Solved it and Can’t Repeat it

Grooved 6 piece board burr #6

I’m visiting the outlaws in Bonnie Scotland this weekend and have tried my hardest to find a way to produce a little nonsense for you to read. It will be short and sweet because using Google's Blogger platform on a 7 year old iPad Air 2 is a bit hit and miss (mostly miss). 

This is (so far) the last in Juno's grooved board burr series and is, by far the toughest. It is gorgeous having been made from their original home made plywood. Satin Sycamore in the outer layer and the yellowish timber used for the inner layer is PNG Rosewood. It is just as tactile as all the others and demands to be played with.

The grooves in this one are in the outside of long lengths which is different to the last few. There are initially only a few possible moves and confidence grew quite quickly. I really seemed to be making progress as the puzzle stretched out enormously. Despite this, when it looks like something will come out being really precariously held in place, the blasted thing remained very well held together by the small dowels in the grooves - nothing else was holding it:

This looks so unstable but it’s very well held

Juno said about it:

"This little beast requires a maximum of 35 moves among the Grooved 6 Board Burr series to remove the first piece from the assembled shape. During the solving process, you may feel that the pieces are no longer interlocking together, but none of the pieces will come apart in a simple way. A few pieces tend to partially rotate and become very unstable especially around 14 moves from the assembled shape but there seems to be no shortcut solution for the first piece using rotational movements. It is somehow like playing with cast puzzles."

He certainly wasn’t kidding when he called it a "little beast"! It’s a monster! I spent nearly 2 weeks going round and round in circles. I got completely familiar with every single possible move in the first 20-25 moves. Nothing would induce it to go any further. I looked for hidden pathways but couldn’t for the life of me find anything new - it had been quite fun doing the initial exploration and gradually finding the pathway. Somehow the crucial step was obscured for me and I started playing with the Bubinburr that I had also received (got nowhere with that one either!)

At some point I must have inadvertently taken a hidden pathway and not realised it. I do suspect that I should not multi-task whilst puzzling. My pea brain barely manages to breathe and puzzle let alone watch TV, talk to Mrs S and puzzle all whilst breathing! Having found myself somewhere new, I tried to return and couldn’t. Oh well, let’s see where it takes me.

I have absolutely no idea how this happened!

Whilst it was really quite exciting to achieve this, it was a little disappointing to not understand it. But I was going to have fun with Burrtools. The model I finally produced (using quite a large grid) wouldn’t work so I asked for advice from the BT-meister, Derek, and he explained what to do (Juno also sent a copy of his file). The beast was reassembled and I tried again…

Nope! Nope! Hell nope! It’s not going to happen. Having solved it once by accident, I cannot do it again. I will keep trying but I cannot seem to find that hidden step. If you like Burrs, especially board burrs and are happy with grooved versions then this one is absolutely fabulous. It is still in stock here. You might find a few other beauties whilst you’re there…it would be a shame to just buy a single puzzle, wouldn’t it.

In the meantime I have another few beauties to work on. There will be a new bunch of releases from Pelikan very soon. Driving back from Edinburgh to Sheffield today in what looks like terrible weather. Hopefully no mishaps. Gulp! 

A Board Burr With a Difference

3 Grooved Board Burrs and an Interloper

A few weeks ago, Juno put his third sequential discovery puzzle the SDBBB (Sequential Discovery Board Burred Box) up for sale and sent out his emails at 4am on a Saturday morning (UK time). The whole world had been waiting for it but unfortunately half of the world (the civilised bit!) was fast asleep in its' beds! Consequently, those pesky Yanks bought almost all 40 that Juno had managed to produce within just 3 or 4 hours and when the Europeans logged on they were all gone and much wailing could be heard.

So you could ask how I got one? Indeed, I should have been fast asleep in my bed but...wait for it! Time for a physiology lesson now! I suffer from severe insomnia (have done for decades). I fall asleep instantly as soon as my head hits the pillow but am usually awake and suffering at 3 or 4 am. Now an interesting phenomenon occurs to us humans at night...we secrete ADH (AntiDiuretic Hormone i.e. anti-weewee)) from our pituitary gland at the base of the brain mostly at night to suppress urine production overnight when we should be sleeping. When one wakes up the secretion of ADH slows and we start producing urine. So what we have here is a middle-aged man who already has a micro-bladder, who has woken up in the middle of the night. As a result, at about 4am I need to disturb the sleeping cats who are across my belly and thighs (compressing the rapidly filling bladder) and get up to go, as we Brits delicately put it, to the loo. I occasionally pick up my phone which is on my bedside table and check my emails. That night I shouted AHA!!!! Actually, I darent make any noise at all for fear of disturbing "she who sounds like a drowning hippo" at night Whack! Ouch! There might have been a puzzle purchased and Mrs S knew nothing about it. At 4:15 I am one of the few Europeans who got one just because of insomnia, a hormone and a cat sleeping across my lower abdomen. Lucky me!!! Lord! I wish I could sleep!

