Did I Just Perform Animal Cruelty?

Tortoise Protocol By Junichi Yananose

Juno Does It Again

I missed out on the Hippo puzzle from Juno which was such a huge hit last year - it dropped at the wrong time for me due to a combination of finances and being too busy to pay proper attention. I was determined not to allow that to happen when the next of his fabulous sequential discovery puzzles dropped. I was poised, logged in and with Apple Pay ready to go. It was just as well that I took these precautions as I have never seen a production run sell out so quickly!

When it arrived, I was rather staggered at the sheer size and heft of it. It is 211 x 162 x 82mm across and weighs in at 870g. The sales spiel had mentioned that it was big and heavy but it really caught me by surprised. It may cause some storage problems but I am not going to think about that until someone who I am frightened of harangues me for leaving it lying around. It is rather stunning being made of PNG Rosewood (shell), Golden Sassafras (body), Silky Oak (limbs and head) as well as Jarrah, Iroko and Juno's often used beautiful plywood. There are also some brass pieces and a whole lot of magnets.

The aim is to find a cavity and a prize somewhere inside. Yes, there's a cavity and NO, it's not a box! The presence of a cavity does not automatically make everything a box. I myself have some cavities within me and I am definitely not a box!

Having received it, photographed it from a number of angles, it was time to torture the Tortoise. It sounds awful but if I was to get my prize from inside then I knew I had to do some awful things. Turning it over and over doesn't really reveal any suspicious noises of anything loose inside and pushing and pulling at limbs and shell does very little. However, if you poke a tortoise on his nose then what will he do? Yes, the obvious thing happens here:

Now you seem me...

Now you don't

After this a few more things are possible and you get to play "Pattycake" with your tortoise and on a few occasions a bit of the internals are briefly visible. I went around in circles for a while moving bits and then moving them back. The moves are rather satisfying and assisted by magnets inside. Up until this point, I was able to go back and forth to the beginning each time but seemed to be missing a critical move to progress. This was where I stopped for the first day.

Returning to it the next day, I used my Einsteinian approach for a bit until something spontaneously different happened - oooooh! Now I really had done something terrible to the poor creature:

That has got to have hurt!

All of a sudden, I could see the innards of a tortoise and just like my own innards, they aren't really intended for the world to see - so I won't be showing them to you! At this point, it's possible to see the sheer complexity of the puzzle and understand why it had taken Juno quite so long to design, perfect and manufacture them. The interior is an absolute masterpiece! Let's just say, more horrors are possible for the poor tortoise including amputatlion of all limbs and tail as well as decapitation. It's gruesome!

Having ripped all appendages off, hopefully to use as tools later, I decided to return it back to the beginning and got my first shock - I couldn't;d not close it up again. I thought I had understood the process but I had missed something and part of the reassembly was blocked. I was flummoxed for a while and was forced to Think© for a bit. Ouch! Eventually I saw through the fiendish design and was able to return to the beginning and leave it for another evening. This was proving to be real fun.

The following day, I quickly tore the tortoise to pieces and examined the interior to see where tools would be used. There were magnets, buttons that were sunken, buttons that were flush, it was beautiful. All you can do is push and prod a few bits to see what happens. Interestingly, you need to combine pushing stuff with specific orientation to make pieces shift inside. Initially, you can see the move but it doesn't seem to help get you any further along. Thinking© again and trying an old old trick reveals a new part of the interior and then brass pieces can be seen sliding around inside. The odd thing is that sometimes those brass things disappear and won't return.......until they do. Why???

I got stuck again at this point. There is an obvious thing to do but it wasn't doing anything until I did it again and it did. It caught me quite by surprise as a component shot out of the tortoise and landed in my lap. Juno did suggest solving this puzzle over a fusion ops folded bath towel and I agree - in the end there are quit a LOT of pieces which could easily be lost down a sofa if you are not careful. Having gotten this piece out, I was able to see a bit more of the interior but it didn't really help me and I was pretty stuck for a day or so. At some point, I must have manipulated a mechanism without realising it because after a couple of days of getting nowhere, I suddenly had a gorgeous piece of plywood in my lap and no idea how. It had quite obviously been held in place by a pin and that pin was nowhere to be seen. I frantically checked my lap, the sofa and the floor and couldn't find the pin. I had no idea where it was and had no way to put it back. Now I had no option but to continue to the end and hope that I would work out how I had achieved that step or I would not be able to reset.

