He called me a genius!

Positively devilish - the HELLical Burr

If you follow me on FaceBook then you will have seen a late night post from me with a puzzle finally solved and an exclamation about the incredible skills of two of my friends! I posted this:

Derek Bosch - you are a genius! This HELLical burr is phenomenal - it took me quite a few hours to dismantle it! Lots of blind ends and even a loop and a hidden exit! Steve Nicholls - your 3D printing of this puzzle is nothing short of stunning! Everyone should go to http://threedyprinters.com/ to see the machine you use - I WANT one!!!

In part of the subsequent conversation that follows, Derek actually said that I was a genius too!

Kevin, you are the genius, for solving it (and remembering how it goes back together!) Even I need my cheat sheet! 

This came as a bit of a shock to me because I remain convinced that I am a puzzling amateur. Yep! I still think of myself as a newbie to this game with a bit of a fetish for burrs, twisties, disentanglements, N-ary puzzles, sequential discovery puzzles and assorted wooden interlocking puzzles. Oh dear! That’s quite a list isn’t it? BLUSH!! The present Mrs S would definitely say that I am no genius as I barely remember my own name some days and have much more purchasing power than sense!

It's Helical - such fun!

So what is all this about? You may think you recognise the puzzle at the top of the post - it is a 4 piece burr puzzle which has been twisted into a helical conformation. I wrote about the predecessor of this a long time ago - The Helical Burr. Derek Bosch designed it and won the Jury's grand prize for it in the 2013 IPP puzzle design competition. More importantly it was very high (number 3) in my 2013 puzzles of the year list! At last year's IPP he showed off a follow up puzzle which required significantly more moves which was subsequently named the HELLical burr because it was HELLishly difficult. Shortly after that, Shapeways killed off affordable puzzle production and I mourned the fact that I would probably never manage to obtain a copy. Luckily, earlier this year we heard from the equally brilliant designer and puzzle producer Steve Nicholls (one of the coproducers of the Threedy printer) and he showed off the first copy of the HELLical burr produced using an FDM printer. I drooled and told him that I wanted one as soon as he was able to produce them for sale. An email exchange took place between Steve, Derek and I and over a couple of days,  and I got progressively more excited! Between the two of them they had managed to produce an animation of the disassembly which stuttered away on my iPad and definitely did not give me much of a clue but really whetted my appetite! I was then recruited (as had occured with the original version) to use my photography and editing skills, along with my now famous kitchen granite to make a solution sheet for it. I played all keen to the boys but was actually quite worried that I would be completely unable to solve it at all!

Eric Fuller! You are N times a genius!

Truly beautiful! From Eric Fuller

Idiot Alert!

I humbly stand corrected by my friend and fellow puzzle blogger, Tom Cutrofello! In my breathless delight at the genius craftsmanship of Eric I really did not adequately attribute the brilliant designers. Here is what Tom wrote:

"Go Pit and Bill are the design genii, Eric is the master craftsman! Amazing collaboration that would have been almost impossible before the IPP and the Internet. The puzzles are going to become even more elegant. We live on the golden age of mechanical puzzle world!"

Thanks for reminding me of my foolishness! Where would we be without the designers? I maintain that Eric is also a genius but I mustn't forget who enabled his genius. Apology over! Can I put my flagellation device (whip) away now?

Now those of you who are friends on Facebook will have seen that I have been making a very good attempt at bankrupting myself over the last few months! There just seems to have been a constant stream of absolutely fabulous puzzles coming out from all the puzzle designers and craftsmen. This is not just the wonderful wood workers but also the fantastic Chinese twisty puzzle makers who have made loads and loads of new twisties that are "absolutely essential" for my puzzling health!

Drool!

Double Drool!!!

It doesn't stop there either - there's also the fantastic twisty modders and Shapeways designers also keeping me sane .....! Yeah! really!

My original 3x5x7. New 5x7x9 (Traiphum) and 4x6x8 (Jeremy)

But despite all this, I have really been getting in to the N-ary group of puzzles and have been adding lots and lots of them to my collection. I established in my last blog post about them that there can never be too many of them in your collection and my aim would be to get a set as good as that of Dr Goetz Schwandtner. I am still a long way away from that but am certainly adding to my collection at an alarming rate - please don't anyone tell the present Mrs S how much they cost! No-one would even find my body!

The Best Helical Ever - Polar Burr

 aka Twisting the Night Evening Away

Polar Burr

Over the years of this blog you will have seen quite a few of these. They are helical burrs all designed by the genius, Derek Bosch. It is quite a telling thing that out of all the incredible puzzlers in the world, only he has designed this sort of puzzle - this is for several reasons...primarily he is a genius but also because he thinks in 3D in a non-linear way that the rest of us normal human beings cannot think and especially because he has a very twisted mind! I personally would be grateful to have a mind at all let alone an evil twisted genius one. Mrs S often berates me for my lack of brains and she is absolutely right (see, I admitted it and she is not standing behind me brandishing her lochaber axe!)

I had reviewed the "He'll lick all bare, too" a few months ago and described how I had dismantled it whilst having gotten lost in the move sequence and then had no idea how to put it back together again. I survived the daggers (aka the Sgian-dubh - my, aren't I full of the Scottish weapons of violence??) that Mrs S threw at me with her glare at the noise. The nature of the 3D printing process always mean that these are built up in layers and they make a rasping noise as you move the pieces about and this noise is particularly annoying to wives (or is that just my wife?). 