In the picture at the top of the post we have Juno's 3 grooved board burrs and in the middle at the back is the much larger (112mm cubed) gorgeous sequential discovery puzzle (yes, I know AND it's a box) disguised as a board burr. It is quite solid and surprisingly heavy made of American Rock Maple, Utile and some "metal parts". It arrived after a rather prolonged stay with Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs before they decided to send me a ransom demand for its' release. Viewing it next to the original Sequential Discovery Burred Box, you cannot tell that either of them is not what they seem to be at first sight:

Is it a burr? Is it a Box? No, it's a Sequential Discovery puzzle!  Both of them.

After a visit to the gym to try and achieve a body beautiful (or maybe slightly less horrific), I fetched it from the post office after paying my fees and forced Mrs S to admit that it was lovely and that it was well worth the money (of course, I didn't tell her how much it actually cost! I'm sleep deprived and stupid but not suicidal! Whack! Ouch!). Breakfast consumed with Mrs S and I was allowed to play with my new toy. I'd had a particularly tough week of major surgery and she took pity on me for once and let me relax rather than do chores or electrocute myself doing DIY...again!

At first, I can find only one sliding movement (see, it's a burr) and nothing else. Then I find another few sliding movements and a piece falls off onto the sleeping cat (they never leave me sitting for long) and I discover my first metal piece. Before going any further, I have a look to see what I actually did. It's a rather nice little sequence. The metal piece is stuck inside until I find another one which happens to be magnetic (Juno has used lots of clever ideas). Here I am stuck for a few minutes until I discover a rather unintuitive move and then another. The cat is getting fed up with the rain of wooden stuff on his head!

A few steps later I have a tool and an obvious place to use it. The tool is duly used and I tuck it away from the cat who always runs off with stuff like that and I REALLY don't want it under our fridge along with hundreds of missing cat toys and half-eaten spiders! At this point, quite a lot of stuff happens and I think I'm almost there. The construction of these pieces is superb! Luckily I didn't lose the tool as it needed to be used again. Yet another odd shaped piece arrives and I think I'm almost there.

Nope! Not yet - I have 2 pieces firmly locked together and am not entirely sure what is holding them that way. There are "tool"-shaped holes but nothing in them so that won't work. Time to borrow Allard's brain and Think©. I notice a piece with something that seems superfluous and wonder whether it has any further uses. Aha! Suddenly, I have somewhere to use the tool but it doesn't seem to do anything. Ouch, my brain hurts. After a few more minutes of doing the same thing over and over again, I have one of my rather infrequent thoughts and suddenly I shout aloud...YESSSS!

Opened the Burr/Sequential discovery puzzle/Box

Now that is a very unexpected final step. I don't think I have seen anything like it before! The construction is simply stunning! For once Juno has stopped teasing me with bread to fit in the boxes, this time we have a glass of wine to celebrate or maybe it is a drink of squash (For you Yanks who don't know what squash is in the UK, look at this). I was so dizzy afterwards that I am convinced that it was wine. No, I am not going to show off all the pieces as it is too much of a spoiler. Maybe I will show it off in a few months once people have managed to solve their copies.

Putting it all back together proved to be a fair bit of a challenge as I had pieces all over the place including some stashed under my legs out of reach of the pesky inquisitive cat. After a couple of false starts in which I forgot to put one piece back in place and also where I discovered that 2 pieces are interchangeable until you actually try to close it completely, I got it back together. I LOVED IT!

This puzzle is considerably easier than the previous 2 SD puzzles from Juno (especially the Slammed car which kept me going for weeks. I am not disappointed in the least - it was great fun and beautifully made. I do know that one idiot decided it was so easy that he wanted to flog it for a HUGE profit. My good friend Ed bought it and despite being blind solved it and enjoyed it immensely. Puzzles really don't have to be impossibly hard to be worth a place in your collection - they need to be enjoyable (being beautiful also helps). I will be taking this to the next MPP to allow the rest of the Brits to experience it.

Grooved Board Burr #3

Having solved the Sequential discovery board burr, I figured I really should solve the third in Juno's Grooved Board Burr. I have been attempting it for months and getting nowhere. There are lots and lots of possible paths and many blind ends as well as complete loops ending up back at the beginning. One of the main reasons I had been failing was that I had been using my usual back and forth approach to keep track of my path so I could always return to the start and hopefully be able to remember enough to reassemble it. A night or two after I solved the SD board burr, I really went for it on the burr and decided to be less scrupulous with my attempts to remember the path. I found something promising...possibly and realised I could not get it back to the beginning. I had a board hanging way off the puzzle but still firmly locked in place and could not get it back on! OMG! Panic set in.

Mrs S was rather upset at all the panting and groaning and muttering noises I was making whilst we were watching TV. I was getting increasingly lost in an extremely complex path as pieces moved almost off and onto the puzzle. Finally, after 4 months and many hours of attempts, I removed my first piece. Phew! It should come apart easily now. WRONG! The puzzle remains incredibly stable even after 3 of the pieces have been removed. It took me quite a while to work out how to get the second piece off and even the third. Just before it was time to go to bed (no wonder I am sometimes insomniac!), I finally had 6 boards to examine.

