Pelikan Summer Release 2025

Upcoming Puzzles From Pelikan

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

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

The Bunch 2.2

The Bunch 2.2 by Alfons Eyckmans

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

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

It's going to be fun putting this back together

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

Rising Peaks - Everest

Rising Peaks - Everest by Girish Sharma

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

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

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

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

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

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

Minima Magnetik

Minima Magnetik by Frederic Boucher

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

"First place the box on a flat surface.

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

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

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

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

No magnets visible but....

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

Minima Magnetik from Tye

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

Minima Drawer

Minima Drawer by Frederic Boucher

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

Dowels galore!

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

No spoiler - it is solved!

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

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

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

Yet More Pelikans!

The bumper crop of puzzles from Pelikan Puzzles

Wow! What a pressured week! Not only did I have an enormous set of puzzles from Jakub and Jaroslav, but I also worked about 80 hours this week as well doing some rather stressful stuff. Luckily for me, I find that puzzling is quite a nice way to relax. It doesn't matter to me if I am failing to solve the puzzles - the process of admiring them, the beautiful wood and playing with them to admire the genius of the designers. I just find the whole process rather soothing. It made a difficult week much more palatable.

Today I need to finish my reviews of the remaining puzzles - some of them have already sold out but there might be a possibility that if people contact them about these then a further batch might be made.

The Horns of Booth

Interesting delivery arrangement

5 pieces to fit in the box

Who can resist a new packing puzzle from Dr Latussek? This gorgeous creation using highly grained Acacia and Purpleheart has a box with 5 very interesting pieces to be fitted inside. The opening in the box is not big enough to have a piece enter sideways - there will have to be rotations at some point during the solution - why doesn't this surprise me? Volker is the master of restricted rotations. Looking at the pieces it looks like there should be lots of room with maybe a number of large gaps between pieces but despite this, the L shapes of the pieces interfere with each other and the required rotations don't seem to be possible. This should be fun. First, I had to read the thought processes that the good Dr went through during the design process. He said:

"When I experimented with the tricube v some time ago to find a suitable box for a certain number of v’s, I stumbled across some surprises. I was thrilled with the new ideas that I hope to publish one day with Pelikan.

I will start with a particularly nice experiment: I wanted to put six broken v’s into the FRITZ-FLOP box, into which six v’s fit without much challenge. When a v is broken in the middle two identical parts are created, which I wanted to put back together in a staggered way. The result should be six parts that look as if the two ends of the Tetra cube L have been cut off. As so often happens, I was unable to solve the task I had set myself. I couldn’t find a move that would convince me and would have given you a headache in the search for it. But when I left out a piece and experimented with only five pieces, THE HORNS OF BOOTH was quickly found.

 

I found the movement convincing, especially because this puzzle has a feature that I appreciate: the box and the pieces have to be turned and tilted to fit. This is the only way to ensure that the pieces move harmoniously around the box without getting stuck. I really like that. THE HORNS OF BOOTH is not suitable for a solution video with a rigid focus on the opening in the box. Discover and enjoy the interplay of the five pieces and the box with me. Then you won’t need a solution video either."

As usual, I started with searching for a 3x3x2 assembly and found a couple quite quickly. Obviously, the shape created can be rotated 90º 4 times as well as inverted giving a lot of possibilities to search through. With most of these types of puzzles, working in reverse from the assembled shape is helpful for me - several of the starting positions are obviously impossible with no piece even remotely removable if it began in that state. After an hour or so, I had honed my search down to 2 possible assemblies (I have to say that the insertion and removal of the last piece to go in the box is rather lovely. Having done that, finding a way to insert them through the reasonably large but not quite large enough hole is a fun challenge. I did bear in mind the Fritz Flop puzzle and some of the moves required for that which did help. If you have done a few other packing puzzles with angles of 45º then you will have a head start but there is quite a lot to do. When I found the required move, all I could do was sit back and gasp at the beauty of the sequence. This is a stunning puzzle - unfortunately sold out just now but hopefully another batch will be made. Dr Latussek is a genius!