Big Steve (from the TwoBrassMonkeys store) showed off the latest creation from Derek's twisted mind and claimed that the Polar burr (named for the snowy white peak) had the highest number of moves yet for any of these helical puzzles. Of course, how could I resist and a short chat with Steve had me sending some PayPal his way and he posted me the next in the series the following day. "Yay!" said Mrs S. Except she didn't. In fact when the box was opened and I gleefully showed of the puzzle that was supposed to have 36 moves to remove the first piece she stared at me long and hard as if to dare me to play whilst we watched TV. GULP!!!

Being extremely frightened of Mrs S and her assorted weaponry, I took the puzzle to work and annoyed a few surgeons with it but couldn't really work on it there because the stuff that I tend to anaesthetise requires a lot of concentration and attention to what is going on (I probably cannot afford to lose focus when doing an AAA repair). This meant that I had to risk possible retribution from Mrs S and play in the evenings. I would wait until she had a cup of tea and a cat on her lap to pin her down before I would get the puzzle out and hope that she had not brought her throwing knives into the living room.

Over the next few evenings I explored the burr in a back and forth manner as I usually do to lay down the pathways in my memory. There is quite a lot of movement in this puzzle which makes it a lot of fun. I personally find that burrs with too many false paths rapidly become less fun to play with because it is really tough to keep the decision tree in my head (I have a minimal capacity brain). The Polar burr is nice because it has quite a few false paths but none are so deep or have multiple branches to leave you getting lost. Several times in the process, I got very close to removing the first piece but it was always blocked. One problem with these rotational puzzles is that false movements are sometimes possible if pieces are rotated in an unintended way. With Polar burr this is not possible - a few times it did become a bit rickety and nearly ready to fall apart but remained stable.

Nearly there? Not for a while yet.

During the process there are several lovely moves that make you almost gasp in delight. Back and forth the pieces dance around each other gradually moving towards the exit. I say "almost gasp in delight" but remember that "she" is armed and dangerous and I cannot afford to risk upsetting her any further. 😈

Finally after 4 evenings I removed the first piece and yelled silently (see my reasons above). I was slightly concerned that I had not really understood the last few moves as I had been watching TV at the same time. Without moving anything else, I decided to put it back together again and relearn all the steps...except I could not reverse the 2 or 3 moves that I had done to take the piece out. Damn! Swearing at my stupidity I spent a rather fraught ½ hour desperately trying to put the loose piece back in much to the amusement of Mrs S who delights when I am in pain. Eventually it went back inside and I returned to the beginning. Now, how did I manage that last move? It took me one more evening to finally solve it and completely take the puzzle apart with the confidence that I could return it to the beginning again:

Just 4 pieces but rotational moves make for a huge challenge!

I have to say that I think this is the very best one yet - the level 36 is huge but this is very solvable even for a puzzle idiot like me. If you want to play with it then Steve has put a few up for sale on PuzzleParadise - they take a very long time to print so will only be made in small batches - keep an eye out for Steve's items there if they are sold out - the Twobrassmonkeys store is kept for metal puzzles and the plastic goes up on Paradise. I seem to have been quite busy with these over the year:

Lots of helicals (one might be lost somewhere in my collection)
The one in pieces is either TwiddleDum or Dee - I can't remember and can't reassemble it

Stay safe everyone - despite what the UK government has said, it's probably too soon to be abandoning masks in public - the Delta variant is extremely infectious so every little thing you do to protect yourself will help. The numbers in our hospitals here are increasing inexorably and this includes the younger population. If you can have a vaccination then take it - any of the vaccinations are effective. We have had hundreds of millions of doses now with almost no significant adverse effects (a few hundred blood clots out of hundreds of millions of doses is insignificant). We know for certain that the vaccine works - pretty much ALL the patients admitted to hospital with Covid now in the UK are the un- or partially vaccinated or those with immune compromise. GO GET A JAB...NOW!

When is a Box Not a Box?

When it's an Assembly Puzzle!

It's NOT really a box!

The MPP guys are all out in Spain with Nigel at a 3 day extravaganza known as the Spanish puzzle party #1 and I am all alone back in the UK (Whack! Ouch! Sorry dear, I didn't mean to ignore you!) I am writing a blog post so that you all have something to read this weekend whilst Allard is gallivanting. Why am I not there? Unfortunately, I could not get those days off work and the cost was prohibitive for me when I consider that I have just been to Ikea for a puzzle display purchase which was never going to be cheap. Plus, Mrs S had just been absent in Edinburgh visiting her family and I couldn't immediately abandon her on her return - the fear of a Whack! Ouch! is just too great! From the pictures appearing on Facebook, the guys all appear to be having a great time.

Today, yet again, I am blaming Allard! A few weeks ago he wrote a review of a lovely little cube-shaped wooden thing from Japan. He had spotted in on Torito's site and combined an order with Big Steve. It is called the Kopa (or KO) box but don't be fooled...it is NOT really a box! This is an assembly puzzle which just happens to be cube-shaped and has a cavity. A puzzlebox is defined by being an article intended for storage of items which needs an unusual sequence of moves to open it. This puzzle is different...it has a central drawer that can be removed but there is no bottom in the drawer so anything stored will just drop out when it is pulled. Plus, a very big PLUS, this arrives in the disassembled state (as in the photo above) and the aim is to form a cube. It almost has maze-like properties.