I was able to see why one piece had been disappearing inside and only occasionally reappearing during the early part of the solve. I suddenly had an extra tool and an obvious place to use it. Another beautiful piece of plywood was revealed and I was stuck again. From now on, there was a lot of thinking, a lot of trying random ideas that wouldn't work until in desperation I tried the correct random thing. The progression over another few days was absolutely delightful. There are sliding pieces, magnetic locking mechanisms and even a lever to manipulate (once you have found the lever) and all of a sudden a cavity is found - not the cavity of a box, you understand... it's the cavity of a tortoise. I had my prize!

For some reason, I was expecting a loaf of bread!

This is an absolute Tour de force of puzzling! It is beautiful, well thought out, fabulously logical and worth every penny. It is absolutely certain to be in my next Top Ten(ish) of the year. Whether it makes it to number one depends on whether I manage to solve some of the other incredible puzzles I have received over the last few weeks. The Jukebox, the Moonage M5, the Ice Bucket, Dead Mortimer are all proving impossible for my feeble brain but I do hope that I might manage to solve one or two soon!

Thank you Juno and Yukari for an amazing odyssey!

Pelikan Final Release of 2024

Puzzles just released by Pelikan puzzles

This may well be a little late for many of you who don't keep an eye out on the Pelikan website or follow me on Facebook. I received a package out of the blue about 10 days ago and had very little time at first to do any more than open it and take my photos. I am definitely not clever enough to solve all of these challenging puzzles in just 5 days and Jakub wanted to get them up for sale before he and his team go off on their well-earned Christmas break. These puzzles went up for sale on Thursday and I'm afraid that at least 2 are sold out already. If there is anything that you particularly want to buy then keep an eye on the auction sites or see whether Jakub might agree to make another batch - sometimes if enough people ask then he does get agreement from the designers to make a few more.

In this release there are some truly stunning and clever designs:
Minima Smiley by Frederic Boucher
Trimini Frame by Lucie Pauwels
Euklid's Cabrio by Dr Volker Latussek
Nested Soma by Dr Volker Latussek with Lucie Pauwels
Lunchbox by George Miller

Minima Smiley

There have been quite a lot of Minima puzzles over the last few years. The series started out as fun small packing puzzles with relatively simple pieces to fit in a small box with restricted entry and usually some odd holes or slots to allow rotations to occur. I have now bought lots and lots of these and thoroughly love the combination of thought, fiddling and Aha! moments. Several other designers have jumped on the Minima bandwagon and I have, of course, added these to my collection (partially thanks to Tye Stahly's Nothing Yet Designs site as well as Jakub and Jaroslav's Pelikan puzzles. 

When I received this one, I really wasn't sure what to make of it. All the pieces were inside and there seemed to be a ball in there too as well as a bolt in the side. What on earth was going on here. It cannot be a packing puzzle - is it an unpacking puzzle? Does such a thing exist? It would appear that Frederic has branched out into other genre's again (remember the amazing Res Q and my own special Visitor Q?) This time the aim is to work out how to release the ball.

Initially only the ball moves from one empty space to another but no further than that and therefore the only thing available to me was to remove the bolt. I got a bit of a surprise at the sheer length of it! After removal, there was suddenly the ability to slide a piece around and this opened up a bit of pathway for the ball. Except it wouldn't go very far and then nothing else happens. I was able to work out what the shapes were inside the box and map them out - there is absolutely no way any more is going to happen. Now I know that Frederic is a sneaky so and so and Jakub is very happy to encourage this sneakiness. A little exploration with fingers revealed something interesting and also some rather strong magnets. a tiny bit more progress happens but I get stuck again. Whilst exploring at this point, I realise that a piece can rotate and I eagerly encourage it only to find it doesn't really help me. Once I realised this, I tried to get it all back to the start and, OMG, it wouldn't go! Cue, minor panic before I got it all reset after 15 minutes of swearing at myself whilst Mrs S giggled at me and said that I don't seem to be very good at this puzzling business - oh, the shame!

