Thinking Outside the Box? Not Always That Helpful!

Or Laszlo Does It Again!
A TIC, a Packing Puzzle and a Dexterity Puzzle All in One!

Rollercoaster by Laszlo Kmolnar
Very nicely made by Brian Young

My friend Laszlo Kmolnar is one of the best puzzle designers around today. This blog is littered with posts gushing about his wonderful puzzles and he has made my top ten of the year with a few of his wonderful designs and I suspect that this one will make it to that exalted list at the end of 2019. Let me say up front that this is AN ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL PURCHASE! Before you read on, you MUST go and buy a copy from Brian and Sue Young's MrPuzzle site - it is available in 4 different kinds of wood:

• Blush Alder - This is a hardwood with a pinkish brown colour. It weighs lighter than the heaviest wood like Jarrah. 
• Saffron Heart - This wood grows in Australia and Papua New Guinea. The wood has a distinct yellow tinge to it.
• Jarrah - A dense and heavy wood grown mostly in Western Australia this wood varies from light to much darker red in colour.
• Black Wattle - A lovely brown wood that mostly has darker streaks in it.

I think that mine is Jarrah and there is the 67 x 67 x 67mm perspex box. I bought my copy from Wil Strijbos when he was visiting the UK for a Midlands Puzzle Party and he may have a few copies left if you are ordering something from him anyway. When bought from Brian it apparently comes with the solution - mine from Wil did not! I try never to look at a solution and if you do buy from Brian then throw the leaflet away! DO NOT be tempted by it - you DON'T need it! This fabulous puzzle is only $19US as I write and so an absolute bargain.

As you can see it consists of just 3 oddly shaped pieces of wood which must be placed completely within the 3x3x3 box with no piece protruding out. The box is rigid, does not dismantle and has a single 1x1x1 hole in a corner to allow the pieces to be placed inside. Don't dismiss this simply because the box is perspex - it has been beautifully made too and actually looks lovely in itself.

Very clear - box and instructions
On the MrPuzzle site, it also says to solve without putting your fingers inside! OMG!

A simple puzzle I can hear you claim? Only put 3 pieces in a regular box? That must be pretty easy! Hell! No! This little bastard kept me busy for 6 months! There is a lot more to the solving of this puzzle than you might think which is why I am so overwhelmingly enthusiastic. Brian Menold made a copy last year with a wooden box that I think must have been almost impossible to solve - the inability to see through the walls of the box will have made this immeasurably harder. This puzzle was an entry in the IPP design competition last year (2018) where it missed out on a prize (I suspect this will have been because of the sheer number of amazing designs that were entered).

New to puzzling - look at that smile!

I have carried the puzzle with me everywhere for 6 months and only just solved it last week! Many many people have been consumed by it and all have failed. They don't let me loose in the Day surgery suite very often but every single time I go down there, I am immediately asked to hand it over and the nursing staff spend a whole day playing with it. I love watching the annoyed looks on the surgeons face as the pieces clunk about in and out of the box! It drives them mad hearing the nurses have some fun. I have given it to a few of my anaesthetic trainees to keep them occupied whilst I write my chart or prescribe the post-op medications. The premise of this is so simple that no-one can resist the temptation - even a new trainee who has never tried puzzling before.

In general, I am not a huge fan of packing puzzles because there seems to be too much random trial and error during the solution process. The Rollercoaster, on the other hand, will never be solved by random movement. It requires thought© and purposeful movement with a decent amount of dexterity to solve this - no chance that you will manage it by accident. Not only is it a packing puzzle, but it is also a dexterity puzzle as well as a wonderful Turning Interlocking Cube (TIC) too. Yep! As if that weren't enough...it requires rotational moves too. Brian and Laszlo are going to force you to make rotational moves of pieces through a small hole and barely within reach. Yay! Bastards! 😂

The first of the Aha! moments occurs early on when you realise part of the order in which the pieces must be placed in the cube, then another Aha! moment arrives as you work out the specific orientation that the large piece requires when inserted. Having made what you feel is good headway with discoveries, then you hit a wall! I did! Many many times.

Time to "think© outside the box"? I thought so too - this is often helpful for these puzzles but remember that Laszlo has a history of making "out of the box" thoughts unhelpful! Obviously, a 3x3x3 cube has 27 voxels inside but this puzzle has pieces with only 15 voxels which means there will be lots of empty space inside when it is complete. This also means that there are dozens and dozens of ways that the pieces can be fitted into a 3x3x3 shape when you do not have the constraints of the walls and the single hole to work through. After a month or two of thinking outside the box and not really getting anywhere plus allowing everyone who wanted to try it a good while to play/fail, I went back to thinking inside the box...that didn't help much either!

Another difficulty with this is that the 2 small pieces look very similar and when you think© that you have an idea, by the time you have made a first move or two, you are completely confused about which piece should be where and oriented in which direction. I took to drawing weird little stick diagrams on pieces of paper that I would leave lying around. At this point, you have a real idea of what to do (or so you think) and then you find that the little buggers move around in the box completely of their own volition and nothing you can do will keep them where you want them! So, you cannot work out what to do, cannot keep track of which piece is which and then cannot control where they go whilst in the box.......Aaaargh!!! This is AWESOME!