The puzzle easily comes apart to reveal these pieces

The two outer pieces just pull apart and the central drawer can slide out. one outer piece and the intermediate are eternally linked by a dowel which sits in a square track around the edge as you can see above. When Allard was so enthusiastic about it, I contacted my usual puzzle pusher and asked whether he had any spare copies lying about. Of course he had one and Allard brought it back for me on his way back from Wil's King's day gathering. It duly arrived here and I couldn't resist settling down with it that very evening whilst "she who frightens grown men" and I watched some TV. Whack! Ouch!

The first thing I realised was that this thing is beautiful and then I realised that it wasn't going to be a pushover - it does slide together quite easily if you take the drawer out:

Easy peasy! Only if you don't include the drawer.

As soon as the drawer goes in the puzzle becomes much more difficult and just as Allard said, after about 10 minutes I was convinced that it was impossible. Sneaky bugger has got me to buy another impossible object! You can reach a stage where it is almost there but there is a cm or so still showing and no obvious way to get past this. I reread his review and realised I was at that early denial stage and that I should keep going. Now with this puzzle, nothing is hidden, there is no secret hidden mechanism. The entire thing is based upon 2 dowels moving around the edges of squares...in fact, there are 2 pairs of these dowels which seem to interact. This puzzle won't be solved by randomly moving the pieces because there are not many moves possible.

There are actually 2 really nice Aha! moments here. The first is when you notice a feature and have a sudden realisation that it could possibly go together if you can organise the captive pieces with the free piece in a certain way. How on earth can you make that arrangement? Think laterally? Think sideways? Backwards? What about inside out? Well, there is a particular thing that you need to do and suddenly a whole new set of possibilities opens up. Even then, I couldn't close the cube (NOT a box). The next Aha! moment is just as delicious...a sequence of maze moves lines it all up and suddenly with a lovely craftsman made slide it forms a cube with the drawer inside:

Genius!

I have to say thank you to Allard for introducing me to this lovely and very clever NOT box/cube. It is a genius idea and beautifully implemented as one would expect from a Japanese craftsman. All in all, it took me about 45 minutes and Mrs S was actually impressed when I showed her the genius idea. She even told me that I was obviously brighter than I looked which is quite a compliment from her except, now that I think about it, this does imply that she thinks I look rather dim! I think I hide my lack of brains quite well! At the moment, both Wil and Torito is out of stock of these but I think Endo-san is being encouraged to make some more. If they do come up for sale then they are well worth your hard-earned cash.

---

When is a Cube not a Cube?

When it's a Shapeshifting Cubic Cuboid!

The Duo Axis Cube

A recent purchase from Calvin's HKNowstore included a bunch of cubes made by MF8. For some reason, my usual twisty supplier is unable to get MF8 puzzles but I can heartily recommend Martin's Puzzlestore for almost all other manufacturers. One of my recent purchases was one that I had seen back in 2014 on both HKNowstore as well as the Twisty puzzles forum and had been fascinated at the look of it but not really that interested in purchasing as it was nearly $200 as a handmade mod. I had completely forgotten about it when I recently saw that it had been mass-produced by MF8 and I added it to my "must buy" list. In that intervening 4 years I had completely forgotten even what was the nature of the puzzle.

After opening my nice package and admiring the contents, taking my photos and frightening myself to death with the Son-mum cube and especially the Unicorn cubes, I put the Duo Axis cube in my work bag to show off to my surgical colleagues who I am gradually convincing that I am extremely crazy but gifted. Whilst we were waiting to be given permission to start a case (we needed a post-op critical care bed), I took it out and investigated what it was. I could not recall the exact nature of it but knew that it was related to the Axis cube that I enjoyed in the past. One of my most read posts is my "Twisty puzzling advice to a beginner" discussion which focussed on where to go after one has mastered the basic odd and even order Rubik cubes. The shape modifications are a really fun challenging next step on your puzzling path and the Axis cube is a fun one to try and is now available as a 3x3 as well as 4x4 versions.

Too many layers

Looking at the puzzle above something did not look quite right - there were too many layers and some odd diagonal pointing pieces that didn't seem to line up with anything when turned. Over a few minutes of showing this off to my rather horrified spinal surgeon, we both came to different conclusions: I realised that this puzzle was NOT a cube...it was a cuboid modified into a cube and axis transformed at the same time! My colleague realised that I was completely nuts! Both of our realisations were correct! The puzzle we have here is actually a 3x3x5 cuboid which in my discussion of the classification of cuboids is a shapeshifter which will be made even tougher by the Axis transformation. Having realised the nature of it, there was nothing else but to scramble it:

Holy crap!!

Once I had scrambled it for a while I saw that those diagonal parts that would not line up with anything were not separating from each other (the 2 middle yellow parts - one with mf8 on it are 2 of them). It actually required me to use some simple 3x3 algorithms to make these line up and then I could get a full scramble. It looks really fearsome like that and luckily also quite attractive as it may be staying that way! Having seen the look of horror on my surgeons face, I then went off and anaesthetised my patient and only much later did I get time to play.

This "NOT a cube" is a really fun challenge for any twisty puzzler who has gone just beyond cubes and simple mods and is looking for something extra. As soon as you have mastered the basic cuboids (Floppy cuboid, Domino cuboid and Shapeshifter) then you are ready for this. The puzzle turns beautifully and is only spoiled by a tendency of the centre caps to fall out (which is easily fixed). Those split axial pieces add a nice extra challenge to it and the solve proceeds logically. It is very important to keep the base puzzle firmly in your mind because after any turns of an algorithm it is impossible to look at the puzzle and see what is next. This needs a good mind's eye. I definitely think that this is a great next challenge for anyone who wants something extra.