I was stumped and had to draw the shapes and the box to work out a possible alternative sequence. Only after I had drawn it out was I able to make further steps and I could see the reason for the name of the puzzle:

Now I have to get the little bugger back inside

Having taken my photo, I tried to reset it, only to hear a lout "clack!" as the pieces reset themselves. OMG, my heart leapt into my throat again and I was forced to work it out from scratch again. For a while I kept trying it wrong and repeatedly heard that clack again and again until I realised the move needed to prevent it.

This is wonderful - very clever and shows that Frederic is able to set his talented brain to all types of puzzle. It has been absolutely beautifully made by Pelikan in Mahogany and Maple.

Trimini Frame

Trimini Frame by Lucie Pauwels

There have been a couple of incredible packing puzzle/antislide puzzles by Lucie this year (Minimal Frame and Open Frame which is still available as I type). I really struggled even to solve the basic packing element of these and completely failed with both of them to solve the antislide challenge. I was amazed at the last MPP when Wil Strijbos sidled up to me and showed me the he had solved it in about 10 minutes. I shouldn't have been surprised as the man is a total genius at design and solving. That display made me all the more determined to succeed at the latest of the challenges. Based on a triangular grid there are 8 oddly shaped pieces to place in a frame with only a single triangular voxel at the corner to hold the pieces in place.

Pepper Castor (another triangular grid)

This time I decided to be more analytical rather than just randomly place pieces in the tray. My usual approach to packing puzzles really isn't terribly efficient. A little trial and error revealed that certain pieces would either have to be oriented a particular direction if the abutted an edge or they would need to be positioned in the interior. This realisation was the key and significantly decreased the number of random moves. It didn't make it easy by any stretch but a true analytical approach made this solvable even by an eejit like me! After about 30 minutes of swearing under my breath, I had a true Aha! moment and it was solved. Absolutely wonderful to play with a triangular grid for once (very few designers do this - the best that I can recall is Alexander Magyaric's Play-girl and Play-boy puzzles as well as his Pepper Castor). There are still 13 in stock as I type - well worth buying to challenge yourself and even non-puzzlers.

Euklid's Cabrio

Euklid's Cabrio by Dr Volker Latussek

This is the second in the Cabriolet series from Dr Latussek. The use of the sliding-lid box has been used before by Hajime Katsumoto and Mineyuki Uyematsu with Slide Packing which I wrote about in 2016. The original Cabrio was a wonderful challenge on similar lines with Volker's own little twist. Of course, Volker is always exploring variations on what he has done before and surprisedmhimself when he found a way to use the Euclid type blocks with the Cabrio style box and we have an incredible challenge as a result which will really keep you think©ing for a while.

Interesting pieces

On arrival the lid is just sitting on top of the pieces and there's no way to slide it on. The aim is to find out which pieces go in the lid and which in the base which will allow it to slide together. A quick exploration revealed to me a really nice looking arrangement of the pieces which would fill those criteria. It looked beautiful! You knew as soon as you read that, that my arrangement was going to be wrong. Volker would never let the obvious solution be the correct one! I spent a good hour or so desperately trying to get that to work and it was totally impossible! The sliding pieces just wouldn't reach far enough to allow subsequent pieces to go in. Think©! There must be another way. 

Not only is this a packing puzzle...this is a sliding piece puzzle. Getting everything in place is going to need careful placement and then careful jiggling about inside to make room for subsequent pieces. I needed another couple of days to figure this one out in my head (luckily there is plenty of space in there). I let out a huge shout when I finally closed the box with all the pieces inside - that man is a genius!

Make sure that you pay proper attention to what you do and how the pieces sit inside because it will require an exact sequence of moves to get them out again and initially you will be blind with a box that is closed or only opens a little bit. As you would expect, I got the box stuck in the closed position for a panicked hour as I shook it about and desperately tried to work out how to open the bloody thing! I actually had to sit down for a bit and think to open it and felt a sudden urge for a gin when I finally did it. I have managed it a few times since then and it is incredibly clever. This is an essential to all followers of Volker and all packing aficionados. 

Nested Soma

Nested Soma - a collaboration by Lucie Pauwels and Dr Volker Latussek

Lucie has recently designed a new puzzle in the Minima series, the Minima nest (I haven't gotten around to it yet), and she decided to try and create a bigger version using a shifted 3x3x3 box. When Volker saw the puzzle idea, he suggested that she try and use slightly altered Soma pieces and sent her a couple of designs for the pieces and then the Nested Soma was born.

