Cubic loveliness - a great investment?

My last 2 cubic lovelies!

Eric Fuller has, over the last few years, managed to obtain a fairly large part of my savings! He can be found at 2 places on the internet - his puzzle shop & his own hosted auction site (next auction due in Feb 2015). He's one of very few full time puzzle makers in the world and seems to make a pretty decent living at it. In fact he's done such good business (not all from me) that he has managed to employ an assistant to help in the workshop. Over the last year or so, prices have risen (due to the increased cost of wood and cost of living) but I still keep coming back and buying more. The only thing that has changed is that I only buy 2 or 3 puzzles each time instead of the usual 5 or 6! I attempted to buy 3 items last time and lost one by having it snatched from my basket just as I was entering my purchase details so ended up with just the 2 lovely puzzles above.

But having watched the last auction at which quite a few of his older puzzles were sold from his own personal collection for absolutely staggering sums of money, I am beginning to wonder whether I should just buy everything that comes for sale straight away as an investment! The increase in value on most of his puzzles has been amazing and certainly would have made better returns than almost all of my other savings! The only problem with that approach (pointed out by my wife, I might add) is that in order to cash in on my collection, I'd need to actually sell something! This is a something that leaves me in a cold sweat at just the mere thought of it!

I packed something

OMG! So gorgeous! I want to produce stuff like this!

Last week I wrote about my causes for celebration! Today I have a rather large birthday (one with a zero on it - I will be 100!!) and I mentioned that some puzzlers had been very kind! Shane had given me some lovely gin and a copy of his first class Haleslock 2 (congratulations to him on selling the special copy of number 1 for $3600 going to Laurie's special charity) and Yvon Pelletier had sent me a package with instructions not to open until my birthday! Pictured above is the contents of that package. I don't yet know what it is called, who designed it or what level it is but I can tell you that it is stunning. Beautiful woods, great attention to detail with bevels everywhere, this is a burr consisting of a frame that comes apart as well as burr sticks and boards. This is going to be very tough indeed! After I have finished playing, it will have to go on display somewhere special because it is beautiful and it is a gift from a wonderful friend - thanks Yvon!

Chain Store

Today I am going to discuss the latest puzzles I received from Tom Lensch. Above is a picture of a packing puzzle called Chain store. Well that pretty much describes it perfectly - there's a chain (made very nicely from wood and a box (also made of wood) and the aim is to "store the chain in the box". Yes, I know I have said many times that I am not at all good at packing puzzles and do tend to avoid them most of the time because most of the solution process seems to be to be trial and error which I don't enjoy. BUT I couldn't resist this one for a few reasons: First it had won a Jury Honorable Mention for Goh Pit Khiam in the Kyoto IPP design competition and so it must be special - not just a lot of randomness to solve it. Second, it is made of lovely WOOD and like any self respecting bloke I really appreciate wood and things crafted from it (hence my rather embarrassingly large wooden toy collection) and.... Third, there was another interlocking puzzle that I also wanted to buy from Tom and it's pretty much an international law that you cannot just buy one puzzle at a time! Hence I ordered Chain Store from Tom just after IPP and he added it to his backlog of orders. Much to my surprise he completed it and requested some PayPal a little earlier than expected. I had some explaining to do to "she who stares with high powered laser"!

It certainly doesn't fit easily

I discussed this with a good friend when it arrived and he was very interested in my thoughts. This good friend of mine had been struggling for some time with it and had singularly failed. If he had failed then I was certainly going to struggle but I had to see what all the hype was about. The first thing to do is to compare the dimensions of the box with the links of the chain and this definitely reveals something very interesting - the width is exactly the same as a length of a single link. The depth on the other hand is an odd dimension and definitely confused me - it was not really related in any obvious way to the links. The height was also of interest and very useful.

Having looked at the dimensions I decided that this was going to be rather like the 4M puzzle and several others like it and I set about trying to do similar things. After a couple of evenings muttering under my breath I realised that I had been led astray and needed to try something else. It was time to try my hand at chain folding. The chain is a tricky thing to manipulate! Just as you think you might be getting 2 links into a useful configuration and you try to add a 3rd one, you discover that wood doesn't fold and you don't have enough fingers. My Aha! moment arrived on the third evening - I suddenly had a vision of what was needed (yes I solved it in my head first which amazed me - this was definitely a packing puzzle with a difference). It took me a little while to manage to manipulate the links the way I wanted (rectangular links need some special consideration to rotate and orient them properly) and I had an interesting shape in my hands. A moment later I just dropped it all in one go into the box and the Chain was Stored! An amazing design and I can absolutely see why the IPP jury loved it! This is a packing puzzle that you need to think about. I have subsequently teased my friend (who shall remain nameless to protect his reputation even if you all know who he is) about his inability to solve it.

No! There's no picture of it solved - it will give too much away. If you really need help with it then contact me and I will send some clues or even give a photo.