Congratulations to AJ and MF8 for some great challenges - this, and the other 3 above look fantastic. I do hope that some of AJ's other mods are mass produced because he makes some stunning puzzles which are just out of reach when handmade.

I love these but maybe I shouldn't buy!

Quintet in F

I have mentioned several times over the last couple of years that the great James Dalgetty, the owner/curator/guru of the Puzzle Museum, advised me at least twice that I really should focus my collecting on just one subtype of puzzle from the great puzzle classification. As you know I have totally ignored him and become a total magpie and collected just about everything I could get my hands on with the exception of jigsaws and dexterity puzzles.

Breadbox

Unhappy childhood

I have gradually worked out that there are some things that I am absolutely rubbish at and so have started to avoid them. For example I have more or less given up on 3D packing puzzles. I started off with the most beautiful of 3D packing puzzles - Make room from Mr Puzzle was a horrendous failure for me (reviewed here) then decreasing the complexity to a puzzle with "just" 2 layers, Unhappy Childhood, made by my good friend Neil was a similar failure. I simplified further to enjoying them when they were simple trays with 2D packing puzzles and wrote a glowing report of David Litwin's Breadbox and also solved the slightly harder classic tray puzzle, Blockhead, which I bought from Brian Menold at Wood Wonders.

Blockhead - only 4 pieces but quite tough

Looking a Gift Horse (or Dragon or Lock or Wire Thingy) in the Mouth

It's a horse!

I have a very good puzzle friend in the Far East who is very good to me and always on the look out for puzzles that he thinks I might enjoy. We email often and I am constantly amazed at the sheer breadth of his puzzling knowledge and skills. I also am amazed when he sends me the occasional package. These packages contain puzzles that he has found for me or managed to obtain from his own friends. He never accepts payment for them so these are always gifts. Occasionally he asks me to source puzzles for him and I buy them and send them his way (which I am always delighted to do) but the majority of the giving is to my advantage. I consider myself a very lucky man to have such a great friend. Mrs S doesn't favour him so much because a lot of the puzzles are jingly and you all know how she hates that - the laser burning stare is terribly painful! I have told her this time that I can never look a gift horse in the mouth - this time literally.

Some time ago I received another package of puzzles from him which included some rare disentanglement puzzles and some new designs from Wang Yulong. The first one that I attempted was The Horse by Binary Arts - produced in 1985. I had noticed this many years ago and tried a time or two to get one on ebay but always missed it by a few $$. Knowing how much I love N-ary puzzles, my friend managed to get me this copy and I have to say it is lovely. In fact it is pretty enough that it sits on show next to me on my shelves unlike my other disentanglement puzzles which get shoved into a drawer. I love that the string in this is a piece of leather just like the reins of a real horse. The aim, obviously, is to remove the loop of cord and the wooden block which impairs movements. There are a few moves that need to be done in the right sequence - it is a lovely satisfying thing to do. Even Mrs S said it was a pretty one.

Well trained horse - not run away with the reins off

Interesting burr designs

Inaccurate Burr

Over the last few months I seem to have bought very little from Eric Fuller - this has mostly been due to the timing of his updates being whilst I was asleep and missing out on the ones I was particularly interested in and then also because I had spent my money elsewhere shortly beforehand. I'm sure that you must think that I buy everything in sight but unfortunately it's not true! If I did buy everything I wanted then Mrs S would murder me, skin me and bury me in pieces before dancing on the various burial sites before burning all my toys! I think she's being very unreasonable but I'm terrified of her and so always think twice before adding to my collection!

Eric has recently completely redesigned his site and split his offerings into some new groups including his Signature puzzles which is the bunch we were all buying before and the Artisan puzzles which used to be called the Raleigh puzzles as more affordable and slightly simpler puzzles. Newly added to the site are the Gem series (smaller wood and acrylic puzzles) and a special Limited edition group which are similar quality to the Artisan group but only made twice a year in limited numbers and never to be repeated again. When the new site update went live again a few weeks ago, I happened to be in the kitchen doing the washing up after dinner and immediately stopped what I was doing and browsed the newest toys. There were lots that I lusted after but having just bought the Stickman twisty puzzle for an eye-watering sum (not that I regret it for a nanosecond), I felt that I had to be circumspect and avoid the wrath of she who must be flinched from. In the end I chose one of the Signature puzzles and one of the Limited edition puzzles. They arrived a few days ago whilst "She" was up in Edinburgh visiting her parents pre-Xmas. Thank goodness she has no idea what has arrived recently!

The Inaccurate burr particularly intrigued me - I love 6 piece burrs with a "difference" and this one designed by Junichi Yananose and made in gorgeous Marblewood was irresistible.  Eric said this of it:

It's not easy to come up with a new variation on the traditional six piece burr, but Juno came up with a great one! Because pairs of two pieces are off-centered, the assembled shape of the puzzle looks inaccurate though the pieces need to be accurate. The puzzle is based on one of the notchable sets of a level 9 combination. Thanks to the off-centered pieces the puzzle has unique solution and is very confusing to assemble! 

Construction of this puzzle is perfect! Tolerances are dead-on and fit is sublime.

How could I resist? The day this arrived, I sat down after work and had a play. The first thing I noticed when looking is that everything is off centre. The moves are a nice fun path which I found rather reminiscent of the Piston puzzle by Peter Marineau (I have a gorgeous copy of this from Jerry McFarland) which is a truly wonderful puzzle to assemble and disassemble. There are no blind ends and the disassembly only took me about 10 minutes or so and I had this:

Inaccurate burr pieces - there is something very odd going on here!

