Lacking QC – Messing a-round

Messing a-round is a 2D packing puzzle was designed by Alexander Magyarics and made by alienpuzzles.  It was 3D printed and used by Alexander as his exchange puzzle at the 41st International Puzzle Party (IPP).  The tray is white and each of the 8 pentominoes is made with a different color giving it a vibrant look.

The puzzle consists of 8 pieces that need to be packed in the tray although not all at the same time since the tray can only accommodate 7 of them.  The pieces are rounded and fit together nicely with each other.  However, 2 pieces are missing a couple of rounds and the pointy corners don’t fit nicely in the inside corners of other pieces.  Really, what has become of quality control these days?  At least these unrounded corners were discovered before distribution and the solution statistics were duly updated.  With these unrounded corners, the number of solutions for packing all the pieces except the T piece dropped from 128 to 1.  Similarly, the number of solutions without the Z dropped from 95 to 2 and the solutions without the L dropped from 19 solutions to 1.  It’s almost as if the corners weren’t rounded on purpose.

Although those unrounded corners are initially awkward, you quickly get a feel for what pieces won’t go together well.  Given that roughly 99% of the potential configuration are going to be eliminated by the unrounded corners, you begin to suspect that finding the valid 1 or 2 working solutions is going to be tough.

I experienced the expected almost solved situations several times.  The case where the last remaining opening for a piece matches a piece that was already placed and not the one in your hand.  And the case where the last piece in your hand would fit if only one of those unrounded corners had been properly made.

Of course, I started with the missing Z challenge since there were 2 solutions and it would be like finding 1 of 2 needles in a haystack instead of a single needle.  And sure enough, even though it took some time, I eventually found 1 of the solutions.  Challenge complete.  No, I didn’t feel compelled to search for the other solution.  It’s always there if my conscious starts to nag me but she’s usually after me to do other non-puzzle related things.

I did the missing L challenge next since T pieces are usually a real pain in these types of packing puzzles.   I found this one much more difficult than the missing Z challenge and it took a lot longer to solve.  In fact, I sat down with it several times without success.  I was relieved when the last piece finally went in to complete this challenge.

I saved the missing T challenge for last since I find that the T piece in 2D packing puzzles usually don’t work well with other pieces.  However, the T is so restricted in how it can work with other pieces that it actually supported finding the solution.  There isn’t much you can do with that T so it helped to narrow things down rather quickly.

If you like Messing a-round, Alexander has designed other puzzles where he’s forgotten to round the corners of some pieces.

Nothing Yet Designs Release: 20 March 2025, 12:00 PM EDT

The next puzzle release from Nothing Yet Designs (NYD) will take place this coming Thursday, 20 March 2025 at 12:00 PM EDT.  Don’t forget to put it on your calendar and set your alarm.

I recently received a box full of puzzles nicely wrapped in NYD’s signature packaging.  Opening a box full of new puzzles never gets old.  This particular box contained the 14 puzzles for this month’s release featuring designs by Frederic Boucher, Stewart Coffin, Haym Hirsh, Nan Ma, Naoyuki Iwase (Osho), Gilles  Kutten, and Alexander Magyarics.  14 puzzles!  That’s a lot of puzzling!  But take advantage of it since NYD has announced that this will be the last big release for the foreseeable future.  Subsequent releases are anticipated to be much smaller.

Like the prior releases, this release consists of a variety of puzzle types and after having played with them for several days, it’s now time to share these puzzles with you.

Minima Dice – Frederic Boucher

Minima Dice was designed by Frederic Boucher and is this month’s puzzle from the Minima series.  It is made with a sparkly black 3D printed box with the name in gold and ….. wait for it ….. Dice!  I have to say that it’s a nice touch to use dice to make Minima Dice and the dice chosen look awesome!  NYD went all out to provide the nicest dice that I’ve seen for this puzzle.  The dice come in a variety of colors and they will be shipped randomly.


After marveling at the nice dice, you will notice that Minima Dice is sticking it’s tongue out at you and just daring you to put it back in it’s place.  This dice sticking out of the box is your clue that the puzzle is not solved.  When solved, all the dice are nicely packed inside.  The next thing that you’ll notice is that the dice sticking out doesn’t fall out because it appears to be stuck to the dice behind it.  After some experimenting, you discover that some of the dice have indeed been glued together and some of them can’t even be removed from the box.