They look so innocuous! That was damned difficult!

Close up I could see the wood choices and construction of the pieces was spot on. It has been made of New Guinea Walnut (Anacardiaceae family tree), European Beech and Silver Ash (Citrus family tree) formed into Juno's characteristic plywood and the grooves and pins are just perfect - the puzzle is 86mm cubed. As all of Juno's puzzle, there is his home-made brand on one of the pieces:

Stunning detail

I had absolutely no way to put it back together from memory and my skills do not lie in the assembly path. I still have Brian Young's craftsman version of the Mega-six burr next to me which I have failed to assemble in 2 years of attempts so there is no way on earth I can assemble this board burr. I went to the amazing Burrtools for help and realised that this was so complex in construction that I would need an 18x18x18 grid to construct it. The solution is an amazing level 34-9-9-6-2. No wonder it took me so long. The Grooved board burr #3 is still available from Juno's store here. I am sure that Yukari will be only too delighted to post one out to you straight away. You will not be disappointed in the challenge.

What should I try next? I have received a couple of new puzzles from good friends this week. From Johan Heyns in South Africa, I bought the Septenary cube which requires 4813 moves for full disassembly:

Septenary cube.
Acrylic and wood - a nice relaxing challenge!

Also, I took delivery of a wonderful puzzle made by the incredible Stephan Baumegger from Austria. I couldn't resist the Pandora burr when he showed it off on his Facebook page! At level 33-24-10 it will be a hugely tough challenge...much less than the 4813 for Septenary burr.

How gorgeous is that? Pandora.

Getting into the Groove...

Definitely Not Bored with Board Burrs!

Junichi Yananose' Grooved Board burrs
Clockwise from front right - number 1 to 4

At the beginning of November, I woke up to an email from Juno (actually, I am sure that it is Yukari who sends them out) informing me of the release of their 2 latest puzzles and amongst them was the one I had been waiting for, the grooved 6 board burr #4. I am a bit of a completionist and, having the previous 3 in my collection, I would really have to add number 4 to it. But not only for the collection...I had actually really enjoyed the solving of the previous ones in the series and Juno had claimed that this fourth one is a hybrid of the designs used previously. Number 1 was reviewed here - the ideas were so new and the movements are so well hidden that it took me several months to solve it, number 2 here - nowhere near so difficult but still a lot of fun and finally number 3 is reviewed here - this was one incredibly difficult puzzle. I was very much hoping that the fourth and possibly last in the series would be as much fun and a good challenge.

Grooved 6 Board Burr #4

As you can see the puzzle is beautifully made Hickory (the first time Juno has used this wood) with strengthening and ornamental splines made from Rose Alder. This is back to the method used with number 1 rather than the use of Juno's rather lovely home-made plywood used in number 2 and 3. It is a nice handy size for puzzling at 87mm in each direction. The description of the puzzle on the store was that there are round and flat pins that engage with the grooves on each of the X, Y and Z axes, making the interactions and movements quite complex.

I received my copy at the same time as the Sequential discovery board burred box and could not resist playing with that one first. To my shame, this one almost got forgotten after the arrival of some fabulous toys from Brian Menold but when I came to putting those away, I found #4 waiting for me on my desk. Off to play!!

Initial movements are quite constrained and it looked like there was going to be a nice time just finding my way through a little maze without too many choices. Then after the first 3 or 4 moves that I found, the possibilities opened up massively and, despite a very large separation of the pieces, the puzzle remained nicely stable (often a huge problem with board burrs is that as pieces separate out, the possibility of inadvertent rotational moves can make the puzzle very unstable and even prone to collapsing). Realising that there might be quite a complex solution, I returned to my habitual, to and fro method of exploration with me returning back to the beginning many times. As the puzzle opens out it becomes clear that the grooves and pins are very different from the previous puzzles, the pins are on the sides of the plates as well as the interior and also the grooves can be just pin-length as well as form pathways with intersections. very interesting and totally different from the previous puzzles in the series.

I was fascinated to find an extra unexpected early solution to removing the first piece using a rather complex rotation and tilt move. It actually removes the same piece as the correct solution and I would say should be treated as an extra challenge for you to find as well as the correct linear only solution. I was rather pleased to see from his site that Goetz (entry 2019-11-23) had also found the extra solution. The rotational shortcut is pictured below under a spoiler button - don't click the button if you are considering buying it for yourself.

This rotation disengages 2 long flat pins and allows extraction of the first piece.

Having removed the first piece this way, I put it back and continued with the "correct" approach. It took me several days to find a very clever compound movement of several pieces leading to an even more precarious but still interlocked position. It looked like a piece would easily fall out from here but due to the flat pins and grooves, they were all held firm. I got stuck here for a day until I realised that the design was based on a 3 unit voxel and occasionally only a partial move was essential. My Aha moment was wonderful when I found out how to remove the first piece in the designer's intended way.