Looking at the picture it immediately jumps out at you that there is something wrong. The pieces are all notchable (i.e. can be cut with a router) and whilst most of the cuts along the length of 6 voxels are at 1 unit intervals, it is obvious that the depths and heights of some of the cuts are fractions of a voxel. The other striking thing for me is how truly gorgeous the Marblewood is (I am lucky enough to have a full set of Laszlo Kmolnar packing puzzles in that glorious wood from the wonderful Brian Menold). I scrambled the pieces and left them a while before attempting my reassembly. It took me about 30 minutes (primarily because I seemed to be able to remember the disassembly) which was lucky because in retrospect I have realised that the puzzle might be very very tough to model in Burrtools! I am sure that a genius like Derek could do it but me? Probably not! There is something rather lovely about this puzzle - not hard but great fun and very beautiful!

Loopy Burr

Loopy Burr was the other one that I couldn't resist (Lord! it was hard to stop at just 2). I wanted to see for myself what one of the new and slightly cheaper limited edition puzzles would be like. This one which appeared like another variant of a 6 piece burr was what tickled my fancy and at $33 how could I resist.

There are only going to be 150 copies made and after that they are gone. Eric said this of them:

The Loopy Burr came from the genius brain of Junichi; a very unusual six piece interlocking puzzle with pieces that form three intermingled loops once in the proper position. Finding that position takes eleven moves, and is downright tricky due to the space caused by the loops. Good luck!
Construction of this puzzle is outstanding, with our usual precision down to several thousandths of an inch.

It is made from Wenge and Maple and definitely doesn't quite have the same finish as the signature puzzles. It is, however, still a stunning creation and very finely made as always. The loopy nature of the puzzle is immediately obvious and is a testament to the incredible warped brain of Junichi Yananose. I have quite a few puzzles designed by him and they all share the same unusual and confusing genius.

The first thing that I immediately noticed was that the voxel grid that this is based on is quite a lot larger than a standard 6 piece burr - in fact each stick is based on a 4x3x12 shape and the entire puzzle on a 12x12x12 grid. This was going to be very tough! There are only a few moves possible at first but after about 3 or 4 then things become very confusing and I resorted to my usual exploration technique of make some moves and backtrack, make some more and backtrack again and hopefully lay down some memory tracks to aid in my solution and especially the reassembly. After about 7 or 8 moves I was hopelessly lost; I couldn't backtrack to the beginning and all I could do was keep pressing forward. After what seemed like dozens but according to Eric is only 11 steps I lifted the first piece out and then it collapsed in a heap of sticks.

6 rather confusing sticks - stunning accuracy on the cuts

They are particularly beautiful sticks which really show off an unusual grid design but after what happened there was no way on earth that I was going to be able to put it back together without assistance from Andreas' wonderful program. A major part of the fun with these puzzles for me is the creation of the Burrtools file and this was a pleasant diversion. After that assembling the puzzle was surprisingly simple using the guidance of the computer - Only 1 pair of hands required much to my relief.

I have played with this for 3 evenings in a row whilst watching crap on TV (that's what I do when Mrs S is away!!! I play with toys, eat junk food and watch crap on TV - it gets it out of my system for a few months until her next trip back up North). So far I have managed to disassemble it 4 times and still have no idea how I have done it! This puzzle will have some lasting power as, at level 11, it is worthwhile attempting to understand it. I intend to keep trying until I have mastered it (both ways) without using the computer. I do wonder how many of these Eric assembled before he had it learned and could do it without Burrtools?

I have another couple of toys for after I've mastered this one - I received a nice package from Bernhard Schweitzer at the end of last week and have another 2 "Turning Interlocking Cubes" to play with.

Beautiful Oak puzzle - Twisty Hollow (left) and Little Bruce (Right)

Having gushed over the Little Kenny puzzle designed by Ken Irvine, I got a chance to try the Little Bruce brother that Allard had written about and which I had failed to solve at the last MPP. Bernhard had gotten permission from Ken to make a few after Eric had also released them and I jumped at the chance to obtain a copy. Bernhard's stuff is always very nicely made and looking up to my left in my study, I have a rather HUGE collection of his handiwork - lovely!!! Of course I cannot buy just one puzzle so I picked another TIC which he had available - Twisty Hollow by Tom Jolly looked like fun. These should keep me occupied until Xmas when I will get to start on the Stickman twisty tile puzzle. Nope! It's NOT a box.....it just happens to have a cavity!

Don't Stop Believin'

Climburr
Designed by Christoph Lohe and made by Matthew Nedeljko

At the end of last weeks blog I showed off a new puzzle that I had acquired from a Facebook friend who had started making puzzles commercially a couple of years ago. I had admired his work from a distance but never actually gotten around to making a purchase. I was finally motivated/forced to buy when Christoph informed me that his last in the series of TICs produced with the design assistance of the TIC-Meister himself, Andrew Crowell were only going to be manufactured in a couple of small batches by Nedeljko woodworks. This series began with Cyburr and Chamburr produced by Pelikan and they were a stunning pair of challenges which I absolutely adored and which sold out very quickly.

Most of my previous TICs that I have in my collection have been sent out to me in pieces with the challenge being assembly. I have to say that I am very pleased that these puzzles in this series were sent out as a finished puzzle as I really don't think that I could possibly assemble them form scratch. I know a few people who could manage it but I have no shame in telling you that I am not one of them.

