Octadecahedron by Another Name – Pinwheel Crystal

What was the last octadecahedron puzzle you played with?  I thought so.  You’ve never heard of one.  That’s because of the lack of publicity that octadecahedron receives.  Now if I asked you about a truncated rhombic dodecahedron puzzle, you’d all be jumping up and down shouting that you have one in your collection.  Maybe even the Pinwheel Crystal made by Dave Rossetti.  It’s all in the naming.

I’ve always wanted a puzzle made by Dave Rossetti and I finally got my wish at this year’s International Puzzle Party (IPP).  Dave’s entry in the IPP Puzzle Exchange was Pinwheel Crystal designed by Stewart Coffin.  This is a geometric shaped puzzle in the form of a rhombic dodecahedron with truncated tips.  And the interior is hollow in the shape of a rhombic dodecahedron.

The puzzle is made from Granadillo and Maple and gets its name from the nice pattern made by the contrasting colors of the woods.  The puzzle consists of 6 pieces that are used to construct the truncated rhombic dodecahedron (just roles off the tongue, not like octadecahedron at all).

I’m always amazed at the complexity of these types of geometric pieces.  My woodworking skills top out at cubic dissection constructions.  The jigs and setup up required to make the angled cuts for geometric puzzles like Pinwheel Crystal is a whole other game.

So Dave used his amazing geometrical angly cutting skills to make 24 identical pieces (12 each of Granadillo and Maple) which he separated into 6 piles of 4, sprinkled them with glue, and shook them in a bag until he had the 6 puzzly pieces with a nice finish.  A little more shaking and he had the assembled Pinwheel Crystal.  Repeat 99 times and you’re ready for the puzzle exchange.  Sounds like magic, but everything seems like magic until you know how to do it.

Pinwheel isn’t a difficult puzzle to solve but it is a very attractive puzzle and beautifully made by Dave.

 

Screwing Around With Flowers – Tulip Twist

What do you give a wife who doesn’t like flowers or puzzles for her birthday.  A flower puzzle of course!

Tulip Twist is a flower themed puzzle with a lot of eye appeal developed by GlennovitS 3D on Printables.  For anyone who would like to print their own copy, the stl files can be downloaded from the Tulip Twist Puzzle Printables webpage.

The puzzle has 2 tulips, a planter box, and 3 layers of soil for the planter box to plant the tulips in.  Each tulip consists of a root, a stem, and a flower.  The flower and stem are the same for each but the roots are different.  Each of the 3 layers of soil has pathways for the roots of each tulip and each layer is different. The goal is to determine how the layers of soil need to be placed in the planter box to allow the tulips to be planted so that the roots are no longer visible.

From a puzzle perspective, Tulip Twist is very simple.  It’s really more about the eye appeal than the complexity of the solving process.  It may not be the most complex puzzle on your shelf, but it will certainly do a good job of drawing attention.

The design of the pieces is very well done.  The 3 parts of the tulips screw together very nicely, but note that they are reverse threaded, which feels somewhat awkward.  This is an attempt to keep them from unscrewing when you’re screwing around with them.  However, they are nice and tight and the rest of the puzzle tolerances are so well done, they don’t seem to be at risk of coming apart.

I was very impressed with this freely downloadable puzzle from Printables and my wife loved it.  It makes a great gift for that special budding puzzler in your life.

Time to Smother – The Blue Bird of Happiness

With a name like The Blue Bird of Happiness, you would expect this puzzle to have an upbeat theme.  However, the goal is to have the other jealous (or if you’re Mr. Mark - envious) birds, Miserable, Wretched, Gloomy, Woeful, and Mournful, smother Happy until it can’t see the light of day.  Yes, it’s time for Happy to have a case of the blues.

The Blue Bird of Happiness was designed by George Sicherman and used by Nigel Croot as his exchange puzzle at the 41st International Puzzle Party.  The puzzle consists of 6 pieces, with IPP41 debossed on each piece.  The pieces are 3D printed with each having a different color representing their personality.  Be careful not to confuse them!

As mentioned above, the goal is to place the blue piece on a flat surface and completely hide it using the other pieces.  Given the nature of the bird-like shapes, it’s not too difficult to discern the orientation of the blue bird required for the bottom of the pile.  One by one, you heap the Miserable, Wretched, Gloomy, Woeful, and Mournful birds on top until The Blue Bird of Happiness has vanished.