With some dice in hand and others stuck in the box, you can see where the external ones would fit but it doesn’t quite seem possible to get them there.  And thus begins the journey.  The journey of nothing seems possible until all of a sudden you discover something and you start to move forward again.  After a few rounds of this, Minima Dice will not longer be sticking it’s tongue out at you and you’ll have a compliant and nicely packed box.

I have to stress that there is not reason to stress the pieces.  Everything move nicely without any force whatsoever.

Drop Out (STC202) – Stewart Coffin

NYD has received permission from Stewart Coffin to produce puzzles based on his designs.  I was always under the impression that Stewart’s designs were in the public domain but this turns out to be an untrue rumor that has spread throughout the puzzle community for decades.  It was disclosed in a recent Mechanical Puzzle Discord (MPD) discussion that it was verified with Stewart that this was indeed not true and permission needs to be granted to produce puzzles based on his designs.  Lucky for us, NYD has obtained permission to provide these classic gems.

Drop Out is a 2D sliding puzzle with a dark side.  It looks simple enough – a 4x3 closed top tray with 5 pieces trapped inside and one outside that can be added through a hole in the top.  The 5 trapped pieces consist of 1 square and 4 dominoes.  The free piece is a disk that we’ll call a puck.  The goal is to add the puck to the tray through the entrance hole in the top and manipulate it and the pieces until it ends up on the other side of the tray.  There is an exit hole on the bottom of the other side of the tray that will release the puck on arrival.

After demonstrating this remarkable feat of puzzle prowess to your friends, your next goal is to challenge them to solve the puzzle as well.  Sadly, they will not be able to repeat your amazing accomplishment, whereupon you can collect your winnings.

When Stewart Coffin initially developed this puzzle, he discovered that after the puck traversed the tray, the other pieces were left in a state that was unsolvable if you immediately put the puck back in at the starting point.  It takes a quick 8-move reset of the pieces to get them back into a solvable state or you could take the longer 26-move route and put the puck in through the bottom and reverse the path.  The move counts that I offer here are from Stewart’s Geometric Puzzle Design book as Ï’m not certain how sliding moves are counted.

Drop Out is made with exotic wood pieces and a laser-cut acrylic tray.  The tray is white with a clear acrylic top to track the movements inside.  There is also a finger hole in the center of the top to help manipulate the pieces in the tray.  I definitely made use of the finger hole as well as the entrance and exit holes to aid the movement or non-movement of pieces.  And it’s small size makes it easy to carry in your pocket so that you can take it with you to torment entertain your friends.

The Rattle – Stewart Coffin

I first encountered The Rattle in 2012 when I had the opportunity to buy one from Eric Fuller at the 32nd International Puzzle Party (IPP).  I enjoyed the puzzle immensely and am happy to see that NYD is now making it available for people in the puzzle community that have yet to experience it.

This classic 3D restricted opening packing puzzle was the genius of Stewart Coffin who conceived it decades before restricted opening packing puzzles became the rage.  The objective is to pack 8 pieces in a 4x4x2 box with a 1x2 opening.  To help get you going, 1 of the pieces is already in the box.  That is to say, it is not possible to remove the smallest piece from the box.  Hence the name – The Rattle.  Unless it was named after the frustration induced vigorous shaking you will inevitably succumb to.

The pieces are made from exotic woods and the box from clear frosted acrylic with the puzzle information debossed on the inside to keep the outside nice and smooth.  The tolerances are spot on and the pieces move very smoothly within the puzzle.  It initially looks intimidating with 8 pieces, but you quickly realize that none of the 7 free pieces can lay down on the job after entering the box and the trapped piece is just not a stand-up guy.  These restrictions limit the orientations of the pieces and make the solution very tractable.

The solution entails a sequence of inserting, moving, and rotating pieces to get them in position.  And yes, you will be rattling the puzzle to get those pieces in position since your only finger hole is the piece entrance.  Although it’s not a stated rule, try solving it without sticking your finger inside.

When you’re done and if you can get the pieces back out, try finding the other 5 solutions.  They are all closely related but 2 of them require a little more effort.  Rattle on!

Decoy – Stewart Coffin

The Decoy (STC 187A) is one of Stewart Coffin’s most difficult 2D restricted opening packing puzzles if not the most difficult.  NYD is now making this challenging puzzle available in laser-cut acrylic with a nice black tray and clear cover and light blue pieces.  The color contrast looks great!