The disassembly of this masterpiece took me over a week to achieve. There are a few moves possible from the beginning but one pathway quickly appears to be more promising than the others and off you go. After a few moves and changes of direction the pieces can be properly inspected and an odd diagonal cutout in a piece appears. This is a clue - use it! It told me that a rotation was going to be needed in such a way that the cutout was the only way that the piece could turn. So make enough room with the other pieces and turn away! This was quite fun to find. Having done so and fiddled with what might come next, I decided to backtrack to the beginning. Except, I could not seem to get to the position to make the space for the rotation to occur. Panic set in! I really don't like getting lost in the disassembly of these puzzles because Burrtools is not going to help me.

It took me a full 2 evenings to get back to the beginning. At this point I made sure that I would absolutely know what position the pieces were in - I took some photos! I am getting to be bloody ancient and my memory is not what it used to be so photos were essential. Then I went back to that rotation and had one of my rare thoughts... is this the correct rotation? I moved it back and forth very carefully and I actually think that the diagonal cut is not really needed for the move that I had made. Because of this I wasted another evening desperately hunting for an alternative. Having failed to find one, I continued on the original path. From here there are a lot of very interesting moves possible including some very enticing rotations of another piece. I was really enjoying myself! 

Despite all this enjoyment, I actually did not seem to be making any progress. Quite frustrating that after several days I was stuck. At least I was able to go back and forth to the beginning (in fact my muscle memory for the sequence was getting to be really good). I took it to work and during a spare moment I tried again. Much to the amusement of a bunch of nurses who were watching me play, I finally yelled my Aha! aloud when looking down from above I noticed something that I had been missing for several days. I had been so busily focussing on the rotational opportunities that I had not even looked at linear moves. I could clearly see an alternative path to try. Whilst being watched, I made another few moves and my first piece was removed. Probably the first time I have ever received a round of applause! Unfortunatelyit was time to do some work so reluctantly I put it back together again. At home that evening I started again and quickly removed the first and then the second piece. The final piece removal was not terribly tough but required some really wonderful rotational moves. 

Simply delightful!

This was a truly brilliant completion of Christoph's TIC trilogy. I enjoyed them all immensely and really do hope that he works with Andrew again and designs some more. I seldom mix the display of puzzles up but I think that the 3 TICs will have to be put together.

So, despite losing faith, I continued to push, continued believin' and solved a puzzle. I still had to do another...

Gobstopper v2 (Gamexy version) pieces

Another puzzle left hanging at the end of last week's blog post was the second assembly of Steve and Ali's Gobstopper v2. I had managed to disassemble the easy assembly that it had been sent out in and having gone back and forth several dozen times, I was really quite certain that I would not be left with a pile o' pieces. BUT... the real challenge was to find the other more difficult assembly.

I really don't know how to go about this sort of thing apart from brute forcing them by attempting every possible assembly I could find. This is not really a great way to go about it when there are 12 pieces and you don't have the compute power of a modern computer. I actually struggle to assemble the six piece burrs unless they are level 1. I was chatting the genius again and he let slip that the second assembly was actually very easy to find. Sigh! He confirmed his genius by finding the second assembly in just a few minutes whilst also chatting to me. His excuse was that he had plenty of practice with the Joy of Hex set (if you don't have it but you love Hex then buy a copy of the set here asap).

I was forced, having tried for a few days and not really knowing how to go about it, to ask for a clue. Derek was very generous and said that one of the vertical pieces in the easy assembly needed to be inverted. Huh??? I asked and like a true friend he said "well other pieces will need to be moved to make that possible". Truly, I am not terribly bright and especially so in the shadow of his genius. I have spent the last couple of evenings trying and failing to make it work and annoyed the cat a lot by dropping brass pieces on his back. This morning having done my weekend exercise and had some breakfast with Mrs S, I risked playing with a heavy brass puzzle on my glass table. The swearing started to get on Mrs S' nerves but I was determined. 

Finally! After several hours of work, the loss of most of the remainder of my hair, and a huge number of swearwords, I finally found the Gamexy assembly.

I am sure that you can tell looking at that photo that is the other assembly - 😈

I have finally managed to assemble something complex and despite needing a clue, absolutely loved the process! This is an essential puzzle for everyone's collection.

Gravitational Burr

A Burr That’s Also a Maze

Gravitational Burr by Junichi Yananose
Gorgeous wood!

Well, what a way to start the year! First, I start on the amazing PicoLock and now I have a stunning and fun chunk of wood sent all the way from t'other (getting in touch with my inner Yorkshireman) side of the world.

This beauty has been made from a rather gorgeously grained American Black Walnut and Juno has mixed and matched the light grained pieces with the dark to make something arrestingly beautiful (I am a sucker for lovely wood) and the fact that it is a fabulously tactile 117mm across in each direction makes for a really nice thing to play with. The only downside is that my Juno puzzle collection is currently stuffed into 2 shelves of my Billy bookcases and this (plus the equally stunning Dual Meanders Box I also received) will now no longer fit in that space and I will need another reconfiguration.

Looking at it, you would think: "so what! It's just another 6 piece burr. Surely everything interesting has been done with this type of puzzle?" You might be right about that as I have multiple burr sets and am always on the lookout for more but this is NOT "just" a 6 piece burr. Juno has added a ball bearing inside and a track for it - therefore it is a 7 piece burr and the seventh piece needs to move around inside to allow the other 6 to move.