Having described what sounds like a nightmare, you have to realise that all this contributes to something that needs yet more Aha! moments. The first 2 or 3 are not enough! I continued to get nowhere and increased my frustration very frequently when the pieces would spontaneously rotate whilst I was trying to manipulate them within the box and frequently I would find myself unable to advance any further and then couldn't pull the bloody pieces out again......Aaaargh!!! Again! I must have come close to a heart attack on several occasions.

Last week I attended a rather good Anaesthesia conference and, as I usually do, took a few toys to play with on the train and in my hotel room in an evening. I failed every time but on the train home where I met one of my orthopaedic surgical colleagues by coincidence, I threatened him with it and when he started to cry (I tortured him for a year when he was a trainee!), I let him off and played myself. Much to the bemusement of a young lad further up the train, I had my final Aha! moment during that journey and managed this:

Yes - it can be done - this picture is of no help to you whatsoever!

The elated feeling lasted for days! Interestingly, the challenge does not end there! Disassembling it is still tough as the pieces rotate and block you without you being aware of what has happened and then eventually when you do take it apart, it is still damn tough to redo the puzzle. After another 5 or 6 solves, I had got to the point where I have worked out the quickest and most efficient method of packing the pieces inside. Phew! The next challenge (which is incredibly tough is to do the whole thing without sticking your finger inside the box! It can be done but be prepared to lose a lot of hair in the process! Yet another challenge - is there no end to them?

When I told Derek (the genius) about my eventual solution, he was rather impressed - at that point, he told me that it was a really difficult puzzle that he had solved with the aid of Burrtools. I have to admit that with the rotations involved, it had never occurred to me to even try using that miraculous program.

This puzzle is simply awesome! It should definitely be in any serious puzzler's collection and everyone should take some real time to actually think© and come up with the solution. There are quite a lot of Aha! moments to find and the final feeling of success is amazing! Don't be tempted by Burrtools - just solve it...even if it takes 6 months!

It is still available from Brian and Sue and maybe Wil still has a few copies - go and buy it. You will see why it will be rather high up my top ten of this year.

I think I need a rest now! Maybe something easy like a twisty puzzle?

Minima(lly) Effective - So Others Try It

Minima Fibonacci series

I apologise for last week...I appear to have had Covid for the second time and it's just as nasty as ever! The only difference for me this time is that I had to obey the government's instructions and continue working with it if I was physically able. So having been poleaxed on Sat/Sun, I continued to go to my usual Monday meetings via Teams and then back to the operating theatre after that. I was told on a few occasions by colleagues that I looked shocking (and even once by a patient) but I soldiered on wearing my mask to protect others - not really sure how effective that will have been but that's the instructions. I'm currently on day 8 and still feeling pretty hellish but am at least more functional. Mrs S, on the other hand is convinced that I am trying to murder her with the virus. Only another week to go before we feel a bit better. Stay safe out there guys, it's still not a trivial thing.

On to the puzzling...

It has reached the point now that my friend Tye Stahly, knows what sort of puzzling I like and contacts me with news of things he is making that I will want to buy when they are released. He is a savage businessman as my PayPal keeps emptying into his bank account! Having fallen for the Minima challenge set by Allard and Frederic Boucher a few weeks ago, I couldn't resist it when Tye showed me that another renowned puzzle designer had jumped on the bandwagon with the Minima series and found some other wonderful challenges. One of the best designers in the world, Laszlo Molnar had decided that this was a good format. I have raved about many of Laszlo's puzzles over the years and been encouraged about them by my sadly missed friend, Felix, who saw the incredible talent and encouraged me to try them and even made me a whole load of them himself. 

The Fibonacci name could only mean one thing:

Fibonacci 1 pieces

Fibonacci 2 pieces

Yep! The Fibonacci series - polyomino sizes 1, 1, 2, 3, 5 all to be fitted into the 2x2x3 box to ensure that all the holes are covered (in fact the box is packed tight). Having said that the name makes sense, I am a little mystified about number 3:

Fibonacci 3 pieces
Still has 12 voxels but it just doesn't add up!

Tye has made them using his usual multicoloured wooden blocks and beautifully cut acrylic sheets - I am informed that it is actually Tye's own Mrs S who makes these and for that he is a very lucky man. I couldn't resist playing with them as soon as I was physically fit enough to concentrate on anything other than my chest. They are just as confusing as ever with the requirement to assemble shapes outside the box first being important and then gradually working out how to get the bigger pieces inside and what constraints they would have on fitting in the small ones. Just because there were single and dual voxel pieces does not necessarily make these easier - the 5 voxel shapes are very restricting and take up a lot of space inside. The requirement for rotations makes for a lovely challenge and interestingly, one of these is solved using linear movements only. I won't spoil it for you by saying which one.

Not to be outdone, the original Minima designer, Frederic Boucher, has extended his design prowess into flat (2D) versions - except the solution is most definitely not restricted to 2 dimensions. Not content with making me rotate blocks around in a box, Frederic has designed a tray packing puzzle - Flat Minima which is still available:

Flat Minima

In this wonderful little challenge the aim is to fit all the pieces inside the tray. Again, there is a limited entry way (in fact there are 2) and rotations are required. The end result is to achieve a 2D image of a 2x2x3 block inside the "box". 

