Cranial Conundrum – Skull Puzzle

It’s that time of year again when the weather gets cooler, the nights get darker, and monsters roam the land.  Yes, Halloween had finally arrived!  Having friends that eschew Christmas and go all out for Halloween, it was time to play dress up once again.  I already had a bad reputation for being a puzzler, so being able to don a mask and go in disguise was a definite benefit.  However, I quickly blew my cover by handing out little puzzles as if they were Halloween treats.  I’m hoping that scaring all those people counts as a win for a Halloween party.

I always like to bring the hosts a gift.  Usually something puzzley to go with the theme of instilling fear in the guests.  Most years I have a difficult time deciding what puzzle to bring but this this year I was lucky and popped one off the top of my head.  It was a skull dissected into 6 pieces that I encountered on Thingiverse.

Skull Puzzle was developed and made available by DaveMakesStuff on Thingiverse.  It consists of 6 burrish pieces with a difficulty level of 2, i.e., it takes 2 moves to remove the first piece.  It may not be a difficult puzzle but it has an amazing visual appeal.  And as amazing as it looked online, it was even more amazing once printed.

Normally, I like to deliver puzzles unassembled mainly because that’s how I like them.  However, in this case I delivered the Skull Puzzle assembled so that it could be enjoyed in all its glory during the party.  My plan was to take it apart before I left so that the hosts could enjoy solving it themselves.  But when the time came to leave, I didn’t have the heart to disassemble it, fearing that next year I would return to a fractured skull.  I needn’t have worried.

Much to my surprise, the very next day I received a message that they had solved the puzzle.  It also reminded me once again how the level of difficulty varies between people.  It took me a few minutes to assemble the puzzle but took two other people working together a long time to reassemble it once they had taken it apart.  And they considered it far from easy.  I won’t repeat the descriptive language that they used to describe their joy of the process.

I suspect that next year I may need a better disguise costume.

Plastic Picnic Plates – Three Plates Burr

Puzzles don’t have to be expensive.  Some nice puzzle can be had for the cost of 3D printing using sites such as Printables and Thingiverse.  Just hop on any of these sites and search for puzzle and you will be rewarded with a large selection of puzzles to choose from.  However, I would recommend avoiding puzzles that don’t appear to have approval from the designers if at all possible.

Three Plates Burr made an appearance at a Puzzle Picnic earlier this month and I ended up with it in my possession at the end of the day.  It is a level 14, 3-piece board burr made available by a mad gardener on Printables.

I ended up with this burr since I was unable to solve it during the picnic.  With only 3 pieces, I assumed that it would go together quickly.  And once it starts going together, it does go together rather quickly.  The only problem is getting it started.

There’s only one assembly for the pieces and a little investigation will convince you of that.  Of course, I always end up taking more time than necessary to accomplish this.  The real challenge is to determine how the pieces need to be placed to start that final 14-move sequence to get all the pieces to their final resting place.  Once you have successfully accomplished the first of the 14 moves, you’re pretty much set on track to completing the following 13.

Finding the start of the 14 move assembly was well hidden and I enjoyed spending quite a bit of time hunting for it.  Three Piece Burr isn’t that difficult but it is tricky.  It’s certainly worth checking it out for the price.

Oh! – Omicron

Wood Wonders’ recent release included many enticing puzzles with several new designs from some of my favorite designers.  There is a nice selection of symmetry puzzles, 2D and 3D packing puzzles, burr puzzles, and Turning Interlocking Cube (TIC) puzzles.  Of course, I wanted to start with one of the TICs.

Omicron (aka Omicrom) was designed by Girish Sharma and made by Wood Wonders.  It looks absolutely beautiful with the contrast between the 4 pieces made from Bloodwood, Wenge, Maple, and Roasted Poplar.  As soon as it was released, Omicron went viral and is now sold out along with the other TIC in the release.  I always used to tell myself that the design was the most important aspect of a puzzle but the stunning look of those exotic woods makes me wonder whom I’m really trying to fool.  However, since Wood Wonders provides both, it’s a win-win.  And I’m always impressed with the little details like reinforced joints to provide durability.

There’s just something relaxing about spending time solving TICs. Om-Micro-On, Om-Micro-On… I can easily just drift through the puzzle-verse, sliding and turning pieces past each other as time continues to drag the real world down outside. 

Designed by Girish, you might suspect that rotational moves would be required and you would be right.  What you may not have anticipated is that the 4x4x4 puzzle would appear as a solid cube.   This is a departure from Girish’s previous TIC offerings and demonstrates his ticnacious dedication to the genre.  Especially since it is definitely more challenging to produce an apparent cube TIC without external voids showing.  However, I find it more aesthetically pleasing and worth the effort.  Having said that, I still love TICs with external voids as the additional space allows for more uncertainty in the assembly and additional complexity along the solution path.