Even after the first piece was out, the puzzle remained stable and now even more movement was possible. For some reason I found the second piece extraction to be a very logical sequence - there were quite a lot of possible pathways but I homed in on the correct one quite intuitively. With piece number 2 out, I backtracked all the way to the beginning and started again (a little difficulty with my very poor memory cost me an extra evening of success). With 2 boards removed, it remained stable and the continued path to full disassembly was just as much fun.

Some very fine woodwork here. Juno's customary brand now visible.

The amazing detail of the design was now visible with very fancy grooves in unexpected places and of unexpected sizes. Look at these pictures to see it.

A maze pathway groove in one piece and some odd notches on others.

Usually, with complex board burrs (in fact most complex burrs), I am completely unable to do the reassembly myself without help from Burrtools. For me, this is an essential part of the fun of these puzzles - I have quite an extensive collection of BT files and creating more is an enjoyable experience. This time, I had kept a note of the orientation of the pieces and order of removal and surprisingly was able to retrace my steps all the way back to the beginning. With a level of 28-10-5-3, this was a really fun challenge. Just like the previous ones, the BT file required me to use a 18x18x18 voxel grid. In fact, whilst this did create a usable file, it would be more accurate if I had doubled up the grid to 36x36x36 because some of the pins and grooves are more than 1 but not quite 2 voxels deep.

This is one very fine puzzle! To my mind, as a collector, this is essential for anyone with al the others. If you only want one then this is one of the best of them. Number one is fabulous, number 2 a little easy and number 3 impossibly difficult. The perfect difficulty level here and a rather fun path to follow. There is also the extra addition of a hidden rotational solution to find as well.

Juno has 19 of these left in stock - there is still time to get your copy. If you are the significant other of an afflicted puzzler then "why are you reading this blog?" and you should go and buy a copy of this burr for them as a Christmas present...they will love it!

Juno's Follow Up is very Different and Still Fun

Grooved Board Burr #2

Yes, it looks very like the beautiful board burr from Juno that I wrote about just under a month ago but it is different in several ways. Just a couple of weeks ago the follow up to the Grooved board burr #1 was released and after I told everyone on Facebook and on the blog about it, it sold out within a couple of days (I am sorry that you will not have a chance to buy it now except at auction).

Version 1 of the Grooved Board Burr was extremely difficult and had a very well disguised critical move that took me 3 months to find (and I am aware of others who have had serious difficulty with it). I could not resist buying version 2 because 1) I love a series of puzzles, 2) I cannot resist beautiful wood and 3) I wanted a similar fun challenge.

No 1 was fulfilled as this is number 2 and Juno has mentioned the possibility of a 3 and 4! Number 2 is obvious - this thing is stunning! Juno has made his own plywood boards with Bubinga and European Beech and added Bamboo dowel pins. It is a gorgeous rich colour with amazing grain in all the layers. It is the same size as the previous edition at 86mm across each side but quite obviously much heavier (I did not realise that Bubinga was so dense). The immediately obvious difference from number 1 is that all the outer surfaces are whole and no grooves are visible at this stage.

I set to one evening this week (I am seriously struggling to find time to solve things at the moment and only just solving something in time for the blog each week) and noticed very quickly that there are less dead ends but there is something very odd about the first few moves. The dowels are on the face of the boards and not the insides and the Burrtools grid was very odd! A normal 6 board burr is based upon a 1x4x6 grid for each board and version 1 was based on a 3x12x18 grid. I have not quite worked out how to model version 2 but I think it will need boards based on a 4x24x36 grid which fills me with horror as I consider a burr only complete when I have modelled it in Burrtools after dismantling it.

There is a certain rhythm to the early part of the disassembly and after the first section, I found a very wild move that looked like it would make the whole thing very unstable but oddly it held well together. I got stuck here for a while and this was the point that I realised that the puzzle was also a maze! A rather fun second section began next and even that is not straight forward - it leads easily to an almost but not quite solved dead end because one can scoot right past the correct turn without realising it. The Aha! moments with this are wonderful and not terribly difficult. After the ardour of the first puzzle in the series, it was actually a pleasant surprise to work my way through this one in just a single fun evening. Juno did think that this one was 10 (or even 100) times easier than the first and I agree...but it is still great fun.

Look at that maze!
If you look closely at the dimensions then you can see that this is not a simple "base 3" grid

I do hope that there is a number 3 in the series as the addition of grooves and dowels make for a very different puzzle to a standard board burr. As with everything made by Juno, they are all beautiful on display. I am so sorry that you can no longer buy a copy of either of the puzzles but look out for them in the various puzzle auction sites as they will come up for sale in the future I am sure.

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As for puzzles on display...after last week being forced to tidy up the desk, I took some new photos of the state of the collection. Things are much better arranged now - what do you think?

Starting on the left-hand wall of my study:

Vinco's, Eyckmans', Many MANY Pelikans and a Crowell or two and maybe a Vanyo

MrPuzzle, Many from Brian Menold, Many MANY Eric Fullers and an assortment of N-ary plus metal overflow

There appear to be a few of the newcomer Rex Rossano Perez on the desk behind the computer and a new one yet to be solved.