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Little Kenny

Little Kenny (notice the TL craftsman's mark)

Little Kenny was the puzzle I had really been wanting to buy from Tom when the "rules" forced me to buy the Chain store too. Ken Irvine has designed (and made) some of the most interesting interlocking solid puzzles that have been seen in the last few years. Amongst his incredible designs are a group that fall into a special subset - the Turning Interlocking Cubes. My very good friend and international expert on the subject, Bernhard Schweitzer, had introduced me to these puzzles many years ago when I edited his series of articles on them for the CFF journal. Bernhard had made quite a lot of these fabulous designs for me and they proudly sit on my shelf to my right and come down frequently to be toyed with. When a new one comes out I just cannot resist them and of course when I saw that this had been entered into the design competition, I knew I had to have this one too.

The Little Kenny differs from the classical design in that it is a 4x4x3 cuboid rather than a cube but the principle is the same. Allard gave a rave review to this (and it's brother Little Bruce which is not available at the moment, sob!) The original had been made from jatoba wood by Ken himself but Tom had been given permission to make and sell copies - mine is a lovely rich Lacewood. It is sent out in pieces and the aim is obviously assembly. The inclusion of half unit cuts on two of the pieces make it really quite easy to establish the ultimate positioning of all the pieces BUT there is a problem:

It won't fit!

The last piece just won't fit in! I have tried putting that one in first or second but nope! Not happening! I have noticed that there is a design feature or 2 on some key pieces:

There corners are all nicely bevelled but 1 or 2 are VERY bevelled

The extra bevelling must be part of the solution but so far I have not been able to work it out. I haven't solved any of these TIC's for a rather long time and am out of practice. Allard mentioned that he has a 5 stage puzzle solving process:

1. Thinking “this should be easy”
2. “I must be missing something obvious” 
3. Thorough bafflement 
4. Believing it isn’t possible, until finally 
5. Solving it!  

I am working through his process (it seemed like a good one) and think I have got past stage 2 onto stage 3! I plan on skipping stage 4 because I know that Ken wouldn't be that mean and Tom is far too good a craftsman to give me an impossible puzzle (Ah - I have just remembered that a certain "puzzle pusher" has done that to me in the past!) I suspect that I will be caught at "Allard stage 3" for quite a long time despite also adopting his custom technique of Thinking©.

It may be that I will need to ask Bernhard for a clue. I'll keep trying for a while yet. My previously mentioned very good friend has also struggled with this puzzle too which does make me feel much better! His is locked up in the wrong configuration just now - whoops.

If you get a chance to play with either of these two puzzles then you won't be disappointed. Tom is a fabulous craftsman and the designs by Goh Pit Khiam and Ken Irvine are phenomenal. I am really hoping that Ken decides to make a production run of the Little Bruce for the rest of us or that he gives permission for others to make it and sell it on his behalf. Come on Ken, put me out of my misery!!!

Now it's time to continue my birthday celebrations - she won't let me play with any puzzles though!!

Not Terribly Bright - My Hall of Shame!

Or puzzles that I just cannot solve! Sob!!!

The Ultimate burr set with a level 1 puzzle assembled

I've been puzzling a fairly long time now (5 years) and have amassed a moderately decent collection of toys. In fact my collection has burst out of my study into the living room, dining room, a spare bedroom and now I've had to put a box of the less beautiful puzzles into storage in my garage! Mrs S has even suggested I just start at the beginning again and resolve all my old ones rather than buy more. My response to that was to ask her to wash her mouth out with soap and I told her that it was too late as I have a whole bunch of new disentanglements coming from my friend Tomas Linden at Sloyd and there might just be a few craftsman puzzles on order too! Whack!! Ouch! Sorry dear - I should have asked you first!

I'm still well behind most other serious puzzlers (I've not yet hit the 1000 puzzle mark) so she should be pleased that I'm working to catch up! Whack!! Ouch! Damn! Despite all this experience and the hope that it would expand the feeble brain that I have, I still have quite a few puzzles that I just cannot solve! To me, this is yet more proof that I'm not terribly bright. One day I hope that I just might manage to solve them.

Assembly of 6 piece burrs

At the top of the post is the gorgeous Ultimate burr set made by Jack Krijnen. It was originally documented in Creative Puzzles of the World by Van Delft and Botermans (1978) and several copies have been produced over the years - one is still available from Dave Janelle at Creative Crafthouse. The set consists of 27 pieces (all unique) that can be used 6 at a time to assemble a burr puzzle and was fully analysed by Ken Irvine. He showed that there are 59 level 1 puzzles that use the solid key piece in which the first move removes the first piece, 255 level 2 puzzles, 127 level 3 puzzles, 75 level 4 puzzles, 44 level 5 puzzles, 33 level 6 puzzles, 33 level 8 puzzles and finally 9 level 9 puzzles. At a total of 635 puzzles I would expect this to keep me busy well beyond my normal boredom threshold and after boredom sets in it will look fantastic on display in my study (which has been turned back into a shithole again!)

6 simple pieces!

That's as close as I can get!