Although it is straight-forward to determine where all the Omicron pieces need to go, it takes quite a few moves to get there.  Omicron requires more than a dozen moves to remove the first piece.  In fact, it takes 15 moves, which may or may not have anything to do with Omicron being the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet.  Of course, it’s provided unsolved, so that would be 15 moves to put the last piece in.  It is all part of a well-orchestrated dance of all the pieces to celebrate the grand finale of the solve.  Even with all those moves, including some rotations, Omicron is not overly difficult as you happily skip along the solution path.

If you missed out on getting a copy of Omicron, don’t despair.  More copies will be available at Wood Wonders in the near future.  You’ll definitely want this one for your TIC collection.

Round Bevels – Petit Albert

There’s some severe beveling going on with Volker Latussek’s latest 3D packing puzzle.  Why?  Because it introduces the ability of the pieces to perform an additional rotation within the box.  Of course this extreme beveling is not beveling at all but rounding where the edge is rounded with a specified radius instead of a simple angled cut. 

Volker Latussek has been generating a plethora of petit packing puzzles in the 2xXx3 format.  The puzzles use a variety of box shapes, openings, piece shapes, holes, rods, spheres, drawers, trapped pieces, and more.  This is the story of Petit Albert.

Petit Albert consists of 5 pieces that need to be packed within a 2x3x3 box.  The box has a 3 voxel opening on one the 2x3 sides to add/remove/manipulate pieces.  There are no other openings in the box.  The pieces consist of 4 tetracubes and 1 dicube.  I’ll avoid naming the pieces to avoid aggravating any sensitivities that various readers may have due to the lack of a definitive naming convention.  I’ll just say that the 2 types of tetracubes are mirror images of each other and that there are 3 of 1 and 1 of the other.  AND!!! the 3/1 split is aligned with the shape of the box opening.  Don’t change one without the other.

Each of the 4 tetracubes has a rounded corner where the radius of the round is equal to the voxel size.  This allows an additional rotation that would have been blocked by an intact corner.  This extra degree of freedom provides one more tool in the bag for solving the puzzle.  Of course in reality, it’s really one more tool used by Volker to confound your solving process.

I found the hardest part of the solve was convincing myself that I had indeed found how the pieces are assembled within the box.  The assembly has some easy to recognize desirable features and yet still appears to fall short due to the difficulty in seeing how the pieces can be manipulated into their required positions.  I’d almost go as far as to say that the first piece to be added to the box is the most difficult to get in place.  Almost.

Petit Albert provides a good mix of assembly, piece interaction, and rotational movements that make this puzzle a winner.  I believe that it will be available as part of the next Pelikan release and I definitely recommend adding it to your collection if you have been enjoying Volker’s other petit puzzles.

Two Lips Are Better Than One – Tulip 1

What do you call a puzzle with a large square corner opening that incorporates 2 lips constructed from triangular half-squares?  Perhaps 2 Lips or maybe even better Tulip.  And if there is more than one design like that, maybe they can be called Tulip 1 and Tulip 2.

Tulip 1 was designed by Osanori Yamamoto in 2019.  It is a 3D apparent cube packing puzzle where the objective is to assemble 3 pieces within a frame such that there appears to be a 3x3x3 cube within the frame although there may be unseen holes within the frame.  Spoiler/No Spoiler – there are vacant voxels when the pieces are packed in the frame.  The frame has a very large and very obvious open corner to add and remove pieces and a single voxel opening in the opposite corner.  My version was made by Pelikan with a Padouk frame and Wenge pieces.  It looks and feels fantastic and is a fun little puzzle with 13 moves to take the first piece out.  Of course, since I consider it an assembly puzzle, it’s really 13 moves to get the last piece in.

As already mentioned, the large opening in the frame has 2 lips.  Why is this of interest?  I would argue that each lip makes its corner open so that the adjacent internal voxel needs to be occupied to satisfy the apparent cube criteria while at the same time being closed so that pieces are barred from being removed there.  Open and closed.

To solve Tulip 1, my initial attempt was to find an assembly of the pieces that would fit within a 3x3x3 space but I ended up with too many assemblies that obviously wouldn’t satisfy the apparent cube requirement.  So I looked for assemblies with a solid corner to fill the large opening while simultaneously having cube in the opposite corner to fill the smaller opening.  This didn’t quite do it for me either, so I instead focused on ways to use the smaller opening.  Now sure, that opening could be there just to force a cube in that corner but I was going on the premise that one of the pieces would eventually have to stick out of that hole.