Above the computer and on the right side of the study:

Very special MrPuzzles, Assorted lovely interlocking puzzles (including some unique ones) and heavy metal!

Hand made twisties, books. a friendly Koala and interlocking cubes

I have a cupboard with a huge number of twisties and a pile of sequential move puzzles and an embarrassingly large number of wire puzzles from Jan Sturm and Aaron Wang:

I really MUST find a better way to display these!

Luckily Mrs S allowed me to expand into a spare bedroom and unlike Allard, I did not push my lovely wife into a garden shed!! The 3 display cabinets upstairs have some of my most treasured and beautiful puzzles as well as some rather special plastic puzzles that I don't want to pack into drawers:

These are some of the most spectacular puzzles I own from many designers and craftsmen.

Can you work out what they are and by whom?

Plastic, glass and disentanglement overflow

Mrs S seems to have allowed a few of the most spectacular (but not too huge) puzzles out of the puzzle rooms into the living room - I don't have so many there any more and my pile of puzzles I am working on is still an unholy mess on the floor but I think the living room looks like there's a puzzler around:

I appear to have a few K-cubes and Goliath...AT LAST!

The most gorgeous puzzles that Brian Menold has ever made

3 rather special cubes from Jean-Baptiste's Arteludes store - these were made by Maurice Vigouroux

I am rather chuffed at the beauty of my collection! I even have room for quite a few more. Whack! Ouch! Nothing is due at the moment dear...at least for now! 😉

Just a 6 Piece Burr?

Heck No!

Grooved 6 Board Burr #1

Just a quick review of Juno's Grooved 6 Board Burr #1 today - I spent all of yesterday looking at a pile of boxes from all over the world whilst not being allowed to open them. Mrs S had chores and DIY for me to do and after she had opened the door to several delivery men on Friday she was firing her laser burning stare rather indiscriminately all over the place! I feared for my life and decided that I should do whatever she wanted me to do for a while. I did not even open the boxes until I had finished a whole day of work around the house - there was no puzzling to be had either! Someone else was very interested.

Sob! Not allowed to touch!

A few weeks ago I finally managed to solve a rather tough puzzle and was going to review it at the time but Allard beat me to it - I solved my copy of this just before he published his very fine review here. I put off my blog post but decided I should still post something as this puzzle is still for sale with just 2 left and maybe I can convince a few of you who ignored him to buy it. It is a magnificent puzzle!

I have a few 6 piece burrs and 3 very beautiful burr sets which allow me to make a hundred or more extras. I also have a few board burrs which I enjoy and find fun to play with. They tend to be only slightly difficult because most of the pieces are based on a simple 1x4x6 orthogonal grid and hence cannot be terribly complex. In fact, when Juno put this puzzle up for sale way back in October last year, I bought the Spade case and the Tangled clip burr but decided not to buy the simple looking board burr.....Stupid boy! A few weeks later I got to play with it at the MPP. It looked like someone had nearly dismantled it and left it like that. I overheard them say that they could not go any further and also could not get it back to the beginning. My interest was piqued and I picked it up - Ah! I see! This is a much more interesting puzzle than I had thought initially - the grooved aspect to it made a HUGE difference. I did manage to return it to the start position and left it like that because I had decided that I really ought to buy my own copy. Yes, it is THAT good!

It arrived in December and I started to play. It is wonderfully tactile and remarkably beautiful to look at. It is 8cm cubed and made of American Cherry, with Jarrah (reinforcement splines) and Bamboo dowel pins. Really stunning. I couldn't resist playing with it straight away and discovered that there are lots of moves possible very quickly after you start. This gives quite a few pathways to try and one or two are really quite long with multiple branches to wander along. This may seem quite frightening but I personally found that retracing my steps was never a problem - I am quite disciplined about maintaining a set orientation all the time whilst I explore and so never lose my place. At least one of the paths is long enough that I was convinced that I was going the right way - it just felt right and was reinforced when I appeared to be just a step or two away from removing one of the boards:

It looks like that left-hand board should come off soon

You know how it is? It all seems to be going so well and you get so close but that final step just never quite happens! I worked on it for a few months without managing to get any closer to removing that first board. Why was it so blasted difficult? Most 6 board burrs are nowhere near this tough and at this point, I realised that with the pins and grooves these boards were not based on that 1x4x6 grid, these were actually based on a 3x12x18 grid which allows a MUCH higher level solution. Even so, the stated level of 22 for the first piece removal of 22 should still have been possible for me without so much difficulty. Nothing I could do would let me get any further. I just couldn't find the final few steps.

You all know me by now! If I can't solve something then I just keep at it until I get it. Sometimes it takes a few days or weeks and sometimes it may take months. Eventually, after 3 months of playing most evenings, I had that highly craved Aha! moment. Juno had completely led me astray! The true pathway was quite an early divergence from that initial path. The correct sequence was really very well hidden and I kicked myself for failing to find it earlier. Even having found the new pathway, it is still not a straightforward sequence to remove the first and subsequent pieces and requires quite a bit of thought and planning. Absolutely genius!

It looks so innocuous!

