Secret of Two Friends by Pelikan

This stunning Puzzlebox is a new design by the Pelikan team. It has been beautifully made from a rather dark oak and a metal lock, keys, hinges and decorations. The aim is to open the chest and see what is rattling around inside. 

The lock can be opened using one of the keys and the chest will still not open. Something odd is going on inside. There is no movement where you think it should be. Time to investigate further and something interesting shows up quite quickly. There is then a need to use what you have in creative ways. I did have to let the Pelikan team know that one piece is too fragile and they have assured me that they are aware and will be fixing that.

I have only found the first small part of the mechanism and have failed so far to complete the task. I have tried using all the pieces I have in ever more creative ways but cannot seem to unlock the chest. I do know how it should open but I seem to be missing a step in the solution. This is definitely a lovely puzzle for anyone's collection and as a rare Pelikan design it is worth getting hold of.

Is It Safe In Your Hands?

Safe from Pelikan Puzzles

This new sequential discovery puzzle box is due to be released by the amazing Pelikan team this coming Friday. It will be limited to a small release of 64 copies so you will need to be quite quick.

Instructions and a certificate

It is a stunning creation made from various woods - it looks like Acacia and Walnut at least. There are also metal components and magnets. It must contain something valuable because it is quite large and quite heavy. Dimensions are 11 x 11 x 15.3cm (4.3 x 4.3 x 6") and weighing 985g (2 lb 3oz) making it very tactile to play with. 

The story is that this safe belonged to George Thomas, a wealthy factory owner, and many robbers have attempted to get into it to steal the huge treasure that is inside. Your task is to get into it and retrieve the haul for yourself. It does not need any shaking, spinning or banging.

There is a door on the front held by an ornate hinge and a dial on the front for the combination. The dial clicks as you turn it to get to the combination. Apart from this, nothing else seems to move at all. The hinge is not a fake hinge and doesn't come apart. There are some interesting brass pins on the side of the puzzle as well. It did occur to me that the feet might be useful but they don't come off to reveal an alternative locking mechanism:

Those feet look like a possible tool or entry?

Small coin
NOT the treasure though

Once you have finished exploring what you have and getting nowhere then you need to think© about alternative approaches. I had my first Aha! moment after about 15 minutes - there is no hint from the outside that what I tried would work but I couldn't think of anything else to do. I was in the safe and found my first small prize - a small coin. Was this a hint at vast treasure still inside? There was clearly more to do. Maybe more coins further in?

I got stumped for a little while at this point. The temptation to shake it and spin it was there but I was a good boy and decided to use my tiny brain on it. The next few mechanisms were beautifully created and a delight to discover. I had my treasure after an hour or so!

Or did I?????

This is a wonderful creation designed by Jakub and brought to life by the Pelikan team. You won't be disappointed in this one. I suspect they will sell out very quickly - make sure you are ready on Friday 5th September.

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I blame Allard! Look what he made me do:

I got by a big customs fee but it should be worth it!

Seven Puzzles From Pelikan Not To Miss In November

Pelikan release for end of 2024

Today I am reviewing the upcoming release of gorgeous delights from Jakub, Jaroslav and the Pelikan team. You may have seen the video already by Ivan - he also does all the photography for the Pelikan site and he is brilliant at it.

Twister Box

Twister Box - a new Pelikan design

This beautiful little creation is a Pelikan design and it is really REALLY clever with a wonderful laugh out loud moment when the secret is discovered. The team has made it using Mahogany, Walnut and magnets…LOTS of magnets and really REALLY strong ones too. Don’t put this near your pacemaker! They have made some lovely slipfeathers and an engraved spiral on top to make it even more pretty. The aim, obviously, is to open the box. Bear in mind that I am really bad at boxes (I have several sequential discovery boxes sitting in my kitchen annoying Mrs S because I have failed to find any moves at all). Reading this paragraph there are a whole lot of "really's" in it but this puzzle needs all of them! 

I discovered the first step of this puzzle quite quickly which is how I knew there were magnets. Once this discovery is past you then it’s time to play with what you have found. You do this by feel and intuition and have to try and understand why things inside seem to be flipping over and back at times. The odd thing is it just all feels rather random. You need to keep at it for a while and all of a sudden there is a change and you’ve opened it. I would guess that most people will open it mostly by chance and then laugh and then play with the open box mechanism for a while to understand what you did and work out a cleaner quicker way to do it. I can now open and re-lock it in a matter of a minute now that I understand the clever mechanism. I must say that I have never seen anything like it before.

It took me a whole week to open it and I’ve been playing with it for a few hours now and it still makes me smile when I look at the mechanism. This is stunning.

Little Tetra Flop

Little Tetra Flop by Dr Volker Latussek

This fabulous new challenge from Dr Volker Latussek continues the wonderful Flop series but showing that he can now see the benefits of the side holes over the loss of purity from an incomplete box.