In fact, it is even more amazing than that. It is actually a level one 6 piece burr with a solid key piece which Juno has made into a level 2 one by having a tiny locking move that needs to be pushed to allow the key piece to slide. The locking mechanism is held firm by a pair of magnets. Once the key piece is unlocked then the first movements are possible and it quickly becomes clear where the name Gravitational burr" came from. You cannot initially see the ball bearing but you know it is there and the only way to manipulate it is to rock the puzzle side to side or turn it over and over. It is clear when the bearing has moved because you can hear it click to a new position. It is only after 4 moves that you can actually see the ball bearing and at this point a small part of the track/maze that it is in can be seen.

4 Moves in and the BB with some maze is revealed

Having found the bearing, I return to the beginning and try it again - it is weirdly satisfying just rolling the ball around and controlling where it goes by holding the key piece tight and clamping the ball in place and not allowing it to roll or fall until I was ready. I found a choice at the 5th move and I carried on deeper into the maze. After a few more moves I lost my courage and returned to the beginning again...except I couldn't get back to the beginning! GULP! Lost already? I knew that I was in good company because Goetz had got himself into the same difficulty. It was a little early for a full on panic and I just wiggled it about in every direction I could whilst manipulating the movable piece and, after a rather fraught 10 minutes, it was back at the beginning again. Phew! I was unable to play with this whilst Mrs S was around. She often takes the piss out of me for listening to puzzles and she very rarely will sit in silence - there is always radio or music or TV on around her and if it's too loud or too distracting then I cannot tell where the bearing is going.

I carried on with my exploration and found another pathway and all of a sudden my ball bearing was peeking out at me in a different part of the maze on a new section of the puzzle. How on earth did I get there? Back-tracking was really hard as I hadn't been really paying attention to orientation as well as piece position and I must have missed an opening. It took me a whole evening to return to the start.

Time to think©! Ouch! I could see that this was going to be rather complex and maybe I was going to have to draw a maze pathway. I started off doing just that and quickly came to the conclusion that my mapping skills weren't going to work. The problem for me and the fun part of this puzzle is that it is not just a burr...it is a maze and to make it extra fun it was a dynamic maze because the pathways moved with the key piece and parts that are blocked become available to explore only at certain positions. On top of this, the bearing needs to be moved by gravity making it impossible to randomly find your way through. I would go as far as to say that randomly exploring will get you into trouble as you will almost certainly get lost and then be in trouble.

Oh, the think©ing hurt me bad this time. I suspect that designing a hidden maze inside a burr using Burrtools might not be that difficult for an expert but that would almost certainly lead to a puzzle that required a lot of random moves and luck to get through - it would not be a good puzzle. Here Juno shows his true genius - with the Gravitational burr, Juno had designed the maze in such a way that once the initial confusion of manipulating the bearing and it popping up in odd places has been overcome, then the think©ing makes you realise that he is showing you different bits of the maze as you go. First you see the top of the key piece, then you see the sides of the key piece and later, a bit by surprise, you get a peek inside the body of the burr and see pathways on the fixed walls of the cavity. Each time you see a bit more it opens up a possible section for use. 

In the end, I actually deliberately worked my way through the pathway section by section until all of a sudden the key piece is in a very extended position to allow the extraction of other parts and full disassembly of the burr. Again, the genius of Juno is shown by the presence of a magnet which holds the ball bearing in place so that it doesn't fall out and get lost in the furniture or swallowed by a cat. In retrospect, I realised that magnet also held the bearing in place at the start of the puzzle - there is no rattle if you listen to the closed puzzle.

All 6 (7) pieces and Juno's stamp is revealed.

Once the puzzle is in pieces then the true genius is on show and you can look at the complexity of the pathway. Not really a spoiler but if you don't want to see the key piece detail then don't click the show hide.

Only half the key paths shown

Now it was time for reassembly. Juno has provided a quick assembly method which doesn't use the maze at all - there is a big cavity in one of the pieces where you can store the bearing and just assemble the 6 piece burr without it.

Ball in the hole and then assemble the burr for a level 2 puzzle

As usual, I had not paid attention properly to the positioning of the pieces and which order they came out in. Have I told you before that I am truly awful at assembly puzzles? To my eternal shame, it took me several hours to reassemble the burr without using the maze. Blush! 

Once I had worked out the burr assembly I was then able to deliberately work out my sequence of moves whilst able to see inside the puzzle and plan out the true reassembly. It took me about an hour to work it out and be certain of the sequence and orientation. Such fun even when you can see everything in place.

This puzzle is a masterpiece! It looks gorgeous, it looks simple and has layer upon layer of complexity and is definitely not solved by chance. It requires initial blind exploration followed by a reveal or 2 or 3 and then definite planning of your moves. Finally the reassembly is not just a simple backtrack - I wanted to truly understand it in its' entirety and that took some time and a lot of fun. Thank you Juno!

The Dual Meanders Box is waiting for me and after just a tiny bit of exploration, I have to say that it frightens me a lot - there are 506 moves to open it!

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Are you a Brass monkey fan? You should be! The BM puzzles are amazing. The 6th Brass monkey burr has just gone up for preorder/early bird sale! The previous 5 were amazing and this is set to be the very best yet. Go buy it now.

Brass Monkey 6 preorder information

I'm a Puzzle Assembly Genius.....Or Maybe NOT!