PSI

PSI by Girish Sharma

This beautiful burr designed by Girish Sharma is still in stock as I write. It is a classical 6 piece burr shape made from absolutely stunning Bubinga that Girish has altered to make a whole lot more interesting. He has taken the standard 2x2x6 burr sticks and added an extra voxel or two along one of the short axes to make a few of the pieces 2x3x6 and yet still assemble into the standard shape. You can see that there is something rather different from the outside by the presence of odd extra cubies visible where you wouldn't expect them. The upshot of Girish's alteration is that it makes the burr much more interesting to explore. Parts get blocked when you think that you are making progress and also the level increases enormously.

I managed after a couple of evenings of play to get to a fairly widely separated bunch of pieces but nowhere further to go. I went back and forth (creating a muscle memory for later reassembly) and really struggled to find the next move. Finally, after a lot of work changing the orientation of the puzzle in my hands and searching inside the shape I had, I found a lovely clever move that effectively split the puzzle in half. After that, I was able to fully dismantle it and take a photo:

Not "just" a six piece burr!

Only the very best of you will be able to assemble this from scratch (you know who you are). I had to resort to Burrtools to tell me the placement of the pieces but was able to reassemble it from there by muscle memory. This was a wonderful little challenge.

It would appear that there is a second challenge"

"By the way, another side goal of the puzzle is to figure out the full form of PSI"

 I'm afraid I have no idea what this means - to me PSI means pounds per square inch but that's not really helpful. 😱

Sym Duo

Sym Duo by Frederic Boucher

This delight from Frederic Boucher is also still available for sale. It was originally sent out to me in the assembled state but I have convinced Jakub that it should be sent out with a false assembly to give you all an extra challenge. It is very nicely made from Limba, Ovangkol and Cherry woods. I originally thought that the primary aim is a packing puzzle to place all the pieces in the box so that the entry is filled. This part of the challenge is fun and not terribly tough for those of you who are used to TICs or doing the amazing packing puzzles by Osanori-san and Alexander-san. There is a rather clever little move to get the pieces in correctly which is rather satisfying.

The real challenge from Frederic is to use the two shapes to make a series of symmetrical shapes. I have found 1 rotational symmetry and 5 mirror symmetries - I am not particularly good at these types of challenges but with these shapes they are remarkably fun and tactile to play with. It will keep you going for a good couple of hours.

Yes U Can

Yes U Can by Frederic Boucher

My goodness! Frederic Boucher is having a good time these days! This is yet another puzzle designed by him in this release. Made from a particularly beautiful combination of Wenge, Padauk & Mahogany, this will be delightful to fiddle with. Unfortunately it is now sold out but maybe it will be recreated if enough people ask jakub. Like the Sym Duo, this is a two-fer - there were two challenges in one puzzle.

The obvious challenge is to place all the pieces in the box. It is made significantly more difficult by the present of 2 glued cubies inside the box. Rotations are required and add to the challenge. I found two assemblies that would fit in the box but I think the aim is to place them all inside with the single tetromino hidden by the pentominos. Make sure that you look for and find both.

The next, and to my mind, much more difficult challenge is to take the 6 pieces and arrange them in such a way that the red tetromino is completely surrounded by the U-shaped pentominos. This is possible in several ways and is a fun thing to try but much more difficult is the challenge to completely surround it so that the red piece cannot be seen through from any angle through any of the drilled holes. I have never tried puzzles like this and find that I do not have the skills to do it. Embarrassingly, this took me a good hour of trial and error. I do not know if there is a good method for this sort of thing - let me know if you have any techniques.

5 Balls

5 Balls by Frederic Boucher

Don't you love a puzzle that has an instruction sheet?

OMG! Yes, another incredible design by Frederic! This wonderful series of challenges is made from Wenge and Maple with 5 nice large chromed steel ball bearings - it has it's own case to store the pieces and will keep you occupied for quite a long time.

The first challenge is to use the 4 L shapes to hide all 5 balls with a mirror symmetric shape. Yet again, I am terrible at these puzzles. he first thing that occurred to me was that the hollows in the wooden pieces should be placed next to each other to enclose a ball bearing but there are only 8 hollows to enclose 5 balls. That requires some thought© which is a weakness of mine. I spent a good hour searching and did manage to hide ask 5 balls but there was absolutely no way I could do it with a mirror symmetrical shape. There are only so many ways to put the pieces together into an effective ring shape but none of them were symmetrical. After more than a week of trying I have gotten nowhere near solving that part of it.

