No Problem Puzzles, Update #12

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.  Another contributor, Crab on Printables, has also tweaked some of the models to improve them.

This post continues the review of the No Problem Puzzles as the models are being released.  Since the last review (No Problem Puzzles, Update #11), more No Problem Puzzles have become available.  All level of difficulty ratings are from the puzzle descriptions and are on a scale of 1 to 5.

Bacon Pancake

Bacon!  Bacon!  Bacon!  I just had pancakes for breakfast, making this an appropriate time to talk about the very appetizing Bacon Pancake.  It’s a 2D packing puzzle with the objective to fit the 7 identical pieces of bacon in the pancake.  Yes, the tray is in fact as flat as a pancake and very pancakey.  That is, it’s not exactly round but a bit misshapen as if someone actually poured some batter on a skillet.  This adds some complexity to the process since the orientation of the bacon within the pancake is now a factor.  Even so, the solve is not that difficult and representative of its level 2 rating.

XY

Why, why, why?  And why and why and why and why?  7 whys in all.  The objective is to address all those whys and solve the puzzle.  XY is an 2D restricted-opening, tray packing puzzle.  Why, do they have to be inserted where X marks the spot?  Yes!  This allows them to enter the tray in any of 4 orientations.  I was amazed to read that there are more than 2000 assemblies.  It certainly doesn’t seem like it when you are trying to find one, much less one that works with the opening.  This was a good challenge and kept me occupied for a little while.  It’s worth noting that you shouldn’t force the pieces since there is at least one close but not-quite-it solution.  When you are done, the pieces should move freely in the tray when you shake it.  The difficulty of this puzzle is 3.5 as an indication that only the whys can solve this puzzle.

Vortex

Now here is a puzzle that is designed for you to go round and round on.  Vortex is a dynamic, 3D restricted-opening, packing puzzle.  It consists of 6 pieces that have to be packed within a 3x3x3 box with a 3-voxel v-shaped opening on one side.  However, the side with the opening can be rotated to provide different orientations as the pieces are added. I found this one to be one of the easier 3D packing puzzles, aligning with the level 3 rating, but there is some minor trickery involved.  However, the description indicates that there are hundreds of assemblies so there may be one that involves less trickery. 

Double Drawers

Double trouble with Double Drawers.  This puzzle consists of 4 identical pieces that have to be packed within 2 drawers.  When packed, the drawers are completely full.  The opening of the drawers face each other allowing the pieces to move between them if needed when not full.  The drawer handles are there to help you move the drawers and confound your efforts.  And large poke holes exist all around that come in handy.  There are some interesting moves with this one and you may find yourself wondering how you can fill the second drawer after the first one has been filled.  Double Drawers is rated at a level of 2.5, deflating my ego after a quick solve.


If you don’t have a 3D printer, you can obtain copies of No Problem Puzzles from Nothing Yet Designs based in the US or the PuzzleguyStore based in the EU.

 

 

16 Pesci

16 Pesci is a 2D packing puzzle designed by Enzo Mari and made using expandable resin in 1974 by the Italian design studio, Danese.  It consists of 16 pieces in the shape of aquatic animals.  The pieces are very thick at 28 mm and can easily stand on end.  Within the box, the pieces nestle together completely filling the box in a single layer except for the corners which are left empty due to the rounded corners of the packed shape.

It’s been more than half a decade since my Pop bought this puzzle.  I don’t know where he bought it or even why he bought it.  I never thought of him as a puzzler but he was an artist and this puzzle is more about it’s artistic nature than about the puzzling.  It is not challenging to assemble and I believe that the original intent was for it to entertain younger children.  Ironically, it’s much too nice for the hands of it’s targeted audience.  In fact, I found this quote on Enzo’s other puzzle, 16 Animali:

Over time, 16 Animali has moved from children’s rooms into museum collections and design shops, where the complete rectangle can look almost too composed to disturb.