Having spent so long working on it I had quite a lot of muscle memory for the sequence of moves and the first few times I was able to reassemble it without difficulty. The key factor though is that I always kept the pieces in order and sort of oriented correctly. When it came to lining them up for the photograph, I lost that order and orientation and then was unable to reassemble it. There are 4246 possible assemblies of the pieces but only one is achievable - this might explain the difficulty of reassembly.

Luckily I find the making of a Burrtools file an essential part of my burr enjoyment and had a lovely time entering it in and discovering the level is 22.6.5.3.3 - a considerable challenge for "just" a 6 board burr.

Hopefully, I have tempted you (along with Allard) to go and buy the last 2 - it is fabulous and you will not be disappointed.

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So you may be asking what was in my boxes? After a frenzy of unpacking it appeared that there was a cat in one of my boxes - he certainly approved of Robert Yarger's choice of box:

If I fits, I sits!

The space inside (rapidly filled by cat) was some long-awaited puzzles:

Mrs S is unimpressed by my splurge!

We have a Stickman, some Menolds, another Juno and of course, several Krasnows. This might keep me going for a while. Don't tell Mrs S that I'm expecting 1 or 2 (or 3) more deliveries soon!

Whack! Ouch! 

Sorry dear.

A terrible memory or a fundamental failure to understand?

Juno's Grooved 6 Board Burr number 7

I’ve had a week of annual leave up in Bonny Scotland relaxing and eating far too much good food! (I can heartily recommend Dine at the Traverse  as a fabulous place to eat - afterwards I was only good for a sleep). Of course there was also the customary visit to the outlaws and even a Mother's Day afternoon tea at The Ivy (again, I was only good for a sleep afterwards!) Luckily, I brought a few puzzles to play with and even managed (with a struggle) to solve one… partially at least!

 

Yay! 6 more!

This week I am showing off the seventh in the series of Grooved Board Burrs by Junichi Yananose. Seven? OMG! But how could I resist? I have the other 6 and absolutely adored them. I have reviewed most of them (#1, #2, #3, #4, #6) over the years as they came out. Number 7 in the series was released a couple of weeks ago and is still available now. Juno himself (he’s a genius) said that the difficulty is extremely high and suggested using the photos on the site to aid with small hints during the search for the solution path.

The first thing I noticed when I unwrapped my lovely parcel was how vibrantly beautiful the puzzle is. As before the puzzle is made using Juno's home made Plywood (this provides strength and prevents warping as humidity conditions change). The wood used are PNG Rosewood and Red Gum which contrast with each other beautifully. This one is slightly larger than the first 6 and is less bevelled to try and prevent inadvertent rotational moves. The immediately obvious difference, however, is that this puzzle has considerably more complex pieces with pins on the external surfaces of the puzzle. These are also there to prevent rotational moves.

Juno wrote in his description:

"The puzzle has a unique solution in a relatively small number of 91 assemblies, and the computer program Burr Tools showed its level to be, 50-18-3-3, the highest number in the Grooved 6 Board Burr series. In the real world, the interlocking of the consisting pieces becomes unstable after around 40 moves from the assembled shape, and it allows a rotational movement shortcut that is theoretically possible. It is yet the largest number ever in the series to release the first piece from the assembled shape."

The pathway is relatively constrained initially but very quickly it becomes apparent that there is quite a lot of movement possible with many choices for what to move and at various points the puzzle gets stretched apart a very long way and still remains stable. Those external dowels/pins really do work to prevent rotations. I managed a good few moves with my usual to and fro approach backtracking to the beginning each time. Then I got stuck for a couple of days. I couldn’t spend too much time on it - we were on holiday and had stuff to do. 

After a bit of a hiatus at one position and wondering whether I had completely mistaken the correct path, I found a spectacular new move which opened up a whole new set of paths but, as is usual I backtracked to the beginning and, yes, as you’d expect I couldn't find the move to get to that place again. I’m an eejit! I spent several hours searching around the same spot desperately trying to find the single crucial move.

The difference was small… I needed to move from this position:

See how stretched out it is?

To this position:

That front board has shifted from one notch to another

This looks trivial to achieve yet it took me 2 days of swearing under my breath! The crucial factor in finding the path was the realisation that the placement of the pegs on the outside forces the puzzle to use ⅓ voxel moves! This is the reason for the title of the blog post - I thought I had just been a victim of a terrible memory but in reality, I had completely misunderstood the complexity of the puzzle. This means that instead of a 6x6x6 grid (with each board being 1x4x6 voxels), a much larger grid was needed. The whole thing would need to be tripled in size!

After that hideous/revealing discovery, it opened up again to a huge new vista of complexity and some seriously scary sequences. The puzzle did begin to become rotationally unstable but unallowed moves were always prevented from being completed by the pins. My to and fro technique worked for quite some time but eventually I got lost. I found myself going around and around in a loop unable to go forward or back until I found my way back to the beginning by accident. Phew!