Challenge two is to create a symmetrical shape using the 4 L's on their sides with the balls sitting in the cavities. To make this particularly hard, the shape created by the L's should be mirror symmetrical but also the position of the balls should be symmetrical too. I do not know whether the whole thing should be a single symmetry or the wood and the balls are different symmetries. Yet again, I have been at it for a week and haven't got even close to a solution. My brain just doesn't work this way - I remember that the 2 piece Symmetrick puzzle from Tomas Linden took me many many months to solve. I just don't stand a chance but it is fun to try.

The final challenge which I did have more success with is to take the pieces from challenge 2 and to created a 3x4 rectangle with the balls assembled into all of the 11 shapes in the diagram above. Some of them are relatively simple but a few are a huge challenge and I think some might be impossible! At least I have completely failed at a few of them so far. There is a lot of puzzling for you money with this one and who can resist a puzzle with a storage box?

Serial Squares NTC

Serial Squares NTC by Lucie Pauwels

This gorgeous tray packing puzzle by Lucie has been made from Ash, Wenge, Acacia and a vibrant Padauk. It also remains in stock. When I first took it out of the box, I wondered whether it was a sliding piece puzzle but in the configuration it arrived in that was impossible and after that I thought it might be a packing puzzle. A little thought told me that would be trivial. There must be something more to it. I then decided that the aim was to pack the pieces in the tray in such a way that no single colour shared an edge in common. This was a fun challenge but did only take me about 10 minutes:

No edges of the same colour touch

I have played with many of Lucie's puzzles and none of them are as trivial as that! It was time to read the instructions! Oh boy! She wanted the pieces to be packed in with no adjacent pieces matching colours on either edges OR corners! That was going to be a massive challenge - there are apparently 2 solutions but I have completely failed to find them myself. I do not have any idea how you go about doing this sort of thing. If you do put by trial and error then how do you keep track of what you have attempted after a few failed tries? I also have to ask, how do we know that there are only 2 solutions? 

This is a beautiful and frustrating challenge that will keep you all busy for hours if not months!

A Huge Selection Of Pelikans!

Upcoming release from Pelikan

Couldn't fit into the grid 

A rather large box arrived earlier this week and an annoyed Mrs S muttered "not again" to me. I gritted my teeth, kept my head down and promised not to leave them lying around once I had solved them (there is a rather embarrassing number of puzzles just strewn all over the house just now and I need to put some away before there's a bloodbath in PuzzleMad HQ.

This time there is a huge selection of puzzles from your favourite designers and a variety of different types of puzzle with varying difficulty levels to suit everyone. 

From top left above:

Zack Die Krone by Stephan Baumegger (2 versions available)

The Horns of Booth by Dr Volker Latussek

PSI by Girish Sharma

5 Balls by Frederic Boucher

One Match Left by Jorgos Anastasou

Serial Square NTC by Lucie Pauwels

LOL by Frederic Boucher

Sam Duo by Frederic Boucher

Heavy Lifter by Girish Sharma

Yes U Can by Frederic Boucher pictured separately

Jakub has asked for me to give some reviews as quickly as possible and so I will be spreading them over two weekends of blogs. Expect them to go on sale quite soon.

Zack Die Krone

There will be 2 versions of Zack Die Krone by Stephan Baumegger, both are absolutely beautiful. This fabulous puzzle is not for the faint-hearted. When I first picked it up, I thought it was a 6 piece burr in a frame and expected a huge struggle as a result. When I had a closer look I was relieved to see that it is "just" a mere 3 piece burr within a cage that has a big hole in the top. How hard could it be? OMG, it is a serious challenge!

There are a few possible moves at first but after that the possibilities open up quite a bit as there is plenty of space to look at what is happening and also plenty of space to move the pieces around each other an around the frame. Initially the frame really gets in the way of what you want to do but after a bit of fiddling a way method of getting around it can be found. Once this has been done, you will need to carefully control the pieces as they appear to become quite unstable. Rotations won't happen easily but are possible and you will need to prevent that. I managed to unlink one side of a piece from the others and then got very badly stuck being completely unable to progress and needed to backtrack to the beginning again. Luckily, I found that it's usually pretty easy to backtrack if you paid attention but I dare say some of you might get lost at some point.