As the only puzzler in the family, I recently took ownership of this puzzle that has been proudly displayed for decades on the back shelf of a storage closet.  I brought it into the light and dutifully took it apart and put it back together.  And I can confirm that it is more artsy than puzzley.  The only question is if I will do any better with the stewardship of this puzzle designed for children and made for adults.

a 

Tetra-Claw

Tetra-Claw was designed by Derek Bosch and entered in the Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition at the 41st International Puzzle Party.  I was certainly lured into attempting to solve it in the design competition room but alas, it wasn’t a quick solve and there were so many other tempting puzzles to look at.  Lucky for me, Steve Nicholls 3D printed a large batch for Derek to use as his exchange puzzle, providing me with the opportunity to solve it at my leisure.  And leisure I did!  I took it apart rather quickly but the 4 pieces had morphed into an artistic pile that graced a dining room shelf for an extended period of time.  We even had parties to celebrate the anniversaries.

Of course, I hadn’t been putting it off solving it because of commitment issues or that it looks daunting.  I was just waiting for the right time.  Which happened to happen yesterday.  After second breakfast.  While taking a break from being repummeled by an innocuous looking 2D sliding puzzle.

Tetra-Claw consists of … wait for it … 4 Claws!  The 4 claws each have 3 prongs that become entangled to make something regularly tetrahedronish.  When solved, each piece touches all the prongs of the other pieces.

To make the puzzle challenging, Derek has added pins and mazes to the prongs of each piece so that there is a non-trivial path that must be taken to solve the puzzle.  Every pair of pieces has a pin-maze interface that defines it’s movement.  That’s 6 mazes that have to be simultaneously traversed.  The pins and mazes have been allocated to the pieces to make them all unique with one piece being all male (pins), one all female (mazes), and the other 2 can’t totally commit with one leaning towards mostly male and the other towards mostly female.

As daunting as it seemed, there did seem to be a good way to start and it didn’t take long to have 3 pieces locked in place.  And I felt confident that they were in the correct placement.  The problem was adding the 4th piece, which had 3 ways that it could be inserted.  It was obvious to me that I was probably not not going to be able to determine which one just by studying the mazes.  So I made an executive decision to simply try all three.  Of course, each required a lot of piece movements to determine whether they would all come together or not. And after trying 4 or 5 of those 3 orientations, I finally had a nicely solved Tetra-Claw.

The other semi-permanent puzzle art fixtures on the dinning room shelf are going to miss their buddy.  

Karakuri Packing

I’ve been wanting to try Karakuri Packing for a while now and I recently had to the opportunity to acquire one from a kind soul on the Mechanical Puzzle Discord (MPD).  Now I can see why others gave it high marks and why it received a Jury Honorable Mention award in the Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition at the 40th International Puzzle Party (IPP).  It’s so good! 

Karakuri Packing is a 3D apparent-cube, restricted-opening packing puzzle designed by Yasuhiro Hashimoto.  It consists of 5 pieces that need to be packed within a 3x3x3 box.  The pieces are comprised of 26 voxels leaving 1 voxel unaccounted for.  Oh, what could that mean?  Well, one piece has a dowel sticking out less than a width of a voxel.  But there are also 5 holes drilled into the pieces and 2 additional dowels that have to be packed as well (yes, yes, you can argue that there are really 7 pieces that have to be packed in the box).  Each of the free dowels is just short of 2 voxels.  5 holes and 5 voxels’ worth of dowel.  Coincidence or trap?

To complete the challenge, the box has a 2x3 voxel opening on the top.  For the version that I received, the 1x3 voxel lip on the box is removable which allows the pieces to be packed in an incorrect configuration.  Or you could store it in the correct configuration and be able to dump and scramble the pieces without seeing how they would emerge from the box.

Attempting to determine what novel ideas could be used, I brainstormed some that were not used.  But more importantly, there were moves that I didn’t anticipate.  I was very happy to see these unexpected interactions.

My solve was done in 2 short sittings, The first to convince me that it wasn’t going to be easy.  The second to show me that it wasn’t as difficult as my impression from the prior attempt.  Although there are many assemblies, there are things that reduce the complexity such as the opening restricting the orientation of the pieces and holes needing to be aligned to support the dowels.  Definitely a fun puzzle and I wouldn’t mind seeing other puzzles in this format.