At this point I stopped for a day to try and regain my nerves! These puzzles are great fun but I’m always frightened with some that I will get stuck in a position and not be able to go forward or back ever again. I have a couple of incredibly complex burrs that are stuck in an odd hedgehog-like shape and I cannot do anything about it - they’ve been stuck like that for years! I did get my courage back, however, as I figured that a 6 piece burr really should not get irrevocably stuck. Once I returned back to the second half of the solution, I systematically tried different sequences until I had my Aha! moment. My first piece came out.

I have to say that Juno's hint pictures were not in any way useful! Each one was taken with a different orientation of the puzzle making it impossible to relate one position to a later one. I tried turning my puzzle at various stages to match the photo but quickly lost any idea of what position I was in whilst rotating it about. 

In removing the first piece, I had to reach to a table to put it down and my grip on the puzzle shifted and the remaining pieces revealed themselves to be very unstable. A bunch of pieces rotated and dropped down. I had no idea how they should have been placed and it was easy to remove a pair in one go from this new position. After that, I took it apart completely for my photo.

Seriously complex pieces!

I would love to tell you that I have managed to reassemble it but there is not a hope in hell of that without Burrtools! I think even the amazing Rich (frequent MPP visitor, who is an incredible burr assembler) might struggle to assemble this from scratch.

I will need to wait until I get home to my computer (this post was done on an iPad) to program it in. It’s going to be a real challenge to enter it as I don’t actually have pictures showing where all the external grooves and pins should be on the assembled puzzle. But, trying to make my BT files is part of the puzzle fun for me. It might take several hours! Oh joy!

This fabulous challenge is still available from Juno now - go buy one before they sell out. It is seriously seriously good.

Thank you, my friend!

Sometimes I Just Gotta Think©

Sometimes I Just Gotta Think Over and Over Again!

Grooved Three Piece Board Burr

Sometimes I think that I am really not terribly bright - Mrs S agrees with me about this almost all the time apart from when she wants something. The beautiful piece of joinery above is the Grooved three piece board burr designed by Kouki Kusumi and fabulously made by the Doctor of wood, Eric Fuller using Maple, Wenge and gorgeous Zebrawood with some tiny acrylic dowels to engage with the grooves.

This very simple design was released at the beginning of August and I couldn't resist it because the design looks so simple (just 3 identical pieces) with a nice challenging level of 8.2 and also because it won a Jury honourable mention in last years' remote IPP design competition. This alone would make it worth purchasing but mostly I have come to accept Eric's choices. He loves interlocking puzzles and burrs but they have to be something really special to pique his attention. He could make anything he wants with extremely high level but he almost never makes that sort of puzzle. Eric only produces puzzles that he personally finds clever and interesting. 

This sat next to me for a few weeks whilst I worked on some of my new toys from Mine and the latest twisty puzzles. Finally I had a little time to play and out it came. The premise is simple - interlock the pieces into a standard board burr shape. A teeny tiny bit of thought© allowed me to deduce how the pieces should end up and where the dowels should be. It is trivial to get two of the pieces to interlock and then when it's time to get the third piece in, it is immediately revealed that the dowel gets in the way. Take it apart and try a different orientation and same result. Doh!

That took some rather special thinking©

I spent about an hour the first evening doing the same thing over and over again but in different orientations with no success. How can it be that hard? The following day, I tried again and had some more thoughts© - I tried to be logical and move pieces around in preparation and Aha! I had my assembled puzzle. That was wonderful - why had it taken so long? I disassembled it and left it for a half hour and tried again...NOPE! Wasn't happening. For some reason, despite having a vague memory of the sort of moves required, I just couldn't reassemble the bloody thing! I kept ending back at the same place as the first day. Time to finish for the day and go back to it the following day...same problem.

More time to think© and I eventually manage to relax my feeble brain enough to let a new sequence in and I had it assembled. There is something wonderful about this design. It is really not terribly complex but it still seems to me to be really challenging. When I try to think to hard I cannot assemble it - I seem to have to try and achieve a relaxed brain thinking© each time before I can solve it - I don't actually think there are very many puzzles quite like that. Random movements won't do it and thinking too hard is counter-productive. The delight here is a sort of unfocussed thinking. This is rather different from the next puzzle.

Mrs S has Really Good Taste

and Kelly Makes A Fool Out of Me!

Mrs S bought me a wonderful birthday present

A few weeks ago I showed off the lovely gift that was given to me by the present wife - she's doing OK for a first wife after over 27 years! I can't afford a divorce and the patio is nicely done so I cannot put her under there - I guess that whilst she continues to put up with my $hit then she'll be a keeper. I was delighted to get the next 2 in Juno's grooved 6 piece board burr series - #5 (right) and #6 (left) as well as a new one, Bubinburr, in the centre.