I took a well disciplined approach to solving this one (after several undisciplined approaches of course).  On careful inspection, I discovered that there were 2 openings in the top of the frame.   After some deep analysis, I deduced that one can support adding 2 of the pieces and the other can support adding all of the pieces.  Some carefully executed experimentation revealed that one of the pieces is trouble with a capital T.  This piece just doesn’t want to be part of the solution.  It complains no matter where you try to put it.  And just when you think you’ve outsmarted it, it has the last laugh by getting in the way of all the other pieces.

After working on this puzzle for quite a while, I was beginning to wonder if the name was implying that it wasn’t really a solvable puzzle but just something to distract me from the real puzzles.

Eventually, I found an assembly where 3 pieces could be removed, but the other 3 were stuck.  But they were so tantalizingly close to being unstuckable!  Surely, this was due to a manufacturing glitch and not my superior solving prowess.  Stewart’s notes on this puzzle do indicate that the frame needs to be slightly oversized or the pieces rounded to support rotations.  His AP-ART compendium also has the solution but I refuse to look at solutions.  Of course I have a large backlog of unsolved puzzles as a result.

In the end, I discovered the secret to the secret sauce and was able to pack all the pieces in the frame.  And no, the secret is not to unscrew the cover.  It may look simple but it packs a really nice challenge.

Pac Men? – Naoyuki Iwase (Osho)

Last month’s release (Nothing Yet Designs Release: 7 February 2025, 12:00 PM EST) included some nice designs by Naoyuki Iwase (Osho) - Sliding Heart and Flying Heart.  This month’s release includes 3 packing puzzles designed by Osho.  The first of these, Pac Men?, is a 2D packing puzzle made from laser-cut acrylic.  It features a black tray with yellow pieces and matching yellow highlights.  The 7 pieces include: 2 happy Pac Men, one hungrier than the other, and 5 sets of conjoined twins.  Each twin is the result of a Pac Man that has another Pac Man attached on the bottom in all 5 possible rotations.  The goal is to pack all these Pac Men within a 2D tray.  This puzzle looks so amazing they should make a video game from it.

The goal is to have all the packed Pac Men facing up, or face down if you don’t want them staring at you as you push them around.  Why do these Pac Men only have eyes on one side of their heads?  It’s to force a single solution.  There are other solutions to be had if you ignore the eye orientation restriction.  Yes, you can easily turn over the symmetric pieces but you get the gist of it.   And no, I don’t know how many there are.  Could be dozens, could be 1.

It doesn’t take long to realize that this is not a trivial 2D packer.  I spent hours solving this one.  I ran across several promising configurations that only served to hinder progress.  Once you find a nice compact configuration of pieces, you are loathed to give it up.  Yet give it up I did.  Several times.  Not that I didn’t go back to them on occasion.  Eventually, I found myself on the right track and managed to swap and move pieces around to finally arrive at the destination with 12 packed eyes glaring at me.  And I have to admit, it is definitely not obvious and I can see why it is so difficult to find.  Once you’ve solved it yourself, just should spend some time analyzing the piece configurations to appreciate how well they divert you from finding the solution.  It’s really good.

While solving Pac Men? I was half expecting to end up in a situation that required me to flip over a piece to fill a spot to complete the packing but this never occurred.  So now I have left, the challenge of finding at least one mixed cyclopian solution.

Bast-Hedron 8 – Nan Ma

For this month’s release, we get to welcome another member to the Blast-Hedron (BH) family.  So far we’ve had BH4, BH6, and BH12.  And now we have BH8 from Nan Ma.  Like BH4, BH8 is a Coordinate Motion (CM) puzzle that forms a regular octahedron from identically shaped pieces.  However, BH8 consists of 8 pieces - twice the number of BH4.  And it forms a rather special regular octahedron.  Each piece is an equilateral triangle with a triangular window in the center and arms extending up from each of the three sides.  Don’t leave these laying around on the floor if you walk around without shoes in the house.

Each of the 8 triangular pieces forms one of the 8 sides of the octahedron and borders 3 other pieces.  And the arms extend through the octahedron to eventually become visible in the windows of the 3 neighboring pieces while displaying a portion of each of the 3 neighboring pieces in its own window.  

If you think that BH8 is more difficult than BH4 or BH6, you would be right.  If you think that BH8 is easier than BH12, there you would be wrong, very wrong, soooo wrong!  It may be easy to determine how the colors need to be arranged, but assembling this one is a real challenge!

The goal is to assemble the octahedron so that no adjacent triangles should be the same color.   BH8 was 3D printed using 4 colors providing 2 pieces with each color.  This results in an octahedron where each side shows all 4 colors, 1 for the triangular side and the other 3 for the neighboring arms that show in the center window.  However, if you manage to get it back together and find that the color scheme is a bit off, my guess is that you will eventually get used to it.