And thus I found a good candidate assembly that permitted a nice sequence of a few moves.  And if I’ve learned anything from these types of puzzles, if it makes a few nice moves, it’s probably the start of the solution path.  There were a couple of times that I thought I had it solved but there was a move in my path that was not realizable when actually in the box.  I could get it to what I estimated was the half-way point but I couldn’t free the first piece.   Eventually, I realized that the first piece to be removed was not the one I was trying to liberate.  With that new perspective, I completed the solve.

Tulip 1 is another great puzzle from Osanori.  Now to track down Tulip 2.
 

No Problem Puzzles, Update #4

No Problem Puzzles provided over 100 amazing puzzles designs for the community between November 2020 and April 2023 until the tragic passing of Symen Hovinga on 7 April 2023.  Theo Geerinck, the other half of the No Problem Puzzles duo, decided to graciously allow the puzzle designs to be made available to the puzzle community for anyone to print their own copy to keep the legacy alive.  Mr BurrTools himself, Andreas Röver, is currently in the process of verifying and publishing the stl model files over the next several months.  These are being made available on the Printables site under the No Problem Puzzles collection. 

This post continues the review of the No Problem Puzzles as the models are being released.  Since the last review (No Problem Puzzles, Update #3), we have another 4 No Problem Puzzles to review.  They consist of Black Cat White Cat, Pizza Panne, Donut Perplex Junior, and Twist Them In.  For this batch of puzzles, the specified level of difficulty varied between 2 and 4 on a scale of 5.

Black Cat, White Cat

This puzzle addresses the problem of herding cats.  It’s not difficult to determine how they need to be arranged but a real challenge to get them to all cooperate by coming together.  The difficulty level of 2 is a compromise between the ease of determining how the pieces are oriented and the difficulty of putting them together.

Black Cat, White Cat consists of black cats and white cats.  6 of each.  All identical in shape.  2 to a side constructing a cubic box.  It’s up to you to arrange the distribution of the colors but I would recommend having a black and a white cat on each side for the best visual appeal.

It’s fairly simple to get all the pieces in place until you get to the last one.  Then you realize that an additional pair of hands or 2 would come in handy to be able to slide all the pieces together.  Only having 1 pair of hands, I failed multiple times to form the box and ended up with partially completed subsets collapsing.  I needed a better way and finding that way became the challenge to solve.  As evidenced by the photos, I did find that better way and ended up with a rather solid box.  And once together, I really doesn’t want to come apart.  Of course the challenge requires a different way to take it apart.  This is the way!

Pizza Panne

7 Pizza Slices.  You know what that means.  Yeah, I don’t either.  Who cuts a pizza into 7 slices?  And it doesn’t make any more sense when you realize that 5 slices seem to make a complete pie.  In any event, you have the task of packing 7 pizza slices from a deranged pizzeria into a pizza box.  The puzzle claims to have a single solution but I’m not sure how this can be determined.  The level of difficulty is rated as 3 on a scale of 5.

In addition to the 7 slices and the box, there are garnishes for the pizza including salami, mushrooms, and olives.  I didn’t originally plan on adding the garnishes since it doesn’t impact the function of the puzzle but since I was printing other pieces in multiple colors, I just added them to those prints.  I have to admit that it does look a lot more appealing and it did add some nice heft to the pieces.

This one is tricky.  The tricky part is knowing if you have solved it or not.  Adding 6 slices to the box is trivial and that last piece just needs to be folded to get it in.  Unfortunately, these pieces don’t fold too well.  It takes a while of jostling the 6 pieces around before you eventually create a space that seems like it would take the last piece.  On my first attempt, I had a configuration that looked like the last piece would fit if given a little force to wedge it in there.  Suspecting a more elegant solution, I forgoed (take that you forewent snobs) the brute force physical cramming technique that I employ for packing suitcases and continued the search.  I was eventually rewarded with a configuration where the last piece slid in with a little friction but no force to lock everything in place.  Solved!  However, when I put the pieces back in after taking the blog photos, I found a different solution where the pieces are still loose in the box.  I suspect that this last configuration may be the intended solution.

Donut Perplex Junior

I originally assumed that this puzzle was a simplified version of Orange Perplex that was covered in the last blog, but in fact it is a decomplexified version of the senior Donut Perplex consisting of 13 pieces that was entered in the International Puzzle Party (IPP) Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition in 2019.  I didn’t see the senior version originally offered on No Problem Puzzles so I don’t know if we should expect to see it released as part of this series.

I can see why the puzzle was knocked down to 4 pieces since it conveniently provides a top, bottom, inside and outside.  I found it easier than the stated difficulty level of 2 would suggest.  Certainly a puzzle for beginners.

Twist Them In

A restricted opening packing puzzle with a twist.  Not only do you have to pack the pieces within the frame but you have to accomplish this whilst being able to rotate the 2 halves of the frame.  With a difficulty level of 4, you know it’s going to be interesting.