Visible burr - stunning and very tough

After an initial problem caused by my lack of brain power, I finally (after about an hour of confusion) worked out how to go about solving the solid 6 piece burrs with the key piece and I surged through the first 59 puzzles in the list over 3 pleasant evenings in front of the TV with Mrs S. I took a break at that point and the following evening embarked on the very first of the level 2 burrs. I was on a roll, I thought, I would manage these with no problem, I thought and then Mrs S reminded me that I am not very bright and I hit a brick wall! Yep! Or Yip as Allard would say, I couldn't even solve the very first of the higher level 6 piece burrs! You all know how addicted I am to beautiful wood and that I have managed to accumulate a fair number of gorgeous burrs from the various craftsmen around the world. BUT I have always received them assembled and worked for hours, days, weeks or months on the disassembly and then reassembled them after having a lot of fun playing with Burrtools. Only a very few of these puzzles have I managed to reassemble from scratch and when I did do that, it was because of memory! One burr that was reputed to be very tough is the Gordian's Knot and I was proud to report to the world that I had managed to both disassemble it and even reassemble it without aid. BUT I can honestly say that I have NEVER assembled a burr from the pieces without having disassembled it first. In fact when Eric sold the Visible burr recently, I paid the supplemental $10 to receive it assembled so I could have the puzzling experience that Bill Cutler originally intended. In my defence with that I am not aware of any of the puzzlers who bought having assembled it without burrtools.

I have been trying to assemble the first of the level 2 puzzles for 4 evenings now and have not even come close! I have managed to find 2 possible assemblies of the completed puzzle but cannot work out the moves required to get that last piece in place. So far I have resisted using Burrtools - the humiliation is just too much! At this rate it might take me decades to solve the whole set and Lord help me when/if I get another set (there is still the 42 piece set that Allard described for me to obtain). I have been advised also that I REALLY SHOULD get the Mega Six burr from MrPuzzle. Brian says this about it:

The puzzle is incredibly more complicated than the commonly known six piece puzzle. 

Bill Cutler first used a computer program to analyse six piece burrs in 1974 but it took until 1990 to analyse all possible six piece burr combinations. Mega Six is the result of that search for the maximum number of moves for a six piece burr with a unique solution. This does not mean it has a unique assembly, due to the number of internal voids. In theory the pieces should fit together in 20 different ways however, the reality is that you can physically only put the puzzle together in one of the 20 assemblies. 

Mr Puzzle’s version, designed with Bill’s help, has one extra cube removed to increase the number of false assemblies....

The Mega Six is shipped completely disassembled! If I cannot even solve the first of the level 2 burrs in the set then what chance to I stand with this. But...... I really have to have it don't I? Whack!! Ouch! Sorry dear!

An impossible N-ary Puzzle

Mysterians

Another puzzle that I have been playing with for a long time is the Mysterians puzzle! I bought this from Sloyd over 2 years ago and it has been sitting on the shelf above me almost that whole time taunting me. I purchased it when I was told that it is an N-ary puzzle. This was confirmed by both Nick Baxter (the head Honcho of the IPP) and Goetz Schwandtner both of whom are amongst the greatest puzzlers in the world. Apparently this puzzle is a Quinary puzzle - it was designed by the amazing Oskar van Deventer and was Nick's exchange puzzle at the 23rd IPP. Mine arrived with a cracked stem which was easy to fix and I must have tried to solve it almost every month since it's arrival 2 years ago. I did get the solution and proof of its N-ary-ness direct from Nick but just could not solve it myself. Finally yesterday, I gave in and followed the solution and achieved this:

Finally in pieces and I have no idea how!

Even using the solution was tough! I will reassemble soon and try to solve it again without it but I reckon that I will still fail - it requires 60 moves to solve and despite being logical, I cannot see the logic! Sigh!! Whack!! Ouch! No dear, I don't think it was a waste of money - after all that time it must be considered good value for money! Whack!! Ouch! Sorry dear!

Fermium

Fermium - truly gorgeous and still unsolved

2½ years ago I was absolutely blown away by a discussion on a forum by the burr solving machine that is Guillaume Largounez. Apparently Donald Osselaer published three versions of the Fermium puzzle and he said this of it:

I am very glad ... in fact I am ecstatic ... that it works 'completely' as intended! This means that it uses 100 logical human moves to free the first piece, which comes out in the same rotating fashion as with the Xenon.

He says (and even in a direct communication with me) that it is entirely a logical solution and should be possible by a human. But at level 102.95.11.4.3.4.3.3 I am completely incapable of solving it. Several times I have gotten completely lost and then spent days desperately trying to return it to the start position. Luckily it is truly gorgeous and looks great on the shelf above me! One day I hope to manage it. Just don't tell Mrs S how much it cost! Whack!! Ouch! Sorry dear! Too late! Who did that?

Bottles, bottle, bottles - Sob!!