I struggled for a while trying to find the best way to juggle 8 pieces.  Add pieces individually?, in pairs?, by halves?…  The problem with this one is that BH8 seems to be very particular about getting all those points lined up just right before they allow the pieces to collapse inward.  I spent a considerable amount of time determining how all the pieces need to be aligned, which just highlights how difficult it is to get things together.  Luckily, when you get enough pieces together, even though it won’t collapse inward if things aren’t perfectly aligned, it does a good job of not collapsing outward either, allowing you to locate misalignments and adjust them.

This one’s my favorite from the BH family so far.  Complex, difficult, and attractive.

Pyramid In A Cage – Naoyuki Iwase (Osho)

Ah, this one brings back fond memories.  I think I had one of these when I was a little kid, but the goal was to put the pieces in the box instead of taking them out.  At least I think it was something like this.  Unlike the one I had as a kid, the shape inside doesn’t seem to match any of the openings.  Not a good sign.

Pyramid in a Cage is made with laser-cut matte black acrylic cage and contains a dark blue 3D printed pyramid.  This particular puzzle is not to make a pyramid but to free it from it’s cage.  Instead of being made with bars, this particular cage has some pretty large openings, 1 per side, and you need to determine which opening is suitable to pass the pyramid.  Let’s call them Hexagon, Phillips Screw Head, Ninja Star, Piece of Pie, Teardrop, and UFO.  Note that none of them is a triangle to match the profile of the pyramid.  To be clear, the pyramid is a regular tetrahedron.  And no, you can’t blast it out of there.

If the pyramid were outside the cage, you would be able to take it into a dark room and use a flashlight to see what types of profile shapes it would make in different orientations.  You could then use that information to match it to one of the opening shapes.  Or could you?

When it arrived, I decided that attempting to solve it by looking at the shapes without testing each one was the way to start on this one.  I even enticed my wife to join me so that we could each come up with our own guess and discuss the shapes.  We each provided our top 2 guesses and even overlapped on one of the shapes.  Thus we had 50% of the shapes covered.

Giving myself the best opportunity to gloat over the eventual win, we started with the one that only she picked.  Nope.  The one we both picked?  Nope.  Next up was my first choice and obvious winner.  Nope!  The next 2?  Nope, nope.  At this point we’d tried 5 of the 6!  It couldn’t be that last one!  Yup.  This one is really clever!  Not difficult to solve but well hidden and clever!

Best Friends – Frederic Boucher

Best Friends is a 2D packing puzzle designed by Frederic Boucher.  It was made from laser-cut acrylic with a green tray, black cats, and white dogs.  Each piece consists of a conjoined cat and dog.  The pieces consist of 9 paired best friends and 2 round treats.

The pieces only have faces debossed on one side so you don’t have to worry about which way to flip them.  And the pieces are thick giving them a very nice tactile feel.  They are a real pleasure to handle when solving this puzzle.

After working on Pac Men?, you just know this one’s going to be hard.  Are the pieces going to fight like cats and dogs?  Duhhhhh.  But even so, I didn’t find this one nearly as difficult as Pac Men?.  I found the solution rather quickly and attribute this to the fact that the tray is nearly completely filled making it easier to solve.  I say nearly since I don’t count the 2 spaces occupied by the treats since they can basically go anywhere or more specifically, in the 2 empty spaces after you’ve added all the friends.  Remember how we said that adding 2 single voxel pieces to Animals Party to fill the 2 empty spaces wouldn’t make it any easier to solve (Nothing Yet Designs Release: 7 February 2025, 12:00 PM EST).

This is a very friendly puzzle that looks amazing, feels amazing, and is a nice challenge that isn’t amazingly difficult to solve.

S&L Crisis – Haym Hirsh

Who knew that we would have an S&L Crisis so early in the new administration.  This particular crises comes to us thanks to Haym Hirsh.  Some puzzle are scary enough but with a name like S&L Crisis, that’s just over the top.

S&L Crisis is a 3D packing puzzle consisting of a green 3D printed stand and 6 dark brown 3D printed pieces that need to be packed within the stand.  Each of the pieces is identical, fits within a 3x3x5 space, and appears as an S when viewed along one axis and an L when viewed along another.  When packed, the pieces fit within a 5x5x5 space.  The stand has 3 sides of a 5x5x5 cube and stands (as stands do) on one corner to cradle the pieces.  There are also 4 fixed cubes in the bottom corner to force a single solution to the packing problem.