The manufacturing skill for this puzzle is totally off the scale! It is stunning made from Elm and Bubinga. The puzzle screams to fit the pieces inside and as you do so it quickly gets blocked up leaving spaces inside that cannot be reached. Time to solve it outside of the box and then you realise that it isn't very stable when the pieces are piled up on a table or your lap. A combination approach would be good. My trial and error approach rapidly failed. There are some very peculiar shapes which have to be fitted into a very restricted part of the box and quite quickly I saw that one piece could only fit in a particular orientation and, gulp, it needed a rotational move - Burrtools won't help much here.

I spent about an hour having increasingly useful breakthroughs and inched my way forwards progressively. The final Aha! moments are delicious. I have posted the solved puzzle because it appears on the Pelikan page - it's a minimal spoiler as most of it cannot be seen.

Solved - really not much of a spoiler here

Lunchbox

Lunchbox by George Miller

I think this might be my first puzzle by George which is strange because he has been very prolific for a very long time. Recently he and Roxanne have been focussed on creating the greatest puzzle museum in the world. 

George wrote this about it:

"Lunchbox is a variation of a puzzle I found in a pile of puzzles I had purchased in Prague. One of the puzzles was simply 10 pieces of wood with no clue as to the goal. I guessed it had to be a symmetric solid shape and began to explore all of the possibilities. This was, in essence, a meta puzzle – that is – and the goal, then solve the puzzle by stacking the pieces into the shape of the goal. The ten pieces were all the ways four 2 unit squares of one unit thickness could be glued together at with two unit cubes cubes glued to the squares to form a checkered patterns on each piece.

I made a copy of the ten pieces on a 3D printer. I used BurrTools to test using these ten pieces to pack a 4x5x3 shape I called a “sandwich”. I forced the squares to the top and bottom and the red cubes to the middle making it look ever so much like a jelly sandwich.

A simple packing puzzle is fun, but making a good puzzle involves a presentation mode plus a theme or story. A presentation mode too often is simply the solved puzzle. This takes away the pleasure of a discovered solution. Again, using BurrTools I found a solid packing of a set of steps with a unique solution. This led to the development of a box in the shape of a lunch pail with the inside conforming to the shape of the set of stairs. The story then becomes that of a young lad taking to school a lunchbox prepared by his mother. When he opens the box he finds his lunch in many pieces he has to pack together into a delicious sandwich before eating his lunch. Putting the pieces back into the lunchbox presents a puzzle unto itself."

This challenge is incredibly well presented - it arrives in one of the solved positions with the pieces packed in the box. Tipping them out reveals the wonderful variety of ways that 2 cubies can be placed on the 4 tetrominoes with gaps.

All the tetrominoes with checkerboard patterns

The first challenge is to create a sandwich from the contents of the lunchbox. Jakub has made the pieces in such a way that it looks like a piece of meat between 2 slices of white bread. I initially attempted to make it so that only checkerboard pieces were next to each other. This seriously restricted the pieces that I could try in each position but left me unable to form the 4x5x3 shape. Once I had determined that it might be impossible with pure checkerboard positioning, I looked at other arrangements and with some thought created lunch:

One ham sandwich

Burrtools tells me that there are another 3 ways to make my sandwich - I will keep working on it. Getting the pieces back into the box has so far proven impossible for me. I know the shape to achieve and it is not a simple cuboid which seems to be confusing me. I will be using Burrtools in the meantime. 

Unlike the sandwich, the orientation of the white bread is not all in the same direction which seems to confuse my feeble brain a lot. It is very similar to the Tabula cubes I wrote about way back in 2013 which I really struggled with:

Tabula cube 1	Tabula cube 2
Tabula cube 1 pieces	Tabula cube 2 pieces

These puzzles are selling very fast - order them quick if you don't want to miss out. They are all amazing. My favourites are Minima Smiley, Nested Soma and Euklid's Cabrio.

Happy New Year! My top ten(ish) puzzles of 2022

Still a shithole!