How hard can it be? Well, I know that I am awful at tray packing puzzles and this has the added challenge of restricted entry and rotations as well as a viral infection - I figured I was buggered!

The first thing to do as usual is make your shape and that wasn't actually too hard. Next, work out a possible order of piece insertion. Finally, insert the bloody things. Erm! It's not quite that simple. The hole in the front and the side is not big enough to actually insert the pieces. This is why it's not really a 2D puzzle. The insertion of at least 2 requires rotational moves in the third dimension and can be quite confusing for am an of my limitations. Having achieved that, I worked on the remaining pieces and noticed that there is not a lot of room left after the first couple are in for the remainder to move about. The Aha! moment with this one is lovely. It probably only took me about a ½ hour but it was a delightful voyage. There's not much of a clue in the solved picture but look at your own risk.

Solved it. Looks like a 2x2x3

Finally, another of Laszlo's amazing designs was thrown in as a gift for me from Tye. The Hardcore puzzle is a sphere packing puzzle:

Hardcore
Pack these 3 shapes in the sphere with no force to close and a snug fit

This is one that Tye had asked me whether I had heard of it and might have the exact dimensions of the pieces. I searched my database and pictures for Hardcore and pronounced that I had no knowledge of it. When this duly arrived, I had a sneaky suspicion that I had seen it before but another search of my database did not reveal that name. I worked on this for a day and solved it with another lovely Aha! moment before realising that I had definitely seen it. In fact, Laszlo had used me as a guinea pig for it before he had come up with the name (hence I had come up blank) - I showed it off back in 2017.

Laszlo's prototype (he called it the Spherical packing puzzle)

I have to apologise to Tye for not realising and helping more - I had seen it before it was named. 

It is currently for sale here and is well worth your attention. It is not impossibly hard...it is just lovely and nice to show to non-puzzling friends as a gentle challenge.

Diagonal Moves are Great!

In fact they are bloody marvelous!

3 Gorgeous packing puzzles from Brian Menold and Laszlo Kmolnar

You will need to excuse any editing errors in this post - I have been desperate to improve my writing methods to make them easier to achieve and less work. The Blogger on-line system is not particularly responsive and I have been trying to move to a plain text editing system using Multimarkdown in a special editor called Scrivener which allows me to keep all my thoughts and plans etc in a single document and organise everything without having to worry much about formatting and having the distraction of the web browser open at the same time. It also means that I have full copies of all my blog posts outside of Google’s system if I ever wish to move elsewhere (for example SquareSpace looks fun as does a self hosted WordPress site). So I am trying out an entirely new system here and my grammar and spelling may wander off whilst I learn new methods - just bear with me.

Today’s topic is based on some gorgeous puzzles I received this week from both Brian Menold and Eric Fuller - all the puzzles that I will discuss today are made considerably more confusing and definitely more interesting by the fact that they do not require simple linear movements. The addition of diagonal (and also rotational in one puzzle) really up the ante on the puzzle. They may well make the puzzle harder to manufacture but it is more than worth it for such a fantastic end result.

The first beauty that I am going to mention is the third in a series from Brian Menold and designed by the genius that is Laszlo Molnar (also known as Lacika Kmolnar) - I reviewed the first 2 in a blog about think Outside the box. In that post I described how I spent many hours struggling to find first the special fancy move that would allow the crucial piece to fit in the box and also the particular assembly of the pieces that would make it possible. Brian emailed to let me know that he was planning on making the third in the series - called No Holes Barred by Laszlo and asked whether I would be wanting it and if so would I want it in the same woods as the previous 2? He said he had just enough of those woods to allow one more puzzle to be made - I absolutely lurve the combination of Marblewood and Holly so I immediately emailed a definite yes back to him and I knew that I didn’t have to worry about the scrum that occurs when Brian posts an update (pretty much every time I get a puzzle stolen out of my shopping cart before I manage to login and pay). I was blown away by the look of Brian’s new additions and so bought more than I anticipated - Mrs S really did not approve when they arrived and the laser burning stare was utilised to maximum effect as well as the whiplash tongue.

No Holes Barred - Marblewood and Holly

The No Holes Barred puzzle was offered in quite a few gorgeous woods and they all got snapped up very quickly. Brian said this about it:

The latest packing puzzle brain teaser from Laszlo is cool! He told me he thought is was easier than Triagonal Agony but after three days of playing with my prototype I had to get back to work and ask him to send me the solution! This is another of his Aha! moment puzzles.

I was very much hoping for a puzzle that was a bit easier than the Triagonal Agony! That one took me weeks before my Aha! moment. Of course it had to be the first one I tried. The puzzle had arrived with the pieces outside of the box and all shrink-wrapped together - no chance to cheat by having a quick peek at the solution. I tipped them out and took the photo above and had a play that evening with a cat on my lap whilst watching TV with the “first wife”. Needless to say I failed to solve it when the little bugger (cat not wife! Whack! Ouch! Sorry dear!) romped off with one of the pieces in his mouth. That night I put it in my bag to take to work for the next few days (just in case I got a chance to play).