My bottle nemeses

When my supplier emails me, I immediately jump and unload the contents of my bank account into his bank account! Whack!! Ouch! Sorry dear! Over the last few years, I have bought almost everything that Wil has suggested to me - as well as a good friend, he is a tremendous puzzle designer and his stuff is just beautiful. I started with his Cola Bottle # 1 which embarrassingly took me over a year to solve despite having seen someone else do it! Of course I couldn't stop just there and have bought several more of his bottle puzzles over the years. BUT to my eternal shame there are 3 of them that have refused all my attempts to solve since I got them - yes it's been years!

I have even muttered to Wil at an MPP whether he could provide just a small hint and on one occasion he did give me a hint in fluent Dutch which of course was no help at all and another time he appears to have completely failed to understand what hint or solution means! Please don't ever ask Wil for a solution - he NEVER gives them out - in fact when people email him for assistance, he sends their emails on to me to help them out. Just don't ask me for help with any of these damned bottles!

Kevin's 'C... and B...' bottle

This particular puzzle has nearly killed me. Every single time I go to an MPP, I get asked by the guys whether I have solved "Kevin's bottle" and every single time I utter some nasty profanities and have to admit that I haven't! Kevin's bottle was a very unique gift to me from Mr Strijbos. A few years ago, at the last moment, I was unable to go to the Dutch Cube Day due to work commitments and the boys came back with a gift for me. It's a bottle puzzle with the usual aim - to remove the marble. Now this particular puzzle is totally unique - I am the only one who owns a copy and I am completely flattered that Wil would produce something unique for me but I suspect there is something mean underlying the gift! I took it to work for a few weeks to show my colleagues and try and get some fresh ideas and my Orthopaedic colleagues (who are well known to be very basic in terms of surgical skills and erm.....rather course) have named it "Kevin's cock and balls" for erm..... obvious reasons! They have suggested to use their own "special" solution on it and I always snatch it back quickly! An Orthopod's solution to anything is to whack it with a hammer and if that doesn't work then to get a bigger hammer!! Hmmm maybe I should let Mrs S try to solve it?? Whack!! Ouch! Sorry dear!

I have even gone as far as to Xray it to see whether there are any hidden mechanisms but nope - apparently it should be solvable by my own brain power!

Nothing hidden inside!

Tripod

28 "simple" triangular sticks - how hard can it be?

My good friend Steve, sold me something special, something which he thought I could solve, something which several other puzzlers including Oli, Chris and Allard have managed to solve, something which I have failed dismally to assemble! The Tripod was designed by Steve in 2014 and looked like fun - it comes in a plastic container that you need to cut open to get at the sticks and then has lots of nice pieces which, like Lego, you should be able to build into a great shape:

No! Of course that's not mine! 

It looks fabulous and I promise that I have tried many many many times to assemble it but I just don't know where to start! This puzzle sits in it's little box just a foot (30cm to you Europeans) away from me on my desk and I can hear it throwing insults at me - it is questioning my puzzle manhood! Luckily for me, as you can tell from this article, I am quite used to that by now and my puzzle manhood is in tatters. Currently Mrs S keeps it in a pickling jar next to her bedside and taunts me with it on regular occasions! Maybe one day she'll let me have it back or possibly borrow it for a while?

I actually have quite a few more puzzles that I still need to solve but at present I'm calling them a "backlog" and not placing them in my hall of shame. I do really hope that upcoming puzzles won't be in that group as I do have my sights on quite a few more. Whack!! Ouch! Sorry dear!

If you have any suggestions for how to solve any of these puzzles then please either post a comment below or contact me using my Contact page. Hopefully this will prevent any further "Whack!! Ouch! Sorry dear!" episodes!

Now it's time for me to curl up into my ball of sorrow and then try and assemble that damned level 2 6 piece burr! AAAAARGH!!!

Tough For Me - A Real Strugg L

Strugg L by Junichi Yananose

This one was an interesting one for me and I have to say that I went through much the same experience as the extremely talented designer/craftsman/solver, Ken Irvine. This means that it is a GOOD puzzle and just the right difficulty level despite having a relatively high level.

Juno has watched the huge increase in complex packing puzzles with varying shaped pieces which have been made more interesting by the use of limited openings as well as a stipulation that the openings need to finish up being covered by the pieces (Alexander Magyarics and Osanori Yamamoto are masters of this sort of design and I have absolutely loved them. Juno always wants to add something new to a puzzle genre and has been doing that in the burr space with the amazing Grooved Board Burrs which have been released over the last few years. So, how could he change the design of packing puzzles? He didn't want to make standard blocks to fit into a box and didn't want to add yet another limited opening packing puzzle. Juno's fresh take on the subject is the use of grooves and pins in the pieces and the box sides. This has the added benefit of allowing the packed puzzle to be completely full. To make it interesting, he also created it using only L-shaped triominoes. This was quite a feat! It sold out in just 5 minutes after going on sale! Amazing for a packing puzzle.

Just 2 moves!