Interlocking #4

At the Midlands Puzzle Party last weekend, we all had a fabulous time as usual and we did enjoy a little extra fun from the Puzzle Pusher who arrived (along with the Puzzle solving machine) from the Netherlands. After my 2.5hr drive from dreary Sheffield, I got myself a much-needed coffee and duly went off to greet a few guys who I had not seen for a while. Louis had brought a few cute little 3D printed interlocking cube puzzles (I don't have any pics but maybe Allard will have some when he posts his spiel). Thanks to the amazing Bernhard, I have become rather addicted to these interlocking puzzles (with or without rotational moves) and had a little poke at them whilst beginning my chat to Shane. Shane, in his usual pugnacious manner, snatched them away and said something along the lines of:

"These are too easy for you if you disassemble them first! Here, I'll do it for you!"

He then proceeded to scatter pieces of 2 cubes over the table leaving me with my mouth hanging open in disbelief. I sputtered that I am rubbish at assembly puzzles and he told me in no uncertain terms to get on with it and stop making excuses! GULP! OK - here goes. One of the cubes was a 4 piece coordinate motion puzzle which took me about 10 minutes. Luckily there are 2 pairs of mirror image pieces and they only fit together a certain obvious way. Also luckily, the tolerances are fairly loose and it didn't require a huge amount of dexterity - if I am bad at assembly puzzles, I am REALLY BAD at dexterity puzzles! This will be a bit of an issue because I received a gift from Wil (so did Allard) - it is a prototype of another of his bottle puzzles. This looks impossible to me - the aim is to put the necklace on the baby in the bottle and have it hanging by its head again:

Of course, the Puzzle machine that is Louis took the puzzle from my display at MPP and promptly solved it in about 5 minutes or less whilst I was not watching. He then unsolved it by shaking it all rather vigorously before I could take a pic! He can be mean that way! As usual, the whole crowd laughed at me - I'm quite used to it now and even enjoy it!

Creepy isn't it? Mrs S thinks Wil might be a secret axe murderer!

The second of the little 3D printed cubes was a 5x5 cube called Interlocking cube #1 which is of interest to 3D printer fans because the pieces can be printed without any support material as there are no overhangs. One day I really will have to buy a 3D printer but not until Mrs S calms down a little. I was rather horrified by Shane's nonchalant destruction but proceeded to give it a go. This was a much tougher challenge and probably took me about a ½hr. I felt fantastic after that - I often tell people that I am not terribly bright and am rubbish at solving puzzles. Most people seem not to believe me but I maintain that I get lucky quite frequently. One thing I do insist on is that I am really bad at solving puzzles in public/company. If someone is watching me then my logical abilities desert me and I look fairly foolish (again!!) Solving the Interlocking #1 in front of the other guys made my day! Even if I solved nothing else all day then I would still be happy.

What those two assembling successes did do was fill me with a whole lot of confidence (probably misplaced) and shortly after that Richard Gain turned up and announced that that puzzle was nice but too easy and I should try the Interlocking #4 which was much more of a challenge. He had a few up for sale and they must have lasted a whole 3 minutes before we cleared him out! I was asked whether I wanted my copy whole or in pieces and with huge overconfidence brought on by my earlier success, I requested that it be taken apart and I would play with it at home. The picture at the top of the post was what I received. Yay!! Brimming with confidence, I set to the evening I got home and was immediately humiliated!

Later that evening a Facebook post from Ali (another puzzle solving machine) revealed that he had managed it. I wasn't surprised that he had done it as he is a seriously talented puzzler. I was a bit more surprised when Allard posted that he had assembled his. Now THAT did surprise me! Allard's usual modus operandi is to buy lots of puzzles that he cannot solve and then whenever Louis arrives for a visit, he solves them for him! Yep! Allard cheats by having help. When I expressed my surprise, I was informed by Wil that Allard had alternative help this time. I suspect that he never actually solves his own puzzles!

Allard has help - Ben is much more intelligent than him!

I proceeded to work on it each evening this week whilst sitting watching TV with Mrs S and the pussy boys! All of whom are no help whatsoever. Mrs S said that I had my "plug face" on the whole time! At several intervals, during the week she actually asked me whether I was in pain to which I had to admit that my ickle bwain was definitely hurting a bit!

Finally, on Thursday evening, I had my Aha! moment and it was fabulous (only 5 days after the other guys managed it). This puzzle is superb as an assembly puzzle and would even be great as a disassembly puzzle too. Maybe I am getting better at assembling puzzles? I certainly really enjoyed the experience and am delighted that I have another dimension to my puzzling challenges.

Filled with confidence, I restarted work on the cubes that I received from Alfons - for some reason, I have really struggled to find the crucial moves to disassemble the first one I chose:

Lili's Cube

I started with Lili's cube because it should have been the easiest to disassemble with a level of 16.1.1.3.6.1.1.2. For some reason, I could get about 10 moves in but no further. So Friday evening I set to and really thought about it. Aha! again! Yes, my genius is improving....I am just slightly above very dim now! I did take a photo at a halfway point to ensure that I might stand a chance at reassembly:

A reassembly might actually be possible!

I then proceeded to fully disassemble it and realised that my new found skillz definitely did not reach this level - I was stuffed and the only way that was going back together again was Burrtools!

OMG! Reassembly beyond me!

I have ordered another couple of interlocking cubes from Bernhard - I do seem to be just a little addicted! After I've finished writing this post I will get BT out.

Next up is another little challenge that I bought from Wil - it's a string puzzle that Aaron Wang tells me is pretty easy. But then he is a disentanglement puzzle genius who does these things in his head! Needless to say, I have singularly failed so far:

Iwahiro's exchange puzzle with an added Strijbos touch.
Move the knot and the ring to the opposite (short) length of string.

Wish me luck!