Stunning series

I have to say that as a set, they are simply gorgeous. Plus, as a series of puzzles they are also a brilliant and fun challenge. I am not a particular fan of board burrs in general (they tend to be very prone to rotational shortcuts) and tend to only be interested if there is something else really special about them. The grooved board burr series definitely have that something special...not only are they made from Juno's own beautiful home made plywood but the addition of the dowels and grooves turn these into a real challenge. At times during the solutions these really look like they will become very unstable and cheating rotations may become possible but the clever designs prevent this from occurring and we get a fabulous tough but not impossible challenge. My reviews of the others are here: #1, #2, #3 and #4 - every single one has been a special challenge in it's own right and I was only too pleased to see that Juno has continued the series. Don't just take my word for it - Mike at Puzzlepusher has been working on these recently and seems to also have loved them. The recent 2 are still in stock at Pluredro.com for the moment. 

The puzzle is made out of their original plywood. American Rock Maple is used for the outer layer and the darker timber used for the inner layer is Amora. The grain on the Maple is understated but still lovely and the contrast between the two wood colours is lovely. These are nice chunky puzzles, very satisfying to hold and play with (even if this means storing them is harder) - they are 8.2cm in each dimension (apart from time).

According to Juno and Yukari, "the fifth version of the series has a configuration very similar to the first version. Also, the number of moves needed to disassemble the first piece is the same as #1, 22 but #5 has a tricky feature. That was the reason why Juno thought he should produce this version."

I have to agree - I cannot remember the details of solving #1 but this new version led me in the wrong direction for quite a while.

"The grooves are set to have a symmetrical orientation when assembled to give unification, but not to spoil the unique solution. A few grooves are added or extended more than necessary. Thus, not all the grooves are used during the solving process." This definitely was part of my struggle during the solution process - the temptation during all the moving about of the pieces is that when they slide within a groove to always slide to the end of a groove because the thinking is that why would he make the groove longer than it needs to be? To answer that...he would make it longer because it either a) makes a fool out of me or b) looks nicer/symmetrical.

In my usual fashion, I started work on this in the evenings in front of the TV with Mrs S (she got to see me playing with her birthday present and appreciated that for once I wasn't making a lot of noise whilst she wanted to watch television). Unfortunately these puzzles really need decent concentration and I struggle to uni-task let alone multi-task! I got nowhere the first evening. I can't really remember but I must have done the same sequence of moves 20 or 30 times without realising it. The 10pm news was full of doom, gloom and death and I used that as an opportunity to actually concentrate on the puzzle. I finally found a new configuration that I had not expected - it was a little side branch off the path that I had taken several times. I stopped there and back-tracked to the beginning ready for trying again the next day.

The following evening I couldn't find the new move again and went around and around in circles for a while before finding it again almost by accident. From here, I needed to find the next move(s) and was delighted and very surprised to see something totally unexpected happen and the first piece came out in my hand. Brilliant and very unusual release method. I spent a few minutes admiring that and decided to put it back and head back to the beginning...except I couldn't find the pathway. Aaargh, not again! Mrs S was less amused when I started to swear like a navvy - it took me another 20 minutes or so to reset the puzzle. Phew! Time to continue having learned that reset sequence. I removed the piece again and expected that the next pieces would be easily removable...they weren't! Even with a piece missing, this board burr remains pretty stable and there is quite a decent pathway to remove the next 2 pieces. This design is absolutely superb! Finally, after 3 evenings I have managed to take it apart:

Well, that took me an unexpectedly long time!

As you can see, the pieces are beautifully constructed. Initially, I was able to reassemble and disassemble this puzzle several times from memory. Today, however, in disassembling it for the blog photos, I discovered that I could barely remember the sequence and having dismantled it with a struggle and taken my photo, there is absolutely no way that it will be going back together again without help. Burrtools will be coming to my aid - luckily the making of the BT files is all part of the fun for me - no burr is complete until I have modeled it. 

I am looking forward to solving #6 but this is proving (blush) a little, ahem...awkward! The bloody thing won't come apart for a simpleton like me! I'll keep you all posted. Go buy these, you won't be disappointed.

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Kel's Spend me not box

One Handed Box remains unsolved

My friend Kelly Snache makes beautiful boxes. At least one of these boxes has scared the bejeezus out of me when I solved it at an MPP a few years ago. I don't own many of his puzzles because, as you all know, I don't collect boxes. I do own a few because they either have something extra to them, or they are Stickman boxes (I still have the latest one designed by Asher Simon sitting right next to me in pieces on my desk after I pulled the pin from the grenade...) or they are simply beautiful.

Kel showed off his latest production run on Facebook and it looked gorgeous to me - I couldn't resist the Zebrano,Wenge and Purpleheart combination and also there is a butterfly inside. It was the butterfly shooting out of the box at the MPP that scared me. The lovely little box has been sitting next to me in the evenings for a few weeks and I have been completely unable to find anything at all to move and open it. Then earlier this week, I noticed something and and wondered how it could be used. I knew that it had to be significant but I got no further until I had a little think© and noticed something in the interior. With a smile I then quickly opened the box (it only took me 3 weeks) and took my photo today.

Pretty isn't it?

Having taken my photo, I suddenly realised that Kel has had the last laugh...I closed it up for the photo with the butterfly outside and now cannot open it again to put the butterfly back! Doh!!! Now I really need to think© and now you can see why I shouldn't collect boxes! Thank you mate - it's a delight.