The key feature of this puzzle is that there is a half block stuck to the box which severely limits the way the pieces can be inserted and also one of the 5 identical pieces is differentiated by having a block diagonally cut away. The first thing I did was try to work out what the special pieces might allow and then see if I could utilise that special feature. There are several possibilities and I obviously would need to try them all out. Then I had to “think outside the box” again - doing it in the box would make it far harder. I failed for the first couple of days and one evening, I had a late finish because of an educational evening I had to attend. Whilst waiting in the Ivory Tower for the meeting to begin, I had a spare hour and under the watchful eye of one of my colleagues, I proceeded to investigate systematically. There are 4 or 5 possible assemblies that might fit in place which can be doubled by rotating the cube through 180º. There was one that looked particularly interesting because it potentially required a ver fancy coordinate motion to work. I tried to get this to happen for about ½ an hour making loud clacking noises and both amusing and annoying nearby colleagues who were struggling to concentrate on more academic topics. Eventually I had to give up on that particular approach and look elsewhere. Just before the meeting was about to begin I had my Aha! moment and all of a sudden I knew how it worked - I got a round of applause from my bemused colleague and a sigh of relief from several others. It’s amazing how annoying I can be to many other people and not just Mrs S!

Finally solved - now it can be put away on show

Another puzzle I couldn’t resist from Brian was a design by Gregory Benedetti - Little Slide Plank. My version was made from Red Oak and Black Palm. I have previously bought a few coordinate motion puzzles from the amazing Vinco (aka Václav Obšivač) - but haven’t bought any coordinate motion puzzles for a while. This new one by Greg was a good price so it had to be added to my shopping cart:

Mrs S says all my puzzle are just cubes - she might actually be right!

Brian said the following about it:

I made this coordinate motion cube just for fun. The three pieces sometimes take a bit of pushing and pulling to get moving but it is not that difficult to take apart. And with only three piece, reassembly is quite easy too. Only a few made of each as these were made from stock left over from another project and a bit of a last minute decision.

Scary movements!

Picking it up in just the right places causes it to literally slide apart and then the pieces drop on the cat who is sleeping on your lap:

He didn't seem to mind!

Good view of the pieces

He didn’t even wake up this time! Putting it back together is not difficult as Brian said but it makes a fabulous worry bead to play with. What a bargain at $19!

Finally today I have to show off yet another amazing design by Gregory Benedetti. The New Old School Puzzles were designed in time for last years’ IPP and Greg worked on Eric to make them in wood. Eventually the convincing worked and Eric said yes. I reviewed the first two of them here and was completely bowled over by the amazing design and production. When Eric said that he planned on making some more in the series then I knew that I had to have them - on the predicted day I sat refreshing my browser repeatedly until the update went live. Another 2 were available and I snapped up both - I did want some of the others but after splashing out with Brian, I had to be careful. I really didn’t want to give Mrs S another excuse for a Whack! Ouch! Pictured below is the Crenel puzzle which is the number 5 in the NOS series:

Just another 6 piece burr? I don't think so!

It is gorgeous in Purpleheart and looks just like a standard 6 piece burr except that no standard linear moves will work. The hallmark of this series is that odd diagonal movements are required and many are coordinate motion. This means that the standard Burrtools application cannot solve it for you.

Eric said this about it:

Crenel is the fifth of the NOS designs and is difficult to disassemble and assemble. It has extremely unusual movements that will have you muttering under your breath when you take it apart, and exclaming admiration for Gregory’s genius when you reassemble. The peculiar back and forth gate movements are extraordinary.

The first thing I noticed was that it was much looser than Eric’s usual output but after playing with it I reckon that is required to ensure that everything slides properly in all the required directions. Literally after a minute or so you get an idea of the complexity of what is happening inside. Notice in that picture the diagonally oriented slots and cuts.

As I played, I noticed that there are several blind ends and even unexpected back tracking is required - this must be the “back and forth gate movement” that he meant. The disassembly is not horrifically difficult - and after a short while the puzzle splits into two halves. One half falls apart easily and the other needs further moves before you end up with this:

These must have been a nightmare to fashion!

Make sure you have noted which pieces belong where before you scramble the pieces as the reassembly from scratch is a real challenge. I absolutely loved it - it is my favourite of the series so far. The fourth one - Transfer (NOS2) remains unsolved - it frightens me to death! Every piece moves at the same time!

Of course I had to take a group photo:

4 seemingly simple 6 piece burrs - don't let the looks fool you

I really hope that Eric makes the others in the series - if he does I will be sure to throw my money at him again. I suggest you go to Cubic now - there seems to be a few of each of the NOS puzzles left just now.

I have made a video of the Crenel puzzle to show off the amazing movements to those of you who haven’t managed to get a copy and also if you have managed to disassemble it but not managed to work out the reassembly then the video may help you.

Hopefully I have convinced you that diagonal moves are great? Now I need to get back to solving puzzles with circular moves - Derek and Steve's last productions - Twiddle Dee and Twiddle Dum are causing me some problems! Twiddle Dum is in pieces and I cannot put it back together and Twiddle Dee just will not come apart! They are MUCH tougher than previous helical burrs.

Damn these are tough!!!