I remained stuck at the same position for a whole evening before I managed to find a possible move. It's a huge advantage being able to see more or less everything that is going on and sort of planning what you can do. With great satisfaction I found a path to release a piece from both the others and then a simple matter of releasing it from the frame. I had my 4 pieces and could take a photo. At level 21.8.3 for the complete disassembly, this is a huge challenge for anyone and only the very best of you will be able to reassemble it without Burrtools (I certainly needed it)

An incredible challenge The magnets hold it stable when assembled

One Match Left 

Looks just like a matchbox

As expected - one match inside

A new designer I've not heard of before, Jorgos Anastasou seems to have been designing for a few years but this is the first of his that has been mass produced. This beautiful cute little puzzle is made to look like a matchbox (very reminiscent of the matchbox playground from last year). It's made of Jatoba, Wenge, Maple & Cherry. Only two of the woods are visible from the outside of the box. There appear to be two but pieces inside the box which can slide and reveal a lovely little single match left in the box (hence the name). 

After six moves the match can come out but the tray formed by the two but pieces still won't slide out. A further 7 moves leads to one more part removal and a further 2 to complete disassembly. It's not terribly difficult but it's lovely and really quite cute. I suggest that you leave the pieces for a couple of days before attempting the reassembly. It will keep you nicely for a little while. Not hard but just right for a little light puzzling.  Indeed, Jorgos wrote about it:

"Sometimes the simple things can be the most enjoyable! The "One Match Left" is a moderately difficult level 6.7.2 disassembly challenge with a unique solution reassembly. It's fun to determine the position of the small match piece trapped inside the seven unit burr pieces and frame. Τhanks to Pelican for making my design a reality with their high quality construction and materials! Have fun!"

He's right, it is a simple thing compared to may others that have been made but it is a delight and very beautiful.

Leave it for a few days and assemble from scratch

Heavy Lifter

Arrives incorrectly assembled

5 pieces

This wonderful interlocking 4x4x4 cube puzzle is by the amazing Girish Sharma. It has been stunningly produced in some lovely woods - Zebrano, Acacia, Wenge, Maple and Massaranduba. It has been incorrectly assembled for transport and quickly comes apart into 4 rather complex shapes and an L. I did not receive any instructions and from the start assumed that it was a TIC. As a result, I set to work looking for the position of all the pieces and then rotational moves to get them interlocked. The process took me about an hour whilst watching TV with Mrs S. It was really very satisfying to work it out and seat the pieces into place. I was so delighted that I did it repeatedly that evening. 

The following day I got my instructions from Jakub and was stunned to realise that it was not meant as a TIC...he wrote:

"Over the last few months, I have been tinkering with the idea of high level 4x4x4 IC which form a full visible cube. So far, I've known the highest level to be 11 by a few designers. The challenge I took on myself was to design something with a higher level. This is first of the many designs that I have coming up in future. 

Heavy Lifter is a level 12.2.2.2 IC with 5 pieces. The puzzle comes disassembled and the goal is to assemble the pieces into a 4x4x4 cube. Once you have assembled the cube, you might realise the importance of the name of the puzzle."

Amazingly, it was actually an interlocking cube very similar to many of the wonderful Microcubology puzzles I bought way back at the beginning of my puzzling odyssey but MUCH MUCH tougher. The following evening, I just had to try again and do it without the rotations. This was a huge challenge as the TIC part had given me some preconceived ideas that I needed to get rid of. Girish has created an absolute monster of an interlocking cube which is absolutely wonderful to work on. The "proper solution" took me well over an hour and was joyous - this might well be my absolute favourite of the bunch.

This was an absolute joy to solve

LOL

Laugh out loud?

This made me laugh when I managed it

How can anyone resist a new puzzle designed by Frederic Boucher. I certainly can't and if it's called LOL then there is guaranteed to be something sprecial about it. This puzzle is very reminiscent of the Galette by Osanori Yanamoto in that there is a small flat box with a limited entry and a set of pieces to insert inside. There's no window in the front so it will all need to be done with dexterity and gravity along with quite a lot of thought. The puzzle is beautifully made from Jatoba and Cherry with the puzzle name on the surface which I think might be Marquetry (it's something I've never seen from Jakub before). 