Although I’m very late to the game with Karakuri Packing, others have blogged about it in a more timely fashion like Allard and Kevin.

Symm-sala-bim

More 2D symmetry fun from Alexander Magyarics.  This one is is Symm-sala-bim and consists of 3 pieces that need to be assembled to form a symmetric shape.  Like most of his other symmetry designs, the type of symmetry that is required is not provided.  And as usual, the pieces don’t look all that complicated.  In fact, one of the pieces is symmetric itself and the other 2 easily combine to create a symmetric shape.  Those 2 pieces aren’t identical although they are close to being identical.  One just has an additional voxel compared to the other.  You think that this would make it easier but it’s just there to lead you astray. 

Without that extra voxel, the puzzle would be trivial and there would be many solutions.  Instead, there is only 1 solution and it is not trivial.  Thankfully!

I tried all the obvious things to create a symmetric shape but Alexander is too good a designer to succumb to the obvious.  This led me on a merry chase where I had to dig a little deeper and try the less obvious.  And then, there it was – Symm-sala-bim!  Very nicely done!

Alan Lunsford SerpentTICs

Working diligently to delay the release of Spin Head, the next engineering marvel in his sequential discovery coin release series, Alan Lunsford has begun carving his own serpentic path through the valley of TICs (turning interlocking cubes).  Apparent cubes – Doesn’t matter.  Square sticks – Doesn’t matter.  Many pieces – Doesn’t matter.

Alan has produced 6 TIC designs using a new approach.  Each is a 4x4x4 puzzle featuring a cubic frame and pieces that need to be packed within the frame.  The pieces include cylindrical sticks and rounded edges to facilitate rotations where they normally wouldn’t occur.  Once solved, the cubes sport many external visible holes.

To make things even more exciting, Alan has uploaded all 6 TICs to his Printables page allowing anyone to download and 3D print the models for themselves.  For those without a 3D printer, Alan has also started to make them available on his online shop, Kinetic Crafts.

Photos of the solved puzzles are not provided to avoid spoiling the complete experience.

Asp

I decided to start with Asp since it looked like a simple puzzle.  It’s easy to determine where the pieces need to go.  It has 3 pieces that need to be packed in a frame with one of the pieces based on a cylinder.  This will be a common but not completely identical theme throughout the series.  Determining the location of the pieces is not difficult and the fun begins when trying to work out the rotations needed to get all the pieces in place.  It was a quicker solve than I had anticipated.

Caduceus

Ignorance is bliss.  Unlike most of the other puzzles in the series, this one only has 2 pieces that have to be packed within the frame and both have cylindrical parts.  Since there were only 2 pieces to place within the frame, I spent some time ruling out assemblies that wouldn’t work.  Had I recalled what Caduceus means, it would have been obvious and a much quicker solve.  If you don’t know what it means, and why should you, do yourself a favor and wait until you’ve solved it before looking it up.  And also avoid the growing number of photos being posted of the puzzle in it’s solved state.  When I took this one apart a couple of days later, it was just as hard to get it apart as it was to solve it once I had determined where all the pieces had to go.  Some serious rotations in this one.

Cobra

Same but different.  The structure of the pieces seems like the others but the behavior of the solve is completely different.  I don’t want to say too much by giving away what the major difference is.  You need to enjoy it for yourself.  I felt that this one was one of the easier solves and when you take it apart, it seems to want to help you.

Hydra

Again, same but different.  With 2 pieces with cylindrical pieces, you would think that it would be similar to Caduceus, but it’s not.  Although I didn’t find it as difficult as Caduceus, there are still a lot of nice rotations in this one.  And for those of you wondering WHY?  Just Why?  Is there a reason why?  The answer is Yes!  Otherwise there would be a second solution.

Worm

The puzzle Worm sticks out because the name is separated across 3 pieces to let you know where they need to go.  This is the puzzling equivalent of painting by numbers.  However, it’s not giving much away since the placement of the pieces is easy to determine without the name of the puzzle lining things up for you.