Happy New Year everyone! I have no idea what happened to 2022! It went by in a haze of work with a little bit of puzzling providing some relief. We are not finished with this pandemic but the knock on effects of lock downs and down turns in the economy has made working in the NHS a bit of a nightmare to put it mildly. I am very much hoping that 2023 will be a better year for everyone.

As for puzzles…it was a pretty good year for acquisitions and I spent a fortune yet again. For solving, it has been much less wonderful - time has been hard to come by and the complexity of my work has gone up so much that I cannot concentrate on any toys during a case and I don’t get any breaks between cases to play. I do hope that next year provides a little respite and I can make some headway on clearing my rather embarrassing backlog. I bought quite a few wonderful and highly rated puzzles from the late and sadly missed Eric Fuller and have barely managed to play, let alone solve any of them. The number of Eric’s puzzles that were shown at Peter Hajek’s End of Year Puzzle Party was a very heartening tribute and reminded me of how many I had to catch up on.

---

Almost there

These are just outside my top ten(ish) puzzles purely because there were so many great designs and creations that towards the end I had to arbitrarily push a few to this group:

Legal Packing

Holy crap! I found this so so difficult!

It’s just plastic, it’s just a tray packing puzzle, it hasn’t won any awards! It bloody took me 2 years to solve it! The final Aha! moment was wonderful with a truly elegant solution which meant that it had to end up in my top ten solves of 2022 for that very reason

Castle sets 

I have watched in awe as my friend Tamás Vanyó showed off his amazingly complex puzzle designs on his FB page. His castle type designs (Castle builder set and Minas Tirith) looked particularly gorgeous and challenging. I was stunned to when Jakub and Jaroslav decided to make any of them because the complexity was incredibly high. Not only did they do a wonderful job but they improved the designs by adding a marble maze inside. These puzzles are on display on my desk next to me!

On with my top ten(ish) puzzles solved in 2022:

---

13) Stir the Coffee

Stir the coffee

Jakub and Jaroslav always create beautiful pieces and they rely heavily on great designers to provide them with puzzles that we will not only love to look at but will also love to play with. A simple burr (or even a horrifically complex one) is not something they will go for. There has to be something fun, some kind of special Aha! moment or a whimsy about the design that will stimulate them to put the not inconsiderable work in to bring a puzzle to life. Dan Fast has turned his hand to burr design for quite a few years now and has started to 3D print them for sale via his FB page. Many of his designs are very high level (too high for me) but some have an element of whimsy to them. The Stir the Coffee burr produced by Pelikan was just such a burr. I looked gorgeous and the solving process was such fun. It had to be one of my puzzles of the year.

12) Packing with Alexander

Sliders 2

Insider

Alexander Magyarics has a tremendous talent with all sorts of packing puzzles. I have a bunch of his 3D printed tray puzzles which vary from sublime to ridiculous in difficulty level. I keep returning to them and failing and then putting them away for a while. Luckily for us puzzlers, he has also had a bunch of his 3D TIC type packing puzzles made in wood by either Brian Menold or Pelikan and a few have been astonishingly difficult yet astonishingly good. I have to pick out the Sliders 2 from early in the year which was stunning and also the Insider puzzle from July and still available.

11) The aMAZEing Puzzlebox

The aMAZEing Puzzlebox

I have read about several designers who make their puzzles from Lego bricks and either sell them as completed puzzles or sell the plans for others to build. They have always intrigued me but never quite tipped me over to spending cash yet. I’m not entirely sure why…it may be my irrational aversion to plastic puzzles (I only buy a few of them), or possibly because they are “puzzle boxes” which I “don’t collect”. More likely, it is fear that they might entice me into the world of Lego which might end up with a murder in the PuzzleMad household (that would be mine!). When Peleg offered me a copy of his aMAZEing Puzzlebox to review, I couldn’t say no and thoroughly enjoyed working my way through the sequence of steps and discovering the various tools and establishing where to use them. I suspect that I am hooked!

10) Climburr

Climburr

I have admired many of Christoph Lohe’s amazing designs over the years and have watched the fabulous development of Matthew Nedeljko’s fine wood craftsmanship for a couple of years. When they teamed up to produce the third and final puzzle in Chris' TIC series and the final one, Climburr, had design input from the TIC-Master himself (Andrew Crowell), I had to add one to my collection. The previous two (Chamburr and Cyborg) had been in last year’s Top 10. I was not disappointed - it was beautifully made with a lovely sequence of moves which were a nice challenge to find. This is a wonderful end to the trio which I keep together despite being made by different craftsmen.