The 5 simple pieces are to be put inside to make a 4x5 voxel rectangle. It's made more complex by the fact that the largest piece can't even fit through the 2 voxel opening - it requires a rotation to get inside and maybe there will be rotations needed inside the box without easy access?

There seem to be only a limited number of ways to create the rectangle and some of them are quite obviously impossible. I found a couple that potentially might be possible but finding a way to get them in the box is a huge challenge. The pieces block each other from getting into position and manipulating them through the tiny entrance hole is a frustratingly difficult experience. At one point I had a really good idea and it worked. But then the next step wouldn't work at all and I had a mini heart attack trying to undo the first supposedly good idea. It took me a good 30 minutes to get the pieces all out again and calm myself down.  There had been quite a lot of swearing during that process and Mrs S kept glaring at me! Having retrieved all the pieces I had a little think© and found myself trying to do the same thing over and over again. At one point, a little experiment with the pieces revealed a very subtle design element and yes, thank you Frederic, I did laugh out loud. A few minutes later I had my assembled puzzle:

Phew! That took a while.

Subsequently I received the instructions and found there was another challenge to be had:

Frederic wrote about it:

"LOL is an assembly puzzle with a very simple goal: Assemble the five pieces to make the acronym LOL, respecting the following rule: the 3 characters must have the same size (height and width). Will you discover the trick and succeed in the challenge? Exclusively for the PELIKAN version, a box is included. As a second challenge you must pack the pieces completely into the box. I hope this puzzle will make you laugh out loud!"

It appeared that I had only done the secondary challenge. The primary challenge still awaited me. This took me another hour or so yesterday and the important thing is to assemble the letters standing up on a flat surface. There is a very special trick that has had be done during the manufacture of the pieces to make it work. Another laugh out loud moment!

Sierpinski's Burr

Sierpinski's Burr by Tyler Hudson

Finally for today, I have a wonderful caged 6 piece burr from Tyler. He has been quite prolific over the last few years and has designed several different kinds of puzzle. This is a caged 6 piece burr which has had 2 opposite corners chopped off to allow quite a lot more freedom of movement for the burr sticks. It really adds to the challenge and allows it to reach quite a high level. I loved it but it might be too difficult for many of you if you are nor big burr fans. It has been beautifully made by Jakub and Jaroslav in Mahogany and Acacia. The angles of all those cuts must have made manufacture a bit of a nightmare to produce but the effort was well worth it. Obviously, it needs disassembly and then reassembly.

Tyler wrote about it:

"Sierpinski's Burr is a variation on the traditional framed 6 piece burr, in which 2 opposing corners have been removed. The resulting shape is one I hope you find quite interesting! It adds a few extra moves to the puzzle, and also provides small windows through which possible moves can be deduced. At level 40, it may sound a bit daunting, but keeping track of the solve is manageable, without too many dead ends. I don't think this one will be the hardest burr out there, but it should be a lot of fun to work out. Of course, the puzzle is named after the Sierpiński Triangle, which the triangular faces of the burr resemble. Pelikan's build of my design adds a lovely tactile feel, as well as being a beautiful wood combination. I hope people enjoy it! :)"

He is absolutely right! This is a huge challenge but is definitely manageable.there is a particular sequence that recurs several times and each time it is done it allows further progression before being undone and moving other pieces. The entire disassembly is level 40.6.3.1.2.2 so once the first piece is out then the rest will follow quite easily by looking inside and working out what is possible. 

A fabulous burr

Having taken my photo there was absolutely no way I could reassemble it myself and off to Burrtools I went. So much fun in one small cube! 

I have only had 5 days with the puzzles so far and managed to solve 5 of them in that time. I plan to work on the rest for next Sunday - come back for them.

My pick from this bunch is the Heavy Lifter and the LOL puzzle but all are absolutely fantastic!