It is rather attractive made from Fijian Mahogany, American Rock Maple and Bamboo and is 88 x 88 x 58mm in size. I was expecting it to be sent out as pieces (I don't think that was ever stated but I suspect that I expected that to be the case because it was supposed to be a packing puzzle). After it arrived, I had a quick fiddle and realised that this was going to be fairly complex to disassemble. In a way I am rather pleased it was sent out assembled.

After my photos and my quick fiddle to see how it moved, I set to properly and really worked on a disassembly. There is only one real pathway through with only a few small blind endings. After about 15 moves there was a move sequence that surprised me a lot - it opened up a lot of other pieces and also seemed to render the puzzle unstable. But despite that key piece rotating all over the place it did not release anything early for me. The dexterity level went up a bit as I had to hold onto several pieces at once to keep them aligned. At that point I found myself going around and around in a loop and could not find the next moves to release the first piece. I inadvertently ended up back at the beginning. Aargh! I am not very good at these! Finally, after about an hour, I had a breakthrough and released the first piece. 

Even after the first piece had been taken out, the others could not just be easily removed. It required another decent sequence for the second and then even the third. This was using linear moves. It would have been possible to cheat with a rotation here but I was disciplined and stuck to the linear moves - those pins and grooves hold the pieces well until all of them have been removed.

6 L's - the holes in the bottom are purely for finger access

I was pleased to have disassembled it and was really not sure that I could put them back inside without Burrtools or my memory of the route but I decided to give it a go. I jumbled them up into a pile and left it for a day before trying to pack them all back in. I was very relieved to read that Ken had managed the assembly but he is a MUCH better solver than I am and that only meant that I had a chance but it was not certain.

After that day and the jumbling, I realised that I did remember the starting position of 2 of the pieces and what the first move was during the disassembly. Maybe if I had waited for a few weeks then it would have been more like starting from scratch but I had a blog post to write! Luckily those were the ONLY moves and positions that I remembered. Assembling the shape after this, outside the box was fun and actually not too difficult. Once I had my 4x4x2 cuboid assembled it was time to try and recreate the disassembly outside so that I could reverse it and put it back inside. I got stuck at this point for a few hours. 

In the end even the assembly was not too difficult. Had I received it in pieces, I suspect that it would have been beyond me but with just the couple of piece clue that I had, this was a very fun challenge. It has sold out now but I am sure that it will come up at auction before long. Well worth adding to your collection!

Keep an eye out very soon for Juno's latest Sequential Discovery Puzzle, the Dial Case. 

Do you love heavy metal or even some complex plastic? Yes me too. It is with great pleasure that I can let you know that Ali and Steve have just released some new toys on their Two Brass Monkeys store:

The Burrly Legal Cylindrical 18 piece burr

A stunning 18 piece burr which took years to develop

Ali's Bolt

The Rhombic Maze Burr

This is a MUST HAVE puzzle - designed by Derek Bosch, the Brass boys have added to the original with an extra maze plate a new design for the pins and a new booklet with 100 challenges to try your hand at. I had a play with this at the recent Midlands puzzle party and it is stunning. My original review of this puzzle was here

Brian and Ken Broke It

Then Brian Teamed Up With Andrew to Make a Cluster - I Said "F$&@"

It's a Soma Cube...but they broke it!

I've discussed Ken Irvine a few times on this blog - he's a sort of evil genius (a name which he is positively delighted to have received) who seems to be brilliant at solving puzzles and amazing at designing them too! In fact, his wood-working skillz are pretty impressive too (Sigh! I wish that I had some talent in some field or other!)

Apparently, Ken had a wonderful idea to fiddle with the classic Soma cube (a puzzle that everyone should have in their collection). He decided that it was much too easy having a 7 piece puzzle to make a cube in one of 240 different ways. In his delightful/annoying way he decided to make it a 6 piece puzzle that only had one assembly! He named it the Broken Soma because he took the 3 voxel L-shape and broke each of the cubies in half before fixing them onto the 6 remaining pieces. Hence it is a "broken soma". Except, we all know the real reason it is so-named...it only takes a short ¼ hour or so before anyone playing with it decides that he has taken a perfectly reasonable puzzle and BROKEN it! It seems bloody impossible! The puzzle was debuted at the Rochester puzzle party earlier this year where several people, including Brian Menold, tried and failed to solve it over the 3-day party. Eventually, Brian solved it after getting home and this seemed to be the response that most of the extremely skilled puzzlers at this event had to this delightful design.

Brian asked Ken for permission to reproduce it to which the response was a resounding yes. I had a little play with Allard's copy at the last MPP and after about 30 minutes was completely convinced that it was impossible - this proved to me that I was quite correct to have ordered a copy myself and couldn't wait for it to arrive (the Royal Mail seemed to have lost track of my package for a week or so). I am always delighted to try anything new from Ken's evil twisted (but clever) mind and of course, anything made by Brian will be stunningly beautiful even if it remains unsolved and in pieces for a while. I bought a copy made from Olivewood and Moabi which looked stunning on Brian's store and is even more beautiful in the hand.

