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.

Vibrant Houston Flower

Vibrant Houston Flower was created by Jean Claude Constantin and used by Wil Strijbos as his exchange puzzle at the 41st International Puzzle Party (IPP).  It consists of a tray and 24 metallic beads.  The beads are divided into 11 pairs with each pair having a different color.  The tray consists of an outer ring, a middle ring, and a color key in the center.  The outer ring has spaces to hold all 12 pairs of beads while the middle ring can accommodate 9.  The color key in the center has a fixed set of 12 smaller beads matching the colors of the pairs along with how many spaces are required to exist between the pair of beads of that color when they are placed within a ring.  The number of spaces run incrementally from 0 to 11.

There are 2 challenges.  The first challenge is to place the first 9 pairs with required spacing from 0 to 8 within the middle ring.  The second challenge is to place all 12 pairs in the outer ring so that they meet the spacing requirements.

Lacking a real strategy, I started with the first challenge by placing the pairs from the shortest to longest distance between them.  Eventually, you get to the point where it’s not possible to add the final beads in the spaces that remain.  However, instead of backing up, it is possible to start shifting pairs around into the available spaces to arrange the vacant spaces for the remaining beads.

Having solved the first challenge, I proceeded with the second using the same approach.  After shifting a lot of pairs, I finally got it down to 1 pair left to place.  And after a lot more shifting, I still had not placed that last pair.  So I put it on the shelf.  Several days later, I took it down for another session and noticed after a few minutes that shifting 2 pairs at the same time opened up the space that I needed and I was done.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a nice algorithm to arrange any number of pairs.  However, the 9-pair and 12-pair challenges seemed to be good choice for solving it without such an algorithm.

Barcode Burr

I’ve finally gotten around to playing with Barcode Burr and what an amazing design it is.  It consists of 6 mostly identical pieces that form a mostly complete cube.  Mostly identical, because the pins and mazes on each make them unique.  Mostly complete since there are grooves in the pieces.

Barcode Burr was developed by Lee Krasnow and was originally made in wood with metal pins.  Each piece had an identical pattern on the outward facing sides that meshed with the other pieces to provide an amazing pattern when the cube was assembled.  It was entered in the 2004 IPP Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition where it won an Honorable Mention award.  Stiff competition that year.

To provide a more economical means of providing puzzles like this to the puzzle community, Lee eventually created his own 3D fab lab to print his fabulous puzzles.  Not only was Barcode Burr made available but also other code burrs using the same overall format but different mazes.  There are now 17 different designs in the Barcode Burr family.

For these puzzles, each piece is comprised of 3 components.  There is the main body of the piece that makes up the outer shell of the cube and 2 other components that allow for customizing the maze and pin configurations.  One is a long protrusion that mounts to the main body and the other is a plate that mounts onto a shorter protrusion on the main body.  Each of these pieces supports interacting with an adjacent piece on 2 sides providing a total of 4 other pieces that each piece interacts with, i.e., all but one other piece.  Since pieces on opposite corners move along the same diagonal line, albeit in opposite directions, it is not possible to have them interact via a maze.

Not wanting to bite off more than I could chew, I decided to start with the rainbow colored Barcode Burr.  Why rainbow colored.  Because, I was a bit concerned that if all the pieces were the same color, it would be more difficult to determine where each piece goes and the order that they have to go together.  AND, there are 3 solutions with 2 being non-intended solutions with shorter solution paths.

To be honest, once I started playing with it, the colors and the expected movements took away any intimidation I had expected.  It was just fun.  I’ve taken it apart and put it back together several times just for the fun of it.  When the pieces start coming out, it does get a little fiddly but never falls apart.  At some point, I’m going to have to try the single color version and scramble the pieces to determine how difficult it is to solve.

As of now, Barcode Burr appears to still be available in Lee’s shop Pacific Puzzleworks if you want to get a copy of your own.  It’s well worth playing with.

Three Caterpillars

How many caterpillars does it take to make a butterfly?  No clue!  But apparently, it takes more than 1 to make a symmetric shape.

Three Caterpillars is a 2D symmetry puzzle designed by Alexander Magyarics.  You may never guess that it consists of 3 caterpillars that need to be arranged to make a symmetrical shape.  The type of symmetry is not specified.  And if that is not enough, each pair of pieces can be used to make a symmetric shape as well.  Four challenges for the price of one.

The pieces are 3D printed and the heads are a different color than the rest of the body so you know which way they are looking.  The colors have no relationship with the symmetry constraints unless I completely misjudged it.

The 3 challenges for making a symmetrical shape with 2 pieces are not that difficult and make for nice warm-up to the main challenge.  The 3-piece challenge is a bit more involved than the 2-piece challenges but I didn’t find it as tough as some of Alexander's other symmetry puzzles.

Update: Alexander contacted me and indicated that the solutions do indeed have to take into account the symmetry of the colors. 

One Match Left

I recently had the opportunity to acquire some 3D printed hand-me-down puzzles from a kind soul on the Mechanical Puzzle Discord (MPD).  Among the nice selection of puzzles was a copy of One Match Left.

One Match Left is a 3D packing puzzle designed by Jorgos Anastasou.  It consists of 3 pieces that need to be packed within a cubic tube.  Both ends of the tube are open and there are 2 protruding obstructions on the inside that keep the pieces from simply falling out.  One is single voxel and the other is a double.  Two of the pieces look like burr pieces and the third is in the form of a match.  The version that I received was printed with extra attention to detail to make the match piece look like a match with a white body and black tip.

This puzzle is one of Jorgos’ easier puzzles and not difficult to solve.  Determining how the 2 burr pieces are oriented within the box and where the match goes is straight-forward and once you have that, putting them all within the tube is a quick process.  One Match Left is a great introduction for this type of puzzle and good warm-up for tackling more difficult puzzles of this type like 4 In Frame (Foreign Fame - 4 In Frame) or Wheel Lock (An Impediment to Rolling Along - Wheel Lock).

 

Gears

Not being much of a gearhead, I was a little apprehensive of tackling Gears designed by Hirokazu Iwasawa (Iwahiro).  It is a 2D restricted-opening packing puzzle made by Constantin Puzzles that Iwahiro used as his exchange puzzle at the 41st International Puzzle Part (IPP).  It consists of a frame with a hinged door on the side that can be opened to allow gears to pass through.  There are 9 gears in all.  2 of them are fixed in the center of opposite sides of the frame and can rotate freely.  The remaining 7 loose gears are the same size and have the same number of teeth as the fixed gears except for 1 that lacks teeth.  The frame also has a large opening in the clear acrylic top in the shape of an I to provide a means of manipulating the pieces when they are inside.  Lastly, there are a couple of pointy bits in the frame to throw a wrench in the gears.

The objective is to add all the gears to the frame and close the door.  I started to putter around with adding gears but it took a while to get the gears turning, in my brain that is.   It all starts out easy enough, but as more gears are added, they need to rotate as they pass through confined spaces eventually leading to gears disagreeing on which direction they should be rotating.

Shifting my brain into high gear, I finally settled on where the toothless wonder needed to be.  Of course I tried all the other places to rule them out for certain.  Even then it was not obvious to me how to proceed.  Eventually, I shifted gears and tried something a bit more complex that set the machine in motion and allowed the lid to close with all the gears inside.  A very nice AHA moment.