I hope you have enjoyed the post - if you do have any suggestions on writing methods and platforms then I’m open to suggestions. Just comment below or drop me a line via my Contact page.

Two Balls are Better Than One!

Box with 2 balls

Another quickie today! I was on call for 24 hours yesterday and that is not good for rest, relaxation and sleep...so today I am absolutely knackered! Plus it has been a very busy and very stressful week with almost no puzzle solving being done. Luckily there have been a few purchases made and they are currently winging their way over various ponds to me and hopefully will provide some good entertainment for both me and you!

I knew the title would grab your attention! Most of us puzzlers tend to be boys and so would generally agree with that statement! However, if you are a girl then maybe you might disagree. Also as a medic, I know that sometimes 2 is surplus to requirement and thus one should be removed (my Urology attending physician friend, Steve Canfield, would agree)! Luckily for me, there was no knife in painful places involved in today's puzzle blog!

Today's focus is on a couple of puzzles I bought a while ago from the "published professor of wood", Brian Menold. His last batch of beauties included the Box with 2 balls designed by one of my good friends, Christoph Lohe. Brain said this about it:

"Another of Chris’s designs that I loved was this beauty. I loved the idea of the three captive pieces. The goal is simple. Removed the two steel balls from the box. The wood pieces inside the box do not come out. The acrylic sides help you to see what is going on and I used three contrasting woods for the pieces in the box to help distinguish them from one another."

I too have come to absolutely love Chris' designs! He seems to have a knack (as does Klaas Jan Damstra) of designing a puzzle that has more to it than a super tough high level of moves. There is a certain element of fun to the discovery of the Aha! moments as well as very quirky unusual shapes that make them a delight to play with and solve. This particular puzzle is only a level 19.15 and so should not be terribly difficult but it has proved to me to be a very tough challenge! It is a gorgeous thing with the box made from acrylic and Bolivian Rosewood and the pieces from Yellowheart, Wenge, Padauk with 2 steel balls.

Brian has made it very nicely and initially, only the Padauk piece can rise up out of the box releasing the balls and other pieces to move around inside. This puzzle is a mixture of a dexterity puzzle and an interlocking puzzle, the box needs to be turned back and forth as well as inverted periodically to control the sliding of the pieces and the balls inside. At times the Yellow heart piece also protrudes through the hole in the top. I did find half way through that I had completely forgotten my route and was unable to return the puzzle back to the beginning. For at least a day, I had to store the puzzle with one or more pieces sticking out the top. The puzzle is very reminiscent of the Sliding Tetris puzzle from Diniar Namdarian that made it into my Top Ten of 2017. Consisting of various shapes held captive in a cube with a ball held captive within a shifting maze, there are many similarities. The addition of the extra ball in a more confined space makes this puzzle a significant challenge.

When I first got hold of it I couldn't resist playing and on day two of play, I managed to dump two really pretty large heavy steel balls on top of a very unamused cat's head! I paid for that with a scratch as he shot off my lap. I was not expecting both balls to drop out at the same time but, POW! they did and in the end, I had no idea how I had managed it. In fact, if you think about it, dumping both balls out together cannot possibly be a Level 19.15.

I've got both my balls out!

After the requisite photos of my balls lying free, I tried to put them back in their box. Except I had no recollection of how I had done it. There are lots of ways of getting both balls inside with all the wooden shapes lying inside but getting the balls to the start position proved elusive. I worked on it for another couple of evenings before resorting to Burrtools (just for a clue). When I had entered it into BT and looked at the solution it had found, I sat back in amazement. It did not find the solution I had used to get them out! It had only found a route which required each of them to be inserted separately and juggling the first one inside a bit before adding the second one into the box. I and my bruised cat were both very certain that both balls had dropped out together. This motivated me to go back to the puzzle myself and confirm that I was not going mad and imagining things. For once BT had not provided the help I required. Finally, after another 2 days of play, I had managed to reset the puzzle after adding both balls at the same time. YES! I was right!

A little discussion with Chris confirmed that another puzzler had done the same thing and informed him. Let's just say that this was not what Chris had intended but he confirmed that my solution was correct. I love this puzzle! For some reason, I cannot for the life of me remember the path through it and despite having solved it 4 or 5 times, I currently have it stuck in an unsolved position as I cannot seem to find the way back to the beginning!

Yes, it is good to have 2 balls despite the fact that I am only allowed to look at them wistfully from across the bedroom where they are kept in a pickling jar on Mrs S' bedside table!

Kamelle Box

Kamelle Box

Brian also produced this clever little puzzle in that same batch. I consider it a crime to buy just one at a time, so I had to buy this one too (ahem! as well as the Cross in Cross). The Kamelle box is yet another design by Chris Lohe (I seem to be developing a collection of his designs). Brian described it like this:

"The last batch of designs Chris sent me had several designs that grabbed my attention. This one, The Kamelle Box, was one of the first. I love packing puzzles that seem simple but are actually quite challenging! Laszlo Molnar’s designs come to mind. Well I thought this clever design fit into that category too! Just place the three pieces into the box. A hole in the clear bottom helps with this but maybe not as much as you would like. Give this a try."