I didn’t find it very difficult to smother The Blue Bird of Happiness and I felt kind of sorry for him.  However, I needn’t have worried.  There were plenty of cracks for Happiness to seep through and like the phoenix, The Blue Bird of Happiness rose again to taunt the next puzzler.

C’est Ludique – Minima Ludique

 

J’aime la série de puzzles Minima.  Chaque casse-tête est un petit défi et ludique, surtout le puzzle du jour – Minima Ludique.

Minima Ludique was designed by Frederic Boucher and made by Nothing Yet Designs.  The puzzle consists of 4 Wenge and Mahogany V shaped pieces that have to be packed within a holey frosted acrylic box.  The packaging for the puzzle is well-thought out and holds the box with 3 pieces trivially packed inside with enough space leftover to place the 4th piece on top of the box.

Apparently you don’t have to worry about the apparentness of this puzzle.  It goes without saying that this puzzle is an apparent rectangular parallelepiped since the 4 pieces are comprised of 12 cubes that have to be packed into a 12 voxel space.  This lets you know that the last piece will simply slide in through the only 2 voxel opening in 1 move.  All you have to do is find out how to pack the other 3 Vs in preparation.

And therein lies the dilemma.  Getting those first 3 pieces into position takes a bit of thinking.  There are 2 tricky moves involved.  The first wants to happen and will pull you along with it.  The second will be less obvious and will attempt to resist you.  However, once you’ve accomplished it, it’s all over.

A few weeks after solving it, I looked at it and decided to put it back in an unsolved state.  Unfortunately, after the first piece dropped out, I couldn’t immediately determine how to release the other 3.  It’s not as if there are a lot of moves that you can make.  And then I saw it.  As during the initial solve, the key move doesn’t lend itself to being easily discovered.

Minima Ludique is a fun puzzle with some replayability for guys like me with no memory capacity.  Maybe I should design a Minima puzzle with lots of holes in the box – Minima Cerveau anyone?

Corner Table – End Table

International Puzzle Party (IPP) Exchange Puzzles come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes (and colors and materials and textures and …).  Although End Table is larger than you would expect and smaller than the name would imply, the name refers to the shape/location of the red square piece in the tray and not its size.

End Table wa designed by Goh Pit Khiam and was Khuong An Nguyen’s IPP41 exchange puzzle.  It’s 3D printed with a marble PLA tray and 6 translucent PLA pieces.  I didn’t want to risk breaking the puzzle by undoing the clips that hold the top in place but it looks like a nice mechanism.  They clips appear to be hinged on the top but I don’t believe in unnecessary violence to puzzles (except for the ones that I make – in fact abusing them is a necessary part of the design/manufacturing process and therapeutic to boot).  The translucent PLA used for the pieces allows you to see the infill pattern.  

It’s immediately obvious that this is a multi-color, apparent-rectangle, restricted-opening, 2D tray-packing puzzle.  The 5x4 tray has a 2 voxel opening in the side.  The objective is to place all the pieces in the tray through the opening with the red piece in the upper left corner (assuming that the opening is in the bottom left corner).  Never fear, there is a red square printed in the tray where the red square piece needs to go.  The pieces consist of 2 blue Is, 2 green Vs, 1 purple N, and 1 red O.

Windows for manipulating the pieces are very large.  The size of the puzzle is much larger than you would expect for this type of puzzle.  It makes handling the pieces easy.  I also found solving the puzzle to be easy as well although sometimes you just get lucky.  Placement of the pieces seemed logical with the red square restricted to the designated corner.

Just for fun, I tried packing the pieces with the red square in the other 3 corners without issue.  None were difficult.  However, after looking at the solutions that I came up with for the other 3 corners, I decided that maybe I did get lucky on the official objective since that solution had a property that the other 3 didn’t.

Easy As – Duck Soup

How many puzzles can you say are as easy as duck soup and be completely correct irrespective of the person attempting to solve it?  Well this one’s Duck Soup for everyone!

Duck Soup was developed by Guy Loel and David Goodman and entered in this year’s International Puzzle Party (IPP) Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition.  Although it didn’t win any awards, I thought it was one of the top stand-out puzzles in the competition.  It was well-themed, well-made, and a good challenge.  