Girish's Wooden Entanglement Puzzles

Twisted Rabbit by Girsh Sharma made by Brian Menold

Last week I reviewed a fabulous assembly puzzle designed by Girish Sharma (Shiba Inu) from Pelikan (2 still in stock) and marvelled at the amazing way he is able to create burrs as assembly puzzles that are accessible to the average puzzler (although still very difficult) and very interesting in their challenge and design. Shortly before the Pelikan puzzles arrived, I received a lovely little batch of beauties from Brian Menold's Wood Wonders store. When they were announced, I had to force myself to decide on just a few to add to the collection because I can no longer see even a hint of my desk and the piles of puzzles to be solved are starting to get embarrassingly large in several other rooms of the house much to the disgust and anger of "someone else" who lives here. She has just said that I remind her of those hoarders that we see on TV occasionally living in filth. I did have to protest that they are all very clean which earned me a stare and an implied threat.

Not only does Girish design burrs but he also designs Turning Interlocking Cubes (TICs) which have gotten more and more complex over the last few years. Some of them are quite fearsome in their complexity. There were 3 in Brian's recent release and I got them all.

First up was Snake Eyes - I had thought that having only 2 pieces, it might be a nice starter, slightly easier puzzle to begin with having not done any TICs for a while. The copy I received was made from Cerejeira and Movingui which made a beautiful contrast. The international postal service had broken a joint on mine and I was delayed in my play by having to glue it back together again. Interestingly, there is only one way the 2 pieces can be interlocked into each other which is always helpful at first and then I  realised that there were lots of possible rotations that can be done. I started moving them about and getting increasingly worried that I will never get them apart again when I found that I had gone in a full circle and they fell apart on me. That was unexpected! Try again and yet again they rotated around each other in a full circle before finding myself at the beginning. I was obviously missing a move (or 2 or 3 or ...). In fact, this reminded me very much of quite a few of the wire disentanglement puzzles I have played with over the years. Lots of moves that I struggle to remember before ending up at the start. Frustrating but fun. Having done Einstein proud by repeating the same thing over and over again, I finally had enough memory of my moves to be able to recognise my path and also explore ways to get off that path. Several of them ended up nowhere but finally after about 2 days of fiddling, I got my Aha! moment. It is lovely - just 2 pieces and yet so very clever:

Two Twisted rabbits intertwined...at last

Next up was the 3 piece TIC released at the same time (also by Girish) - Snake Eyes

Snake Eyes by Girish and Brian

This version is made using Cerejeira, Wenge and Sipo. I expected this to be a significant step up in challenge and was not disappointed. Brian wrote this:

"Lots of moves and rotations. I think I lost track of the rotations at 9 and the moves at 30! A really fun challenge always has lots of rotations. This puzzle holds up its end in that regard."

3 pieces means that you need to make a choice where to start and I chose wrongly at first because I'm an eejit. I should have picked the 2 pieces that had a restricted way of being introduced. Luckily I realised my error quickly. The two critical pieces can be entangled in 2 ways but just thinking about the end position (of which there are 2 possibilities) narrows it down. Yes, I used thought© not random trial and error to choose my starting positions and then started rotating. Oh boy! There are a LOT of rotations! I lost count well before the 9 that Brian did. Thinking that I might have gone too far, I backtracked to the beginning a few times until, at one point, I found that I couldn't get back to the start. I was fully committed to this puzzle now. It needed another 2 days to find my way through - and that was just those two starting pieces! Yet again, Girish has designed a wooden entanglement puzzle here with more constraints than a wire one has. It is marvellous! Once I had the first two pieces correctly placed, it was obvious where the final one went and only a bit of work to back track to make space and then sequentially lock them all together:

3 pieces make my cube - the Snake eyes are visible

I have some serious concerns about being able to take it apart again. I have absolutely no idea how I did it! Yay! Brilliant fun - always looking for more from this great pairing of craftsman and designer.

Yesterday was the last MPP of the year and for once I wasn't working. I headed down to Birmingham and joined the boys for a day of fun, puzzling and a kebab. I am sure that Allard will be writing a story about it soon. Mrs S immediately commented on my arrival home that I had left with 1 box of puzzles and arrived home with 2! Whack! Ouch!

Here is what I got:

Not a bad puzzle haul - it includes what Ali brought back from IPP for me
The cardboard box is a new one from Kyle Chester Marsden with a Xmas theme (I'm saving it for then)

When I took the photo, I actually missed the extra gift from Stefan - he has perfected Micro 3D printing and made a Soma cube with box that are so small that you need tweezers. The one I got was the big one because age made me fearful of not being able to focus on the even smaller one!

Each Voxel is 1mm!