Looking at this puzzle, you just know it’s going to be easy!  Fairly simple looking pieces.  All identical.  Fits a cubic area.  Probably has a symmetric solution.  Nothing to worry about!  And that’s how I set myself up for my very own puzzle solving confidence crisis.  I couldn’t solve this simple looking puzzle!

Starting out rather cocky, I decided that I would simply take the 6 pieces and make a cube without the assistance of the stand.  In the back of my mind, I viewed the stand as a potential trap to lead novice puzzlers away from finding the solution.  So I set about to quickly make a cube, identify the holey corner, and place it in the stand.  What a great plan!  Except I couldn’t make a cube.  How embarrassing!

I spent a long time shuffling pieces around only to be astounded at how difficult it was to pack them together.  I was even starting to be happy when I achieved a 5 piece cube.  That 6th piece would just not go in.  And since they were all identical, it was hard to pin that culprit down.  They all seemed to be conspiring against me.

In the end, which really wasn’t the end, I finally had a 6 piece cube.  But none of the corners was holey enough.  It needed to be holier than holey and my temporary confidence boost completely deflated.  After several more attempts at this, I decided to go with clever rather than cocky and use the stand to develop a holey procession of pieces whereby I would build the cube around the required corner.  This is automatically supported by the 4 cubes fixed in the bottom of the stand.

And let me tell you about my success.  There was none!  Instead of creating incompatible cubes, I could only create cubes with 5 pieces in the stand (without having pieces stick out, which was beginning to look rather attractive by the way).  I created several 5 piece cubes in the stand, I shuffled pieces around, I attempted to switch to other corners, I prayed to the S&L, SAIF, and even the FDIC … all to no avail.

I was in full crisis mode!  And I was not about to admit defeat within the text accompanying the photos of this simple looking puzzle.  So I spent even more time on it but now have to call a cease fire and make a deal to blog about this one again once I solve it in order to get this blog out before the next NYD release.

This puzzle packs a tremendous ROI.  You should definitely put your money here!

J11GSAW – Haym Hirsh

Haym Hirsh has been on a tear with developing ever increasingly difficult Jigsaw Puzzles.  Eschewing the tedium of 1000+ piece jigsaw puzzles, Haym has taken to reducing these to less than a dozen pieces.  In fact, the first one I worked on consisted of only 4 pieces (All Corners, No Corners – 4-Piece Jigsaw).

This NYD release has Haym’s latest Jigsaw creation.  It’s called J11GSAW but it comes with 22 pieces.  What’s up with that?  What’s up is that it has 2 challenges supported by their own set of 11 pieces.  As with the prior Jigsaw puzzles, the pieces are squares with innies and outies added to give them a puzzly look.  Yes, believe it or not, innies and outies are technical jigsaw speak.  One set has these features located on the center of the edges and the other has them near the corners.  The puzzle is made with laser-cut acrylic with a white tray with blue highlights and one set of 11 red pieces and another set of 11 blue pieces.    

I should warn you that Haym has a black belt in packing packing geometric shapes and is the record holder for packing 19 equilateral triangles in the smallest possible circle.

After being beaten up on S&L Crisis, I approached J11GSAW with a bit of trepidation.  Unlike S&L, this one did not appear to be easy so I was hoping to be completely wrong again!  And I was.  While both the red and blue sets were solid challenges, I managed to solve them within a reasonable amount of time.

Is this just a square packing exercise?  Not at all!  Haym has taken it to the next level and jigsawed the design to nicely integrate these 2 aspects into a nice set of challenges.  They are both very well done!

Au Pays – Gilles Kutten

Recently, a new puzzle designer has popped up on the Mechanical Puzzle Discord with new 2D tray packing and symmetry puzzles.  His symmetry puzzles have quickly gone from first attempts to producing excellent designs in a matter of days.  The first of these refined designs by Gilles Kutten is Au Pays consisting of 4 dark blue laser-cut pieces based on a triangular grid.  As with most good symmetry puzzles, the pieces have similar characteristics allowing them to be put together in multiple ways without an obvious hint as to which ones may be correct.  You have to work for it.  It’s not overly difficult but a nice challenge and well done.  Worth getting if you like 2D Symmetry Puzzles.

Monster Eats Ducks – Gilles Kutten

The second 2D symmetry puzzle from Gilles Kutten in this release is a monster.  This one is really tough.