As soon as the name Laszlo Molnar came up I knew I had to have it! I have most of Laszlo's puzzles from Brian and have reviewed them here and here and here. Anything similar to one of Laszlo's puzzles is a "must have" for me! Brian made 3 versions available; I chose one of them and it was removed from my shopping cart by someone else buying it even more quickly! I chose another and my copy is a Red Elm box and Yellowheart pieces. It is truly lovely.

The first thing most packing puzzlers do is try and assemble the puzzle outside the box to work out how it can go together in a shape that should theoretically fit. I found a few possibilities and then had a play to see how the odd-shaped piece might go through the L shaped orifice at the top.

The bottom is acrylic with a hole for manipulating the pieces

There is a hole in the bottom to allow a finger inside (or a piece to protrude) and I set to playing with it. Just 3 pieces? Should be easy peasy? Hell no! I spent an hour getting nowhere and then another one! Eventually, I thought, "similar to one of Laszlo's designs?" Aha! What about a rotational move?

The Aha! moment was wonderful and with great pleasure, I had this:

Solved it!

I thought I had been really clever! I even put it back on the shelf convinced that I had solved it. At the last MPP, I brought it with me to show to the guys and I was a little surprised when Rob Hegge (visiting from the Netherlands) solved it in about 15 minutes. I know I am not terribly bright but I really didn't think I was quite that dim! I congratulated him on finding it so quickly and asked him whether he thought the rotation was good. He asked "what rotation?" and my jaw dropped! Is this solvable without a rotation? Apparently so!

I had solved it completely the wrong way and now need to go back to it and try again. OMG! I will be doing that as soon as I've finished with this blog post!

Not only do Brian and Chris produce fabulous puzzles...they manage to prove that I am a very poor puzzler! I really MUST do better!

Over the last few years, I have waxed lyrical about the incredible disentanglement designs from my friend Aaron Wang. He makes some of the most difficult (and fun) wire and string puzzles you will ever see. Mostly I have suggested that people visit the website of the Felix puzzle store to buy them but the lack of an English translation has put people off. The puzzles are now available direct from Aaron if you wish - he has put his current batch up for sale on the Puzzle Paradise auction site. There are lots of great ones to choose from - have a browse and check back for my reviews and then buy them...you won't be disappointed!

Packing in some beautiful wood

BDSM with interesting box to pack

At least twice this year (here and here) I have waxed lyrical about the fantastic collaboration between extraordinary puzzle designer Laszlo Kmolnar and the amazing craftsman Brian Menold. Laszlo has produced a whole series of cubic packing puzzles which look quite simple yet require some very complex thinking because they are not just about randomly rearranging pieces until they fit in the container. Each design has added something special....either rotational moves to orient some of the pieces once inside the container or some very unusual diagonal sliding moves to get the pieces to interlink. The shapes are just "simple" cubes very like the classic Soma cube but with containers that have very constrained (and sometimes multiple) openings for the pieces to be placed through. So not only do you need to find the correct one of a number of possible cube constructions but then you need to work out how to get the pieces through the window(s) and then how to get them facing the correct way. I absolutely adored the ones I had bought so far and despite not being good at packing puzzles, I had managed to solve them all.

I am not sure why the puzzle was called BDSM - I am not really into that scene despite all the Whack! Ouch!'s that I receive but maybe it's because you need to be masochistic to try it?

Gifts Provide a Real Challenge

Laurie's Three Piece Block Puzzle

Last week Allard reviewed this puzzle from Shane and I was soo soo pleased that he had also struggled with it! I saw the first person to solve it was Oli on his Puzzle Paradox FB page. It looked like he had had it for only a few hours and had managed to solve it straight away! I wasn't terribly surprised because he is a bit good at puzzling (certainly a lot better than me) but I was quite surprised that when I opened my own delivery box the same day, I couldn't even begin to repeat the feat - the first step eluded me!

Yet again, as agent 001, I was very grateful to be in receipt of one of Shane's masterpieces. It is very different from his usual work but as is usual with Shane, he was very self deprecating about the quality. There is a very good reason for his feelings about that....he compares himself to Lee Krasnow, Eric Fuller, Jakub Dvořák, Brian Menold, Brian Young and Scott Peterson! Pretty much every wood craftsman in the world looks bad next to them - these guys produce the best work most of us have ever seen and Shane doesn't stand a chance at producing stuff like that straight away at his first attempt at an interlocking solid puzzle. He knows what is required but freely states that he hasn't got time or the inclination to do that and I don't blame him. For me this puzzle is still absolutely lovely and made to fine enough tolerances that it is fun to play with and looks great on the shelf.

The puzzle is a classic from the devious design mind of Stewart Coffin and has long been the favourite of a great puzzle friend to us all, Laurie Brokenshire (one of the greatest puzzle solvers the world has ever seen). Shane wanted to make something special for Laurie but of course add his own Hales magic which of course has to be a locking mechanism of some sort - yes he looped the pieces on a chain and padlock!

Thought Outside the Box and.....Failed! So....

....thought back in it again!

Triagonal Agony

First new post of the year and this is a brilliant puzzle that really kept me going - proving that I am not terribly bright!