Pelikan has created this beauty out of Wenge and American Cherry, keeping the 4x1 piece outside of the box (which is 4x3x2 voxels with a 1½ voxel deep entry postbox on top).

The first challenge is to work out how to remove the pieces from the box. As we all know Volker designs both the puzzle and the delivery conformation to be a challenge and this one really takes it to the max - it took me a good 30 minutes to get all the pieces free. I love this aspect of these puzzles. Having taken them out, you now have 6 of the usual set of tetrominoes to put back in using the trademark flop moves.

First thing to do is find the possible assemblies of which there are 14. Obviously the restricted entry helps limit the numbers and you also need to decide whether Volker would stoop so low as to use the side hole of the box to place the last piece. So how should you go about narrowing down the assemblies? I got slightly lucky and managed it after a few hours of trying random positions before realising that the most important thing to do was to leave enough space for the insertion of the pieces that can only be rotated into the box.

The Aha! moment is wonderful with this puzzle. It’s yet another example of Volker’s genius mind. It’s not too horrendous and very very clever. Having solved it, I then had to try and find the delivery assembly all over again. Brilliant fun!

Centrifuge

Centifuge by Lucie Pauwels

This lovely little challenge from Lucie Pauwels has been made in a gorgeous red grained Merbau and a very white contrasting Ash. It consists of a square frame surrounding a 3x3x3 hole to be filled with the unusually shaped pieces. There are holes in each other the 4 walls of the frame which need to be filled once the pieces are packed.

I spent a good 15 minutes trying to construct a 3x3x3 cube which could fit inside before I sheepishly came to the realisation that a) this was impossible and b) would make the holes in the frame totally superfluous. Having had my eejit moment I then looked at constructing the shapes that would fit inside. This is a nice intuitive challenge because the pieces have ½ voxels sliced off in strategic places which really narrows down the possible arrangements. Obviously it is important that none of the ½ voxels are visible from above or below or in the holes and this adds to the challenge.

Very clever solution

This is not terribly tough but the sequence is clever and the aha! moment is very nice. It’s especially good if you don’t waste your time trying to do the impossible!

Shiba Inu

Shiba Inu (Limba version)

Garapa version - deliberately not showed off the shape of the dog

Here we have a couple of challenges in one from the amazing Girish Sharma. It’s a 6 piece burr with a single solution (no key piece) and then a 7 piece burr with the addition of the little dog inside the burr. Jakub and team have created two versions of this one. One made from a gorgeous Garapa and the other from a beautifully grained Limba. These are sent out as assembly challenges which will cause you some significant difficulty.

You would think that I, as a self confessed burr lover, would find this easy, but you’d be completely wrong. I may adore burrs (especially those that are part of the burr zoo) but I am awful at assembling them from scratch. I’m more of a puzzler who works to disassemble them and gain a muscle memory to help with reassembly (or I resort to Burrtools). I have multiple burrsets and yet still struggle to assemble a standard 6 piece burr - especially if the level is greater than 1 (hence the key piece comment). I started work on this one morning and it took me a whole 2 days to find even one assembly of the 6 piece burr. I was only able to do it because the solution that I found had a level 1.2 solution (i.e. it had a key piece that didn’t look like a solid key piece). Yes, I had found the simplest possible assembly of the 6 piece burr. Once I disassembled it and set the pieces out on a table in the correct orientation, I realised that there was no space inside for the doggie. There must be at least one more assembly that has a different interior cavity. It had taken me 2 days just to find one simple one - this was going to be a puzzle for Burrtools.

Not quite there!

Just the 6 piece burr assembled

Luckily I love making BT files and this was a nice easy one. The fabulous computer program showed me that there were 14 solutions to the 6 piece burr and only one of them was able to contain the dog. There was no way I would find the assembly myself so I used BT to tell me which burr sticks went where and after a good few hours managed to assemble the complete 7 piece burr. There is a nice little surprise for you when you do get it together (no spoiler here though).

Lisa and Lottie

Lisa and Lottie by Dr Volker Latussek

Remove the pieces this way

This incredible piece of puzzle analysis by Dr Latussek is definitely one for the collection of the hard-core puzzler. It is not for the faint-hearted - it is difficult…really REALLY difficult! The Pelikan team have made this exquisite puzzle from Bubinga with an Elm box.

Unusually for one of Volker’s creations it is sent out completely assembled in the box. The entry hole seems much much larger than the usual we have seen for the Flop series which gave me hope…until I tried to take them out of the box. I managed to take 4 of them out and then got stuck - are there rotations? No matter what I tried, I could not rotate any of the remaining pieces at all. This was very odd. Jakub never makes mistakes like this so I had a closer look and I then noticed that one of the sides of the boxes was removable. Once I had actually seen all the pieces, I had a bit of a panic! There were a lot of pieces and they were quite complex.