I have carried this with me to work as well as played at home for several weeks. In my usual fashion, I went about it by randomly trying to combine pieces and of course failing every single time. There was always a piece sticking out or a small ½-voxel gap in a wall. I tried combining the half pieces and tried putting them at the ends of edges and nothing would work at all. Ken had certainly broken my Soma! I gave it to people at work to try and they were all convinced quite quickly that it was impossible. This includes a consultant and clinical fellow foot and ankle surgeon who are quite used to taking a fracture random assortment of funny shaped bones or fragments and putting them together into something vaguely foot or ankle shaped - of all the types of surgeon I work with, their 3D visuospatial ability is pretty much second to none. Between the two of them, I challenged them for an hour or so and they also were convinced my puzzle was broken. I also gave it to my anaesthetic assistant and one of my senior anaesthetic trainees to attempt during a rather long case. They are also pretty good at 3D reconstruction (having gotten very used to using 2D ultrasound and creating a 3D mind view from it) and yep...they declared it broken too!

At some point during all this torturing, I sat down and took Allard's advice and actually had a think©! Apart from causing a severe headache, I had a very nice realisation...there is something you need to figure out before it will be solved. You may well solve this by chance, by random piece placement but this is actually quite unlikely. Once you actually think, you realise exactly what is required and you can quite quickly assemble a cube.

This photo really gives almost nothing away!
Just look at the beauty of these woods!

The Aha! moment is simply wonderful. It is not the feeling of exhaustively working through every possibility (my memory is nowhere near good enough for that), it is the feeling you get from a sudden realisation that you know exactly what is required and can do it in minutes. Brian and Ken have created a masterpiece...I would say that every collection should have a Soma cube as well as a broken one. Thank you so much, my friends!

It's a Cluster F$&@!

Another genius who has been collaborating with Brian is the incredible Andrew Crowell. I have tried to make sure that I get a copy of almost everything he designs. This is courtesy of either Brian or the world expert on Turning Interlocking Cubes, Bernhard Schweitzer. Not everything that comes from Andrew's warped brain is a cube - he has designed a few other shapes but in common they always share the common feature of requiring some really complex interesting rotations. I am still struggling with a couple of PackTIC designs despite months of work. When Brian showed off on his site the Cluster puzzle which whilst not a cube still requires a bunch of rotations, I couldn't resist - plus my fetish for gorgeous wood meant that I just had to own a small amount of Patagonian Rosewood.

Surprisingly, this puzzle is still available in Yellowheart or Peroba Rosa for a very reasonable $54 - go and get it now - you really won't be disappointed.

I had left this one until I had solved the lovely fun FantasTIC and then set to. The fact that it is not a cube shape makes it both easier and harder for some reason. I was able to discern what I thought was the placement of the pieces fairly easily and then try and find the order of insertion and the correct rotations to get them in place. Except...this wouldn't work for me. I am a bear of very little brain and so kept trying the same thing. After a couple of days of failing to place the last piece and not realising that the gap was not the right shape, I suddenly took note and decided to start afresh. This time, I realised my stupid mistake and then was forced to hunt for another assembly entirely. Because of the odd shape of the intended final puzzle, I found this quite tough and discovered the alternative placement of the first piece entirely by accident. Aha! Now on to the main rotational placement. I had discovered a very interesting move that would allow entry of other smaller pieces but there seemed to be no way to get both of them inside...stuck AGAIN!

A few days later, I went back to it and thought to myself:

"What if I...?"

OMG! That is amazing! Who would have thought I would have a railway inside the puzzle or is that a Scalextric (remember those?) - there is a totally unexpected sequence of moves in there and it made me chuckle when I found it!

It's a cluster - brilliant - go get one

Well, I had better leave you now - Mrs S has just returned from a few days visiting the out-laws in Auld Reekie and if I don't sit and chat then she may get really upset at the pile of puzzles that have arrived in her absence as well as a few more that will be arriving soon! After a trip to the homeland, she packs a mighty Whack! Ouch!

These cubes are Mine's (Or are they?)

The second post of the day!!! I just had to get this off my chest - it has taken me a VERY long time to solve these puzzles!

Mine's Cubes?

None of these puzzles are new - in fact I have had them for an embarrassingly long time! This collection of cubes/interlocking solids have an interesting history. They were bought at separate times and from different craftsmen yet share a common theme. From left to right we have Lock-Y-Cube, Disjointed/Accordion Cube and Lock-N-Cube.

All three of these were designed by the incredibly prolific Mineyuki Uyematsu aka Mine. The middle one was also independently designed by a newcomer to the puzzle design world, Ken Irvine, who arrived like a hurricane at the Washington DC IPP in 2012 and caused a real storm (sic!) when one of the cubes that he released to the world was absolutely identical to one produced by Mine. After the furore died down and the community realised that they really had been designed independently (after all, calculus was discovered by 2 great mathematicians simultaneously), they began to appear on the market. Mine had called his the Disjointed cube and Ken named it the Accordion cube - why these names? Because this happens:

Just a cube?