Back in November I had a little epiphany about packing puzzles....I needed to start thinking outside the box. One of the most important triggers for this was a brilliant puzzle that I bought from Eric Fuller - the One Hole designed by Bram Cohen. But even before this I had a trial run when Brian Menold sold me a beautiful copy of the L-I-Vator cube designed by Laszlo Molnar (apparently who is also known as Lacika Kmolnar). The L-I-Vator taught me that there were quite a few steps to be done between assembly of the basic shape outside of the box and the actual packing it in. The requirement for rotations of more than one of the pieces made it a really fun challenge and I loved it. It was not hugely difficult but certainly had a couple of brilliant A-ha! moments.

When Brian announced that he was producing another of Laszlo's creations, the Triagonal Agony, I promised myself that I would jump as soon as the went up for sale. I was actually on-line at the moment that Brian made his announcement that they were up for sale and quickly added my preferred one to my shopping cart along with another beauty (the Tropical Fish). There is an odd quirk of the shopping cart that Brian uses that allows puzzles already in someone's cart to be snatched out by someone else buying before the original purchaser gets to the checkout. This has happened to me several times over the years and Brian always tries to make good on it if you ask him about it. Apparently it was my turn to do the snatching! Hooray! I got there first! I ripped the copy out of someone else's cart when I paid. A day or so later Brian emailed me to ask whether I would agree to let that one go and he would make me another copy using the same woods as my L-I-Vator cube. Well I hate to disappoint anyone and I trust Brian implicitly so of course I agreed and a few weeks later I received my new toys with the Triagonal Agony being made out of Holly and Marblewood to match my other puzzle.

It's 2019, I Got a Bouquet and It Was FantasTIC!

Is That's a Hat-Trick?

......Erm No. This is About 4 Puzzles and Not 3!

Bouquet

At last, I have finally found some time to play with some toys and might have had some success at last! Yay! I can now tell Mrs S that I do still need to buy new toys as I am solving the old ones. I am not sure she believes me but I am sticking to my story.

I am going to start with the Bouquet which I bought from my good friend Brian Menold's Wood Wonders store quite some time ago (I am ashamed to admit that I got it way back in August and it has sat on, under or next to my puzzle chair ever since then! I love variants on 6 piece burrs (hence I own quite a few burr sets) and a burr with a frame (like Terry Smart's Premiere puzzle which I reviewed here) is completely irresistible for me. The fact that this particular puzzle was designed by another friend, Christophe Lohe, makes it even more special - he has a unique talent for designing puzzles that are just the right difficulty level and really interesting to solve. When I say "just the right difficulty level", I do mean it despite this taking me 3 months to complete!

Brian made a few copies of this in a number of different wood varieties and my rather striking copy is a Wenge frame, with Padauk and Maple burr sticks. It is simply stunning on display - maybe that is the real reason I left that on or around my chair for so long? BLUSH! It is very tactile, a lovely weight and feel to the finish (as we have come to expect from Brian) and I kept failing at it! There are quite a lot of moves possible from the beginning...some of them really look like they are leading somewhere until the trail runs cold and backtracking is required. Not only are the paths quite deep but there are several of them! They all look so enticing that I default to my "Einsteinian insanity" approach and kept getting surprised when nothing happened. Yes, I know, "she" is quite right...I am NOT terribly bright! I think I am supposed to be quite good at puzzling after such a long time but I always struggle.

Round and round and round in circles, I went! Surprisingly never getting bored (this shows how good a design it is) and as always got nowhere. I was obviously missing a critical move somewhere. But where? In fact, I was missing 37 moves (the puzzle is level 23.3.5.3.3)! In shame, I kept doing the same thing and putting the puzzle down for a few hours or days and even had thoughts of shelving it for a while - then in October, Mike published a review saying that he had managed his copy after just a few weeks. I continued my advance into madness and worked on it every evening. There had been a few comments on Facebook about it slightly taunting my prowess which kept me motivated.

At Last!!!!!

Finally, earlier this week I found something - instead of doing the same thing over and over again, I made a few moves and looked inside (visibility is great with this puzzle) and saw a potential opening. What if I???? Oooh! That's nice! Suddenly a new configuration but blocked again for a while. After a little more brain-ache, I realised that there was a certain rhythm to the sequence and then the first piece came out followed by the second. Removing the third and later pieces took a bit of figuring too as I tried to avoid inadvertent rotations and also keep a vague memory of the piece positions.

Wow! That is an absolutely brilliant BRILLIANT puzzle! The movement of the pieces is perfect thanks to Brian's craftsmanship and the design is simply awesome! This is one of the best 6 piece burr variants I have played with. Well done Chris! It is no longer available (due to the excessive time I spent solving it) but if you see one come up at auction then don't ask any questions, just buy it!

2019

Another puzzle which I received from Brian in the same delivery was the 2019 puzzle designed by the equally amazing Klaas Jan Damstra, another absolute favourite designer of mine. I wasn't sure about this particular design but I cannot buy just one puzzle from Brian...I think I may have bought 5 at that time!! Whack! Ouch! Brian made it sound intriguing with his description:

These pieces move about within the frame quite freely despite the rather close tolerance of the frame to the pieces. I was afraid there may be some unintended solutions but I was not able to find any. Not terribly difficult but a pretty good challenge that seems easier than it really is!