I did manage to get a copy of the Jammed Gem when it came out and have only had time to idly play with it so far. It was in several of the top 3 puzzles at Peter’s EPP and I must try harder!

9) Akaki’s Picnic

Akaki's Picnic Basket

The late Eric Fuller only ever produced puzzles that he personally thought were fun and challenging. He had seen the amazing designs of Picnic baskets with items to pack inside created and 3D printed by Akaki Kuumeri. I had bought them because they looked gorgeous and I am a sucker for a puzzle set. I had not had time to play with them for nearly a year until I was told off by Ali for being so tardy. On his advice, I moved them to the top of my queue and took them on holiday with me to Edinburgh. As is usual with Ali (and of course, Eric) he was right. Each puzzle literally only has 4 simple pieces to place in the 3x3x3 cube yet the challenge is still tremendously fun and surprisingly difficult to do. Having left it untouched for such a long time, I now have it in my top 10 of the year!

8) Snappy Burr

Snappy burr

Jerry has appeared in almost every top 10 of mine since I began doing them. His puzzles are always instantly recognisable and are beautifully made from lovely wood with a very fine lacquer finish. What marks Jerry’s work from others is the incredible complex puzzle locking mechanisms that he creates. I don’t know how his brain works - he is definitely not like the rest of us but I am very grateful for his work. He gets very easily distracted and when he is supposed to be making puzzles for people on his list, he gets side-tracked and designs something new. Then he cannot resist taking the time to make it and I am lucky to be one of the puzzlers he asks for an opinion from. The Snappy burr was immediately delightful for the magnetic snapping movement it made which ended up as a bit of a fidget toy for me for a rather long time. Completion of this puzzle took me rather a long time because Jerry has used a set of moves that I have never seen him do before. It was quite fun to discover and the reassembly was a challenge too. I cannot wait to see what he comes up with next year!

7) Loki

No, not the Marvel character but it was a devil of a challenge. Boaz Feldman has exploded onto the puzzle lock scene with triumph after triumph! I received a copy of Loki, his sequential discovery lock puzzle early in the year and it took me over two weeks to manage a complete solution. There is considerable extra fun because the reset mechanism also has to be worked out since it is not the same as the opening mechanism. Boaz has a new puzzle released recently and this has reminded me that I really need to get a copy as soon as possible.

6) Pelikan’s Burr Zoo contributions 

Waltzing Whales and Hippo Burr

Boo burr and Dino 2 

Dracula

This year has been an incredibly creative success for Jakub and Jaroslav’s Pelikan puzzles - they produced dozens and dozens of phenomenal puzzles with a very diverse list of puzzle types and from many wonderful designers. You all know that I adore burrs (as long as they are not too difficult and particularly love the puzzles with hidden internal pieces making them part of Goetz' burr zoo. They started the year very strong with Waltzing Whales designed by one of the masters - Alfons Eyckmans. In May they added two more, Hippo burr and Boo Burr both by James Fortune - the hippo was particularly amazing fun!Dino 2, another one of Alfon’s creation was part of the September release and again brilliant fun with just the right level of complexity for me. Finally just sneaking another one in for Christmas, they produced the fabulous Dracula, also from Alfons (my goodness, he had a great year!) which is a 6 piece burr with sticks based on a 3x3x9 grid forming a wonderful maze-like solve process with the bonus of an extra piece inside.

5) Visitor Q+ and Res Q

ResQ by Eric

VisitorQ+ by Frederic

Well what can I say? Frederic Boucher is a master puzzle designer with an eye for challenges that are very different for most of the usual puzzles we see. He had created the Visitor Q (my version is a unique “plus” version) and then collaborated with the Doctor of wood, Eric Fuller to create the ResQ. Unfortunately I had missed out on this due to shopping cart difficulties when it came out. On hearing that, Frederic very generously gave me a special copy of VisitorQ last year and I had singularly failed for a very long time. I was then very kindly lent the ResQ by a trusting friend and I failed for a while with that but persevered with solving them both side by side. The space odyssey that I went through was truly mind blowing and a huge amount of fun. The final move on the ResQ took me days to work out and left me with the feeling that two of the very best in the world had collaborated to produce something absolutely incredible!