Twist Them In consists of a 3 piece frame and 4 pentacubes that have to be packed inside.  The 2 halves of the frame are connected but can be rotated.  One half has an open side but it has a sliding cover that can only be removed when the halves are rotated 90, 180, and 270 degrees.  However the lid is locked firmly in place when the 2 halves are aligned at 0 degrees.

This one is a great challenge even with the experience gained from solving the prior puzzles in this series.  It’s obvious that the last operation in the assembly is to add the cover and rotate the halves so that they are aligned.  Analyzing the impact of the rotation on the space within the frame provides a good starting point on how the pieces need to be placed within the box.  Even so, it took me a while to finally come up with the winning combination.  This is my favorite No Problem Puzzles puzzle so far.

This is the fourth blog post continuing the review of No Problem Puzzles as they are released on the Printables site under the No Problem Puzzles collection.  The prior posts and the puzzles that they cover are:

Preserving a Legacy – No Problem Puzzles

• Sandbox
• Swinging Lid Tray
• 3U Frame

No Problem Puzzles, Update #2

• Turn Around
• Unmatch Box
• Quinta Cuboids
• Dizygotic

No Problem Puzzles, Update #3

• Boon
• Sliding Doors
• Pivot Window
• Orange Perplex
• Salmiak
• Vixen’s Antlers

If you don’t have a 3D printer, you can obtain copies of these puzzles from Nothing Yet Designs based in the US or the PuzzleguyStore based in the EU.

2-Maze Challenges, Double – CrossRoad

Every once in a while you run into a puzzle where the pieces seem to be at cross-purposes with one another, forcing you to battle on until you are cross-eyed.  You may even be tempted to crosscheck the starting position with the challenge descriptions by cross-matching maze plate colors and orientation indicators.

Of course I’m talking about CrossRoad designed by Brian Kren and made by Puzzled By Piker.  I bought it because I thought the label said it was a crisis-causing amazing challenge.  It turns out that it was a criss-crossing multi-maze challenge.  All-in-all, it provides 62 amazing crisis-causing criss-crossing multi-maze challenges to conquer.

The puzzle is 3D printed and consists of a frame, 7 maze plates, and 2 sliders.  The frame holds 2 of the 7 maze plates at a time and the different combinations of maze plates and starting slider positions provide 62 challenges to solve.  The number of moves to complete each challenge ranges from 7 to 67.   

The included documentation identifies the 2 plates required for the each challenge, their orientation, and the location of the sliders for the starting position.  Each plate is printed with a different color for easy identification and has 4 debossed symbols used to identify the orientation of the plate within the frame.  

I originally expected that the 2 plates would move in different directions, one along the x axis and the other along the y axis, like Goodbye (Say Hello to – Goodbye).  However, both maze plates move along the same axis, which also makes them easier to manipulate.

Each slider consists of 2 pieces that are magnetically connected so that they can be separated to easily insert them through the frame and maze plates.  The sliders move within the cross of the frame and through the mazes as both the sliders and mazes are moved.  Do I even have to mention that the ends of the sliders get in the way of each other.

Each maze plate has a single exit point and the goal is the manipulate the plates and sliders so that the plates are eventually removed from the frame.  Each challenge states the minimum number of moves to solve the challenge but you are certainly welcome to exceed that number if you so desire.

With the easy-reset magnetic sliders, setting up the challenges is quick leaving you to focus on the challenges themselves.  I found that as I worked on the challenges, I developed a feel for how to traverse the mazes and was able to solve them quicker (for the same difficulty level) as I went along.  The cross and the windows in the frame provide ample viewing of the mazes to chart your way.  The first objective is to try to determine which plate needs to be removed first and you can easily guess wrong.  Needless to say, a lot of backtracking may be involved.  If you get hopelessly lost, it only takes a couple of seconds to reset it back to the beginning.  I didn’t find it necessary to do this, but there were several times I was going back and forth trying to get the sliders past certain blocked moves.

I haven’t completed all 62 challenges, but I can say that CrossRoad is a nice design and the implementation is well done.  Thank goodness for the easy-reset sliders.

Since this puzzle utilizes 2 mazes at a time, I’m tempted to refer to it as Double CrossRoad.  Especially since the pieces always seem to keep going back on each other.  Of course there are 2 sliders as well so maybe it should be Double Double CrossRoad.  And for variations in the future?  Triple Double CrossRoad anyone?

Although the packaging and included documentation studiously avoids providing any means of contact including a website address, this puzzle was made available on the Puzzled By Piker Etsy Shop.  It is currently unavailable but you can purchase the STL model files for a nominal fee to 3D print a copy of your own.