Disjointed/Stretched out

This particular version was made by the amazing Eric Fuller and sold in Feb 2012 - he made it from beautiful woods (Holly, Canarywood, Sapele, Zebrawood and Walnut). The interesting thing about it that makes it fun is that all five pieces move along the same axis, yet nothing seems to want to come apart. This is a very devious and fun design that stumped me for quite a while - it requires you to notice something rather unexpected before a piece comes loose. After that, it all comes to pieces. Reassembly is not too hard as long as you remember the order and position - there are several ways a couple of pieces would appear to go but only one is correct.

Eric makes such gorgeous puzzles!!

Cast Galaxy

Cast Galaxy - my goodness it's a tough one to photograph!

Big box from Puzzle Master

This is the first puzzle from my recent Puzzle Master delivery! Yep! I couldn't resist it and just had to get some more wonderful toys to play with and to review! Recently the postman has had quite a bit of extra work and not just because Christmas is coming but because I have had a bit of an ahem.... rush of puzzles to the head! The big box from Puzzle Master will keep me busy for quite a few weeks.

One of the first that I couldn't resist ordering is one that I have "sort" of solved before! I have absolutely no recollection of how I solved it and, until now, have not actually owned a copy myself. The Cast Galaxy was designed by Bram Cohen (yes, the same brilliant man who produced Bit-torrent) and was entered into the IPP Design competition in 2013 where it received a Jury honourable mention (there are quite a lot of prizes in the competition and I really don't understand what they all are for). Shortly after the competition, it was announced that Hanayama had done a deal to have it mass produced as one of their wonderful Cast puzzles. Congratulations Bram! It seemed to take ages after the announcement to reach the market and when it did, it sold out really really quickly and so I had to wait a while to actually obtain a copy.

Asian packaging only

Oddly, it does not seem to have been released with the European/US packaging yet. The version I got was the only Cast puzzle to have come in the Asian packaging (this time a green box) and apart from the name, I have absolutely no idea what the instructions say. I have to assume that it says the same as all the others - that you have to "take it apart and put it back together again". If there are any other aims then I do not know what they are. As you can see from the box it is rated by Hanayama as a level 3 out of 6 and Puzzle Master has rated it as level 7 (Challenging) out of 10 on their own scale. Taking it out of the packaging, you are immediately struck by just how beautiful this puzzle is - it is shiny shiny shiny and because of all the curves and the way it moves it just screams out to be played with!

I Am So Bad at Boxes!

Yes, it's a box and it doesn't look too difficult!

I am sure that the majority of you will recognise the box pictured above and you will all laugh at me when I say that I could not open it! For those who don't immediately recognise it, it is a burrset made by the Doctor of Wood, Eric Fuller. A few months ago he released a bunch of these in different woods and due to work pressures, I was not quick enough off the mark to get one of the more gorgeous sets. However, I was just able to buy a copy of the Cherry, Ash, Walnut and Birch set just before they all sold out and have to say that I am not in the least disappointed. It is simply gorgeous even in the more mundane wood choices. Eric has put all of his usual magic into the manufacture of this set - the joinery is simply perfection itself and it looks beautiful. The lid lifts off to reveal a lovely ordered set of burr sticks which have been perfectly engraved with their piece number for selection according to the booklet of challenges.

27 beautiful burr sticks plus a "filler"

How many burrsets does one need? This is slightly embarrassing to answer - at the moment, I must say that at least 4 is the correct number!

The "42 piece burrset" by Jerry McFarland - aka the Caramel Case
314 solid burrs as well as many many additional holey burrs! Plus Jerry added an extra stick

The Ultimate burrset - by Jack Krijnen
637 challenges varying from Level 1 to level 8

The Level 5 burrset Mr KY Wu
162 possible level 5 assemblies

Eric had made this set using the exact same pieces as the Ultimate burrset which I already had above. So why did I buy it? Apart from being unable to resist Eric's work, this was named the Pen-ultimate burrset because it had been modified. The ultimate set was based on sticks made from 2x2x8 stock. The extra length on each stick made the assembly challenges quite a bit tougher in places as the lateral movements during the solution can be quite restricted. For this set, Eric had created the burr sticks from 2x2x6 stock and to enhance the puzzling the set had been analysed by the amazing genius that is Ken Irvine (check out his brilliant new blog here).

So having established that I already have more six-piece burr challenges than I will ever be able to solve (have I told you all that I am rubbish at assembly puzzles?), the next question must be where is that booklet of challenges for Eric's set? Yes, I asked that too! I had not actually read the full description of the item before clicking buy and only after it arrived did I realise that this Burrset was also a box. Apparently, there is a hidden drawer in the box which contains a booklet of challenges - hence this is a box too. It is very well disguised but when looking and feeling the box closely it is obvious where the hidden drawer is and of course, it is locked tight. So no puzzling until I can open the box...GULP!