4) Angry Walter

Angry Walter

Another puzzle box that I was not sure about buying until a friend of mine corresponded and worked very hard to convince me that it was well worth the outlay and the time. As usual, I saw within a few minutes that I had been stupid to be so reticent. Dee Dixon’s DEDwood crafts has produced a number of stunning puzzle boxes over the last couple of years and they have been very well received by the community and won prizes in the Design competition. Indeed, Angry Walter won a top 10 vote getters prize this year. I got stuck on several parts of the solution and a very gentle nudge got me going - I had a wonderful time solving this and I am now completely converted to Dee’s puzzles.

3) Burr Bot and Burr Bank

I count myself very lucky to have managed to buy copies of Andrew Crowell’s new obsession. Having previously mastered the skill of TIC design, he moved on to sequential discovery puzzles that utilise burr features as well as sequential discovery tools. Burr bot was a wonderful introduction to his whimsy which was just preparation to the tour de force that was Burr bank which had many Aha! moments and a led me to a false sense of success before I realised there was yet more to do. These creations are “only” 3D printed plastic but are still absolutely stunning and remain on display in my puzzle cabinets rather than put away in a drawer.

2) Mittan

Mittan

Another habitual entrant in my top 10 is the incredible Junichi Yananose who’s store is constantly inundated with wonderful creations in several puzzle genre’s. The amazing Mittan was a masterpiece that allowed my to buy a puzzlebox and a sequential discovery puzzle in one piece. Being a gorgeous cat shape, it was acceptable (even liked) by Mrs S and allowed to remain on the mantlepiece in our living room. The sequence of moves is a lovely fun thing to explore with just the right difficulty level. The final step had me stumped for nearly a week and required a lot of thought before I found what Juno had masterfully hidden. I eventually had the cat’s bell and his little fish dinner (thankfully not bread this time).

Such an amazing range of puzzles from Juno

Juno had not been only responsible for one fabulous challenge in 2022! He created yet more board burrs with some very unusual pieces in them as well as the Card case which had the most wonderful mechanism to explore (literally).

1) Dr Latussek Packs A Punch

Fermat meets Fuller - a masterpiece and a fitting tribute to Eric

My top acquisition for Peter Hajek’s EPP had to be the incredible, mind-bending, Fermat meets Fuller packing puzzle designed by Dr Volker Latussek and stunningly produced by Pelikan. I began the review of this on my site with the words “Buy this puzzle! It is incredible!” and I have to stand by this - it is one of the most wonderful puzzles to solve I have ever seen. Volker has expanded from cylindrical packing pieces to blocks and now to triangular prisms. This puzzle was beautifully and accurately made as you would expect from Pelikan and is very difficult. There are quite a few potential arrangements of the pieces but none achievable in the restricted entry of the box until you find a critical move which is absolutely stunning. The Aha! moment was one of the best of 2022. I am amazed that I managed to solve it (the original Fermat remains unsolved)

Having singled out the Fermat for Fuller as my best of the year, I cannot stop without mentioning a few of the other creations from the twisted mind of Volker!

The recent Eros which is STILL available from Pelikan and PuzzleMaster has shades of the much loved Casino which was my number one for 2018. There are 4 squircle disks and 2 hearts to be placed in the usual Latussek box and the sequence to find to get them in is wonderful.

I could not miss out on the amazing Tau as well - Volker has graduated from simple shapes to polyominoes but increased the complexity by adding in 45º bevelled faces on them and a single voxel blocking the entrance. Again, the finding the several assemblies is fun and a nice challenge but working out exactly how to get the correct one inside the box requiring several complex tight rotations is fabulous.

If you can find any of these then don’t hesitate! Just buy them and ask questions later!

Do you agree with my top 10? If you have any different thoughts then please comment below or even use my Contact page to tell me how wrong I am. I look forward to your thoughts. 

Happy New Year to you all!

I really hope that you all have a wonderful year in 2023 with good health, success and plenty of wonderful puzzling. I look forward to entertaining and maybe helping many of you in this year.