There are 2 goals: the ultimate goal and a waypoint goal for encouragement.  The waypoint goal is to make a bland soup by packing all 7 ducks in the pot without the bouillon cube (with the lid closed of course – no legs hanging out of the side of the pot like in the kitchen).  If and when you accomplish that, you can add the bouillon cube to the pot as well for the ultimate soup experience.

No names for the ducks were provided so I’m going with Rufus, Pinky, Chicolini, Bob, Gloria, Vera, and Zander.  I managed to pack these 7 ducks into the pot in the IPP41 design competition room without the bouillon cube.  It was enough of a challenge to realize that I wasn’t going to obtain the ultimate goal at IPP if I wanted to spend time enjoying the many other puzzles in the competition.

When Duck Soup became available on Nothing Yet Designs, I grabbed a copy as soon as possible.  Continuing the theme, the puzzle arrives in a takeout box with everything you need to successfully make Duck Soup – a pot complete with lid, 7 ducks, and a bouillon cube just to spice things up a bit.  You don’t have to worry about the ducks making a mess.  The bottom of the box is filled with hay.  All the pieces are 3D printed and they are very well-done.  As well-done as the design competition version was, these are weller-done.  The ducks are so cute, who wouldn’t love them.  And the pot, most amazing pot ever!  Love that fuzzy skin.  However, I do have to say that I miss the magnets that held the lid on the pot in the competition puzzle.  Having 3D printed a few puzzles myself, I completely understand avoiding embedded magnets and I feel the tradeoff with the other enhancements like multicolor printing was worth it.

Working on getting that bouillon cube to dissolve in the pot at home, I think I discovered most of the 180 solutions of organizing the ducks in the pot without the bouillon cube.  And of course it was just as easy to add the bouillon cube and leave out Rufus (who was very grateful by the way).  

I failed to make the ultimate Duck Soup over several days.  The ducks were just not cooperating and free-ranging in my living room.  Did I mention that there is only 1 proper way to make Duck Soup?  At some point I stopped and decided that I needed to think like a duck.  If I were a duck, how would I cozy up to other ducks to waste the least amount of space.  Once I figured that out, it was Duck Soup!

The IPP design competition has so many great new puzzles designs that they can’t all be given a prize.  Duck Soup is one of those gems.  If you want one of your own, you can get it from Nothing Yet Designs when it is in stock.

Not ducks were harmed in the making of this blog.

 

One Person – Three Body Problem

At this year’s International Puzzle Party (IPP), I overheard Girish Sharma say that people smiled when he told them the name of his puzzle, Three Body Problem, during the IPP Puzzle Exchange.  I know it didn’t make me smile – maybe cringe-worthy.  All I could think about was complex coordinated movements in physics with no general closed-form solution.  Turns out I’m just socially stunted and not tuned in.  3 Body Problem is the name of a series on Netflix based on a novel by Liu Cixin.  However, I may have been on to something since the puzzle does indeed require complex rotational movements.

Three Body Problem was designed by Girish Sharma and used as his exchange puzzle at IPP41.  The puzzle is nicely made with Maple, Cherry, and Mahogany by Brian Menold at Wood Wonders.  And dowels were used to reinforce end grain glue joints.

The stated goal is to interlock the 3 pieces within a 4x4x4 space.  It also promises some rotational moves in the solve.  Removing the 3 pieces from the box, it’s obvious that they are not going to fill the 4x4x4 space and won’t even cover the exterior surface like the many amazing turning interlocking cube (TIC) puzzles created by Andrew Crowell.  I used to see this as a sign of an unfinished design but to be honest, this puzzle is awesome.

Although this puzzle calls for 3 bodies, I thought I would tackle it solo.  However, it took me 3 times longer to solve than I expected.  I sat down with it several times before I finally had all 3 pieces packed together.

The final assembly was never really much in doubt, although I was required to doubt it a little since it took so long to find the solution.  However, the rotation supported by the half corner cube pretty much forces you to believe in the assembly.  It’s that crazy dance of the third piece that eluded me several times.  The problem is that you need to envision it from the end back to the beginning and there are so many steps, it’s not easy to run through.  Along the way, I found some interesting moves that I thought would be required but didn’t lead anywhere.  Eventually, I found my way to the final assembly.

I also enjoyed coming back to it a couple of days later and found that it took me several minutes to get it back apart.  To say that rotations are required is an understatement.  Being a fan of rotations, I really found this to be a great puzzle.  I’m sure the Netflix series plot has many twists and turns if it is anything like the puzzle.