I take out all the burr sticks from the set and admire them and search for hidden mechanisms inside...NOPE! Then I realise that stick 0 and the red stick are both solid and hence one is superfluous...or is it? Eric would not just put an extra stick in for nice packing in the box. After all 28 sticks pack as a nice 7x4 array but if there were just 27 sticks then that could easily be nicely arranged in a 9x3 array and not need the extra stick. Plus, why is one made from a different (and rather gorgeous) Padauk piece? It's pretty clear by the presence of a magnet embedded in it that that is critical for unlocking the drawer. There must be a hidden mechanism that requires the use of the magnet. I set to exploring what I could find with this magnet and there were several very nice Aha! moments. I found hidden magnets, I found that things could be done by using magnet on magnet and there I got stuck! For ages and ages! All over the internet, I saw puzzle friends opening their drawers and starting on their burr puzzling and I couldn't begin. My howls of anguish spread wide and I was encouraged by others to continue and not over-think it. The puzzling continued...but not with success.

Eventually, Eric was on FB and saw that I was on-line. He sent me a message and asked what I had found and could do. I gave a hypothesis of what else I thought I ought to be able to do and he indicated that I was correct...but my set would not do that. I was sorry to inflict pain on Eric but his response was one of absolutely superb customer service, he told me that in my set I obviously needed a stronger magnet and the following day he posted out a replacement key-piece (no extra charge at all). A week later I received another stick with a MUCH stronger magnet embedded in it. I immediately put it to the test and the much-expected movement that I had been unable to perform with the smaller magnet was now easy for me. So I did it and tugged on the drawer and...and NOPE! Aaaargh! As I said, I am RUBBISH at boxes. Yet again, I spent several evenings with my usual game of doing the same trick again and again and again and, like a mad man, expecting something different to happen at some point. Of course, it didn't and I still could not play with my burrs! Eventually, I caved in and asked Eric for a bit of help, wondering whether there was another issue with my burrset (it is very common amongst us addicts to state that if we cannot solve a puzzle then it must be broken - that gets stated many many times at the Midlands Puzzle Party).

Eric confirmed that there was more to the opening than I thought and gave me a particular but not descriptive clue which I (surprisingly) understood but could not immediately follow through with. He then said something key:

"Remember that I like to make things look like they don't move when they do 🙂"

Within a few moments of that I responded:

"Holy shit! Just found it! Damn! That's well hidden!!!!"

I have to say that I feel that I got my money's worth out of this puzzle and that is before I even got to play with the burr sticks!

OMG! At last!

Now I was able to explore the set further. There was a nice Cubic Dissection logo sticker in the booklet and the booklet itself provided the full analysis that Ken had made of the Ultimate set with shortened sticks and also including the assemblies that do not end with solid burrs:

There are rather a large number of challenges to work through:

• The Ultimate burrset with stick-length of 8 had 535 unique solutions with voids whereas the Penultimate set here has 708 - that alone will take me most of the rest of my life!

On top of this, there are an enormous number of other assemblies possible which will provide interesting puzzling - potentially another 20,322! Homing in on the slightly more challenging ones, Ken's analysis states that there are 3,479 piece sets that require a minimum of 2 moves and a maximum of 3 moves to remove the first piece, 51 sets that require a minimum of 4 and a maximum of 5 moves for the first piece and 3 sets that require 5 moves.

Not only is the analysis an amazing and very complete piece of work, but it has also been beautifully set out in the booklet and, as long as you have good eyesight (a problem for us "older" puzzlers), then it is a work of art as well as a fabulous puzzling resource:

At last! Very small print but gorgeous and a lifetime of puzzle challenges in there! Don't tell Mrs S!

Finally, I have been able to challenge myself to assemble something. As you would expect from Eric, the burr sticks fit together absolutely perfectly! It is a pleasure to play with this set - I will assemble a few and then it will be stored for my retirement when I have a whole lot more time on my hands.

A burr assembled and the Cubic dissection sticker proudly stuck on the interior of the lid

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Still unsolved - probably a box!

Finally, as proof that a puzzle is a box...Juno's Slammed car which has now sold out after it won the Jury Grand prize in the design competition in Japan, was sold to me as a Sequential Discovery puzzle which I adore. However, Juno insists that it is also a box which we have established today that I am truly awful at solving! He says:

"The puzzle has an internal cavity and it is also categorized as a puzzle box. To make the definition of the puzzle clearer, we put a loaf of bread in the cavity and it helps you to realize the goal of the puzzle."

The loaf of bread is another dig at me after George Bell stated that a puzzle is a box if you can put a loaf of bread in it and there have been several of Juno's puzzles where he has had a joke at me with this. I received my copy of this a couple of months ago and have watched in amazement as everyone has solved it around me (including my completely blind friend Ed) and I zoomed off to almost the end of the challenge and have been stuck there for weeks. Yep! It is definitely a box - not because of the bread but because I am completely unable to solve it! I will keep on working on it and hopefully before the year is out will have opened it - some puzzles take me months or even years of effort! Thanks, Juno!