When it arrived, and I tried to take photos of it, I was amazed at just how mobile the pieces are! They basically slide around freely all over the place, including lots of rotation of all the pieces. It feels like it is just going to fall to bits but despite all the movement, it remarkably remains intact. It was really quite tough to make it sit nicely for a decent photo - in fact, if you turn it upside down it will not sit nicely to take a picture!

Despite all this movement, it is not a trivial puzzle to solve and there are no illegal solutions either. I played with this one when I got fed up with failing at Bouquet and realised after a couple of days that this also needed to be solved by looking inside. Once I started doing this then the Aha! moment occurred and I said to Mrs S that "I love it when a plan comes together" (that is for those of you old enough to remember the A-team). After 3 or 4 evenings of fiddling I had my 2 pairs of sticks and the lovely pinwheel frame:

That was a nice piece of fun

The reassembly is not a terribly hard challenge but you must remember which orientation to hold the frame and then try not to get the order of the pieces wrong when you put them back.

FantasTIC by Andrew Crowell

I cannot resist buying a TIC (Turning Interlocking Cube) when a new one comes up for sale! My collection is now pretty extensive - not quite up to the level of the world expert, Bernhard but still pretty good. I had noticed that there had been a couple of TICs in the IPP design competition and they looked like they had been made by Brian (apparently they hadn't). The designer initially was not known but let's face it...we ALL know who has been turning out TIC designs like there is no tomorrow for the last year or so! Yes, Andrew Crowell is some kind of evil genius when it comes to these. The sheer complexity and beauty of the designs that just pop into his head is nothing short of incredible. Luckily for the puzzling community, Andrew had allowed Brian to make a nice batch of them after the IPP was complete.

I had bought a few TIC's at the same time as I bought the Bouquet and 2019 puzzles but mostly they remain unsolved as a small pile of pieces around my puzzle chair. Despite that, the new ones looked so gorgeous that I had to have them. If Andrew thought they were good enough for the competition then that was all the encouragement I needed. These arrived at the beginning of November, after taking my photo and admiring the gorgeous combination of Purpleheart, Redheart, Yellowheart and Holly that had been used, I set to work straight away.

They are a wonderful 3 phase challenge...firstly, work out where everything needs to go (this can sometimes be a massive challenge if the pieces are small or not very complex). Secondly, try to establish the order in which the pieces might need to be added to the puzzle and finally, twist your bwain in the same way that Andrew has when he worked out all the required rotations. For many of these puzzles, I even get stuck at the first stage of the solve process! A puzzle with rotational moves always comes with the ever-present worry that a glued joint will be snapped but here, Brian has excelled himself with the very attractive dowel reinforcements in the pieces at risk.

This puzzle lives up to its' name...it is truly FantasTIC!! It is not terribly terribly hard and has just enough to keep you working on it for a good few hours (in my case days) and the positioning/rotation of the pieces follows a lovely logical sequence. That is...until I attempted to place the final piece! I knew where it needed to go but for the life of me, I could not get it into position. I tried to change the order of insertion but that just blocked other pieces. Stuck - AGAIN! Sob! After playing and sleeping on it for a couple of nights, I had the most marvellous Aha! moment! A very unexpected rotation suddenly leapt into my tired brain and I had my cube:

It lives up to its' name!
Andrew and Brian - you are amazing!

I have taken to storing these puzzles (as well as most of the Osanori Yamamoto packing puzzles) in the disassembled state so that I can challenge myself and friends again in the future. I went back to this one to write this article and...Lordy, that's still a huge challenge! One of my favourites of the year!

Hat-Trick by Laszlo Kmolnar

Finally, the 4th puzzle in the Hat-trick(????) from Brian is a gorgeous packing puzzle from another designer I am proud to call a friend, Laszlo Kmolnar. He is one of the most interesting packing puzzle designers out there and I try to get a copy of everything that he designs. In fact, with the names Laszlo Kmolnar, Osanori Yamamoto and Volker Latussek, we have the best packing challenge designers in the world today!

As soon as I saw this glorious creation in Box Elder and Redheart I knew I wouldn't be able to resist. The wood is stunning, the joinery on the box (with the highlighting corners) is gorgeous. Plus, another puzzle from Laszlo HAS to be added to the collection. It was a Top ten vote winner in the IPP design competition which means that there is something fun to the solution and hopefully doable by me.

The box cavity is 4x3x2 voxels in size and there are 6 identical L shapes to be placed inside. It did not take me very long to find a number of possible assemblies but at that point, I stopped dead. The T-shaped slot in the top of the box makes the insertion quite tricky! Pieces go in nicely at first and then we are stuck. It's immediately obvious that rotations are needed but where? There is a lot of space inside for the rotations to be done and I reckon I was stuck on this for a couple of evenings. The Aha! moment was a delight - it took me a couple of hours in total to solve it and with the calibre of the IPP attendees, it will be a perfect difficulty level for them to solve in the competition room.

It's gorgeous packed too!

Phew! That was quite a blog post and finally some decent solving by me! Hopefully, this winning streak will keep going! I have spent a few weeks on Brian Young's Ages sequential discovery burr and to my horror have literally only found 2 small moves so far! Luck! Don't fail me now!!!