Boa

While I was working on the previous 5, Alan expanded the series to include Boa.  It doesn’t appear to be a significant departure from the others, but for some reason, this one took me longer to solve.  I really don’t know why.  It has 3 pieces that need to be packed in the frame with one of the pieces based on a cylinder.  Right in line with the series.  However, it may be that the non-cylindrical pieces had a bit more movement during the play, which widened the field of possibilities.  Just more time to enjoy the solve.  This might be my favorite of the series so far.

 

These serpenTIC puzzles are fairly quick solves but all are fun.  The size of the series plus the number of rotations required for each will allow my goldfish mind to enjoy experiencing them for the first time, many times.  I’ll certainly be looking for others cough, cough, after Spin Head is released, cough.

Kevin also recently provided a nice description of the first 3 in the series over at Puzzlemad.  You should give it a read.  Just don't look at the photos until you've solved them!

No Problem Puzzles, Update #11

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.  Another contributor, Crab on Printables, has also tweaked some of the models to improve them.

This post continues the review of the No Problem Puzzles as the models are being released.  Since the last review (No Problem Puzzles, Update #10), more No Problem Puzzles have become available.  All level of difficulty ratings are from the puzzle descriptions and are on a scale of 1 to 5.

Möbius Cut Rings

Möbius Cut Rings consists of 2 rings that are cut with a Möbius strip and then cut radially on one side to produce 2 halves that can then be separated with minor flexing.  The objective is to make a pair of linked rings.  It’s trivial to make a pair of separate rings but worth the effort to see exactly how the pieces go together.  I expected the linked rings to take just a little bit more effort and with the help of the difficulty rating of 3, I underestimated it.  More than once, I had to back out of a 4 half-ring tangle.  You really need a plan going into this one.  I had to sit down and examine this one closely to construct the interlocking rings.

SOS

SOS consists of 3 pieces that have to be packed within a frame with lots of openings.  The name comes from the shape of the frame as you descend through the layers.  It’s not difficult to add the pieces with a few rotations but the description indicates that it takes 21 moves to put in the last piece, which is way more than I originally used.  Yes, you guessed it, no rotations allowed although this is not specified in the description.

Solving this puzzle without rotations is much more involved and hence earns it’s level 4 reputation.  Without rotations, the orientations of the pieces are limited to how they can enter the cage.  This provides a lot of information on the assembly of the pieces within the available 3x3x3 space.  That along with the limited ability of the pieces to move will narrow it down to the winning assembly pretty quickly.  Then you just have to assemble the pieces within the cage.  I have to point out that now that you don’t want the pieces to rotate, they are prone to rotate on their own and you have to keep an eye and a grip on them.  It’s well worth the effort to solve it without rotations.

Ringed Tetra’s

Ringed Tetra’s is a restricted-opening 3D packing puzzle consisting of 10 pieces that need to be packed within a box.  The 4x4x3 box is entirely open on one side except for a half-voxel lip all around.  The ten pieces completely fill the 4x4x3 space within the box.  There are 2 rings and 8 tetracubes.  The tetracubes include 3 L pieces, 3 B pieces, and 2 Z pieces.

At first glance, and with a difficulty rating of 4, this puzzle appears daunting.  However, I found it fun to play with and was able to narrow down possible piece placements fairly quickly.  I was surprised that this one ended up being a one session solve.  The solution is very nice and I ended up liking it a lot.

Viking Shield

Viking Shield is a 2D packing puzzle with the goal of packing 9 horny helmeted vikings in a shallow shield shaped tray.  It’s not too difficult to squeeze 8 vikings within the tray but it takes some effort to get all 9 in.  Those horns keep getting in the way and are continually boinking their neighbors where they’re not supposed to.

After a short session I managed to get all the vikings encamped.  However the layout wasn’t clean.  The puzzle appears to use a triangular grid and my solution utilized 2 triangular grids that intersected with each other at an angle.  Another short session revealed a proper solution with a single grid.  The level 3 difficulty rating was spot on.




If you don’t have a 3D printer, you can obtain copies of No Problem Puzzles from Nothing Yet Designs based in the US or the PuzzleguyStore based in the EU.