Volker said this about the puzzle:

“_Some of my puzzles start with a complete set of pieces, for each of which I have looked for a matching box to formulate a packing problem. Published examples of this are YIN YANG (6), TETRA-FLOP (8) and today LISA AND LOTTIE (10).
For LISA AND LOTTIE, Toshiaki Betsumiya had already proposed a complete set of ten pieces with GEMINI in 1987, each consisting of two half cubes (0.5x1x1) with a common contact area of at least one quarter (0.5x0.5). A few years ago, I initially asked myself which eight pieces could be packed into the cube-shaped box (2x2x2) of CASINO. At that time, I had to find the answer with the help of a self-written Fortran program in order to be able to present the BOX (2.5x2x2) for the ten pieces today.
There are 25 ways to build a corresponding cuboid (2.5x2x2), but only one way to put the pieces through the opening - which is the reason why I asked Pelikan to make a small batch of LISA AND LOTTIE. The uniqueness of the solution is very surprising to me, as I assumed there was no solution, even though the opening (1.5x2) is impressively large.
If you are willing to look at the ten pieces and how they interact, you will find the solution. Along the way, you can store the ten pieces in the box. _”

All ways to join 2 1x2x2 tetrominoes

This meant that if I could find one of the 25 possible cuboid assemblies then at least I could get it back inside. Off I went on my search. So far I have been totally unable to assemble even a cuboid to put back through side of the box, let alone find a way to put them all in through the hole in the top. I made a BT file for this one and found that the assembly in the box is not possible without some rotations so even if you do cheat a little bit then there is still going to be a huge challenge for you - there are 25 assemblies and 4 possible orientations of each to try. 100 possibilities even with the actual assembly shown is definitely a massive task. I am saving this for when I have a LOT of time on my hands. This is an incredible piece of puzzle analysis and something for the true puzzler.

Open Frame

Open Frame by Lucie Pauwels

This is a second of these amazing challenges by Lucie Pauwels to match the Minimal Frame from the last release. Like its' predecessor, it is a very colourful 2D packing puzzle with multiple different woods combined with an anti-slide puzzle using a very minimal frame but this time the edges of the frame are formed by single voxel pieces in the centre of each side (unlike the last one which had only 2 corner pieces). There are 9 pieces to be fit inside the 7x7 square. There is an overlap between the two puzzles with some shared pieces but the very simple ones are different.

Close but not there

I went to work and yet again, realised that tray packing puzzles are very difficult for me. I did manage after an hour or so to find a single assembly. It is oddly difficult to place these pieces into such an open tray. Like the Minimal frame, I was able to get many not quite there solutions but actually making the complete square shape proved very tough. The solution I found was satisfying but it did not fulfil the anti slide requirement. There are 2 pieces in the puzzle which must be oriented in a certain way to prevent them slipping out an edge or you must find a way to confine them to the interior of the assembly shape. 

A quick resort to Burrtools showed me that there are 15 possible assemblies of the square but only one of them is also anti-slide. I won’t show the final solution but once you look at it, it is a marvellous thing to behold! This is a huge challenge and very attractive! If you have the Minimal Frame then you owe it to yourself to get this one to go with it.

X-Ray

X-Ray byBenjamin Heidt

This beautiful creation made from Wenge, Purpleheart and Maple is the sixth of the puzzles from Jakub designed by Benjamin Heidt. Like most of his designs there is always something different and clever about them and this is no exception. It looks like a standard 6 piece burr made with tubular burr sticks, except there are 10 sticks in total, with 4 of them split into 2 halves. It is designed so that you can see right through it to work out what is going on inside, hence the name. Being based on a 12x12x12 grid it might give you an idea that there could be some rather involved movements and you wouldn't be wrong. My initial exploration managed to move the pieces a long way apart whilst still interlocked and nowhere to go.

Almost there? Not a chance!

Interestingly, there are very few blind ends in dismantling this one and those that there are, are relatively short. The challenge here is to find the pathway. The hollow nature of the sticks means that you can see almost everything but despite this I got blocked on numerous occasions. Part of the reason for this is the rather sharp internal edges which need very precise alignment but once you think that you can see a move, stick with it, make sure it's all aligned correctly and it goes very smoothly. Whilst the level is a pleasant 14.2.3.2.1.1.1.2, it is a really good challenge to effectively work your way through the maze. I find that for complex burrs the teens and twenties is just about right for an enjoyable experience.

Brilliant clever design

These wonderful puzzles should go on sale at Pelikan's website on Wednesday, 13th November at 10am CET (9am GMT, 4am EST & 1am PST). Whilst you are there, there are still a few copies of the wonderful Sukiyaki which I reviewed here and Benjamin's incredible Steam Boat which I reviewed here.