Monster Eats Ducks is made from orange laser-cut acrylic and consists of 4 pieces.  The pieces don’t look like they are very complex.  You can almost imagine that they were randomly created like duck sauce stains on a table cloth.  Playing around with the pieces demonstrates that they can interact with each other in any number of ways.  And therein lies the problem.   With so many ways that they can interact with each other, it is difficult to zoom in on the correct relationships.

After establishing how easy it was to connect pieces, I quickly determined that it was not as easy to get something that remotely looked like it would even pretend to be symmetric.  And as difficult as it was to initially find anything close to symmetric, after an extended period of time, I eventually found a couple of configurations that were indeed very close.  In fact at one point, I thought that I had solved it only to realize moments after announcing my triumph that it was just slightly off from being symmetric.  Slightly embarrassed, I had to do a take-back AHA (that’s AHA spelled backwards and pronounce with a descending tone instead of a rising one).

During my initial search for symmetry, there was a significant hint that I dutifully ignored for a long time.  However, I eventually caught on and began symmetricizing pieces in earnest.  And it still wasn’t easy.  I kept circling back around to the comfort of the close configurations.  After a protracted battle, the monster finally reared its ugly head, or maybe I should say its symmetrically appealing head, to celebrate the win.

This is an amazingly good puzzle from a new designer.  I highly recommend this one if you are interested in 2D symmetry puzzles.

Sharpened – Gilles Kutten

Not only is Gilles Kutten honing his skills but he is also sharpening the pieces.  The pieces of his third symmetry puzzle in this release have been sharpened and are rather pointy.

Sharpened is a 2D symmetry puzzle made from red laser-cut acrylic and consists of 5 pieces.  Although it has more pieces than Monster Eats Ducks, solving this puzzle is not nearly as difficult.  The final shape is far from obvious.  It always amazes me how the pieces of 2D symmetry puzzles can hide the final shape so well.  This one’s more fun than difficult.

Windy – Alexander Magyarics

NYD has produced several 2D symmetry puzzles designed by Alexander Magyarics and Windy is the latest entry in this collection.  Windy is made from dark blue laser-cut acrylic and consists of 3 pieces that together make a symmetric shape.  

Windy provides a perfect balance of being challenging while not appearing very complex.  I expected no less from an experienced symmetrologist like Alexander.  With only 3 pieces, you would think that you could try every possible combination of the pieces to quickly identify the solution, but this is not the case.

I find that my best strategy for solving symmetry puzzles is to use hindsight.  I came to this conclusion a long time ago when I realized that the solutions were obvious after I had solved them.  It’s a bit like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Puzzle where you know now that you don’t know the positions of the pieces and that you don’t know when you will know the positions of the pieces.

Being temporally challenged, I had to manually wade through all the events between initiating and completing the solution constantly moving against the wind.  And this puzzle is Windy!  After completing my go-to random try this and that method to filter out the easy challenges, I moved on to the more serious approach otherwise known as the slightly less random try this and that method.

Without spoiling anything, the pieces sport clues to be exploited although resolving the issues that they present seems to be difficult to accomplish.  I found myself going around in circles on this one before I finally constructed a symmetric shape.  It’s very tricky and I recommend adding it to your 2D symmetry puzzle collection.

You may also want to check out Alexander’s other 2D symmetry puzzles from NYD including Amoeba, Baikonur, DNA, Thin LiZZy, F Fort, Hangers, Three Keys, RMF, Half Correction, A Lady’s Mess, Tasmania, Talons, and Delta Force.

Answers From The Void – Sixmetry

There is something appealing about a packing puzzle with identical pieces.  I think it has to do with the initial assessment done by the subconscious mind where it realizes that it has less shapes to deal with and throws a couple of dopamine chits your way.  And yes, fewer shapes does equate to less complexity, which in many cases results in easier.

Sixmetry is a 3D packing puzzle designed by David Goodman and made by Vinco.  It was used by Patrick Major at the 41st International Puzzle Party as his exchange puzzle.  The puzzle consists of 6 identical wood pieces that need to be packed in a 4x4x4 wooden box.  Each piece consists of a 2x2x1 board attached to a 2x3x1 board.   The pieces consisting of 10 voxels each only use 60 voxels of the 64 voxel box leaving 4 of them unoccupied.

Even without the clue in the name, I would have guessed that the solution would be a symmetric shape.  In fact with 4 empty voxels in a 4x4x4 box, I assumed we had a Slothouber–Graatsma situation brewing here.  Don’t google that if you want to avoid spoilers.

There are a lot of puzzles that fall into this category.  A lot.  So many!  And after so many, when you are presented with one of these, you basically know where the empty voxels are located, which simplifies determining the solution.  And this allowed me to solve Sixmetry in about 5 minutes.  I’m sure it would have taken a lot longer if I hadn’t know the positions of the empty voxels.

And extra points for Vinco for providing the non-solution packing configuration on the instruction sheet.

A Physical Manifestation Of An Ethereal Concept – T Pack

Haym Hirsh, a professor of computer science for 100100 years, presents us with the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework.  This educational model describes the intersections between technology, pedagogy, and content for the effective integration of technology within teaching.  It consists of 3 contextual knowledge categories: content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and technological knowledge, the 3 pairwise intersections of these categories, and the overall 3-way intersection representing the entire framework.  Realizing that such a conceptual frameworks would not capture much interest, Haym transformed this abstract concept into something more physical albeit somewhat still cerebral.  The framework has become a box frame, and the 3 knowledge categories and 3 pairwise intersections have each been embodied in a T.  He has anointed this physical construction with the name T Pack.  Note the introduction of the critical space to distance it from the original ethereal concept.

T Pack is a 3D apparent cube packing puzzle designed by Haym Hirsh and made by Wood Wonders.  It consists of 6 wood T-shaped pieces that need to be packed within a 3D printed box made with wood infused filament.  And the box has been specifically constructed so that each side presents a smooth 3D printed plate-side finish.

Each side of the box has a square opening in each corner except for 1 side that has a corner shifted to the middle of a side to merge with the adjacent corner.  The edge of the new opening has also been removed to provide a full 2x1 voxel opening for inserting and removing the Ts.  And even though you can’t pass the Ts through the square windows, they are large enough for the pieces to poke out of them.

The goal is to pack 6 Ts in a box.  What a great concept!  I’m quite partial to 6 T puzzles (Shhhh! She Just Turned – 6T and Not A Box For Tea, A – T-Box).

Since all the pieces are the same T shape,  you only need to investigate how that one piece can enter the box and how it can manipulated once inside.  After looking for possible 3x3x3 assemblies outside the box, it quickly becomes apparent that some of the pieces will need to be rotated.  And although there’s not a lot of room within the box, all those windows facilitate the rotation of pieces.

Since not all the voxels within the box will be occupied by the Ts, the first piece removed from the solved configuration does not necessarily need to come out in the first move.  In fact with all those windows, there could possibly be a lot of movement before the first piece comes out.  I focused on the removal of this first piece as a starting point of how the pieces would be configured.  Of course, I didn’t start with the correct way to remove this piece and spent quite a bit of time unnecessarily cajoling pieces into positions to no avail.

It’s always fun when you get half the pieces in, decide it’s not going to work, and then have to figure out how to get them back out for another think.  Sometimes its because I naively thought I could do something undoable or sometimes its because I simply lose my way.  I’ve recently noticed a strong correlation between puzzle experience and losing the thread of a solution.

After discovering an infinite number of ways that the Ts can’t be rotated within a partially filled box, I finally manged to get everything aligned and had an apparent cube of Ts within the box.  The solution entails a nice sequence of moves with rotations and I really enjoyed this one.  At the time of this posting, T Pack was still available at Wood Wonders.

Infesting In Puzzles – Parasitic Version

I have a lot of burr puzzles and they seem to be accumulating at an alarming rate.  This seems to be my retirement strategy.  Collect as many wood burrs as possible for the day I can’t afford the heating bill.  Or maybe they’re just fuel for the soul.  

I particularly love 6 piece burrs.  And 6 piece burrs with 9 pieces are even better!  This seems to be the result of an ever increasing tendency to stuff things in burrs.

Parasitic Version is a 6 + 3 piece burr designed by László Molnár.  It was made by Pelikan Puzzles and used by Gergely Prémecz as his exchange puzzle for the 41st International Puzzle Party (IPP).  The 6 main burr pieces consist of 2 pairs each of Wenge, Acacia, and Purpleheart. and the parasites are made from Maple and Bubinga.

You know from the start that getting parasites into the burr will not be easy since Wenge, Acacia, and Purpleheart are naturally pest resistant hardwoods.

I believe that the puzzle came with the 6 piece burr assembled with the parasitic pieces outside.  However, it was such a long time ago from when I originally received it and made a pile of pieces that I really can’t remember how it arrived.  I really don’t know why I keep acquiring new puzzles when I could just redo the same ones over and over again for the first time.  Yes, I do – and you do too!

I started the solving process by assuming that the 6 large burr pieces were actually paired by wood type.  Wouldn’t you?  It doesn’t necessarily have to be that way, but typically if there are 3 types of wood used, the pieces are paired,  This gives you a boost in the solving process since you don’t have to worry about all those other combinations.  Of course it’s also sometimes used to force a single or more difficult configuration.  So using the logic of purposeful intent, I went with the paired approach and started to look at possible configurations.

For each possible configuration of 6 burr pieces, the next step is to determine whether the parasites can be packed within the central envelope.  After a couple rounds of that, the process changed to one of looking to generate specific configurations that will accommodate the parasites instead of testing randomly generated candidates.

And then the fun really starts when you have to insert the parasites.  Of course, you can’t just let them dig their way in.  That would be boring!  You must go through all the proper channels and find the correct way to get them all nestled in their new home.  After spending some time with these buggers, you begin to get a feel for what will pack and what won’t that you can then narrow down to the winning configuration.  Even then, you have to still get it together, which I found an interesting juggling act with 9 pieces and 2 hands.

When everything is said and done, you are rewarded with a 6 piece burr that looks exactly like it did when you started.  But you know the difference because now, you’re infested in the process.

A Small Puzzle Can Still Be – Epic

EPIC is a 3D apparent-cube packing puzzle designed by Václav Obšivač from VIN&CO.  It is rated at a level of 5+, which is VIN&CO’s highest level of difficulty.  It consists of a box and 6 pieces that have to be packed in the box.  The 6 pieces are all identical - well almost identical.  Each piece consists of a square plank with a cube attached to a corner and one of the pieces has a misaligned cube.  I don’t know how this got past quality control.  Speaking of quality control, the box is far from being cubic and slants quite a bit in all directions.  In other words, it’s an oblate trigonal trapezohedron.

I’ve always been intrigued by the look of Epic and jumped when I had a chance to acquire one recently.  The skewed shape is what makes this puzzle interesting.  Although it shouldn’t, the shape has a tendency to throw your perspective off.  It’s a nice touch to a clever puzzle.

Since the puzzle arrived assembled, I quickly took it apart without paying attention to the details. As usual, I’m so successful at this that I need to start with determining what the solved configuration looks like.  And in this case, it’s not too difficult to determine what shape the apparent cube needs to be.

Each side of the box has a rectangular opening that allows pieces to added.  All that needs to be done is to determine how to construct an apparent cube and then feed the pieces through the openings into the box.  Once I got past the skewed perspective, I was able to quickly construct the apparent cube within the box albeit with my head cocked at an odd angle.  For a 5+ level puzzle, I found this one a pretty quick solve aside from the torticollis effect.  However, it’s well done and I’m glad I picked it up.

Finding Elegance – Four Pieces

Four Pieces was designed by Emrehan Halici and entered in the Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition at the 41st International Puzzle Party (IPP).  He also used it as his exchange puzzle for IPP41.  It is made from laser-cut acrylic with a double-sided black tray with white lettering and 4 red pieces that need to be packed in the tray.  It also comes in a very nice box specifically made for the puzzle.

The pieces remind me of the great white shark Bruce from Finding Nemo.  He was the character that lead a support group for sharks that want to be friends with other less toothy fish.  And indeed, your mission here is to get these fishy pieces to cooperate within a room.

Each side of the tray has a different shaped conference room for the Fish Are Friends, Not Food meetings.  One side of the tray has a square conference room to be filled and the other has a hexagonal conference room.

I only spent a few minutes trying to herd great white sharks around before really getting down to examining the pieces.   The sharks had the look of being the product of intelligent design leading me to assume that there would be an elegant solution.  With that in mind, I tackled the puzzle in earnest.

I started with the square conference room since it had a higher order of symmetry, which I figured would have an easier discoverable elegant solution.  And I was not wrong.  It didn’t take long to commence the meeting in the square conference room.

The hexagonal conference room takes a bit more effort,  I found a couple of configurations that were just shy of fitting.  I was tempted to blame the contractors but I’m all too familiar with the close but wrong scenario where more effort (mental, not physical) is required.  And yes, my faux solutions were elegant as well.  I eventually realized what I was missing and found the true elegant solution to bring the final meeting to order.

And finally, please note that you are packing great white sharks in conference rooms.  There are no red herrings in these meetings.