Monkey Business - HepTIC

It’s time to put the monkey back in his cage.  We manage to get him inside but his head is sticking out of the side.  After pushing his head in, we notice that he is not comfortable, so we turn him around.  But now his head is sticking out of the front of the cage.  We rock him back into a seated position and make him sit down.  Good monkey!  We place a banana in his lap, and while he is calming down, start to close the cage.  The door ends up right against the banana so we move it to the side.  The now, not so happy monkey, throws the banana, which proceeds to roll on the floor.  As we were closing the door, we pick up the banana and give it back to the monkey as the door clicks shut.

Spoiler Alert!  The prior paragraph is my wife’s solution to HepTIC designed by Andrew Crowell.  As I mentioned in a prior post (5 Is the Magic Number - PenTIC), my wife likes to create stories to remember the solutions to puzzles.  Each piece becomes a character in a thrilling plot with many twists and turns.  Monkey Business is now the official HepTIC solution.  So if anyone asks you how to solve it, you can send them a copy.

My version of HepTIC was beautifully made with exotic woods by Andrew himself.  It is definitely more fun than a barrel of monkeys.  It consists of 4 pieces: cage, monkey, banana, and door.  However, I’m not quite sure why Andrew didn’t use the Yellowheart for the banana.

HepTIC is part of Andrew’s Turning Interlocking Cube (TIC) series with a rating of 7.1.5 and requiring 3 rotations.  According to my wife, the monkey is a wiggler, which accounts for most of the rotations required to get that monkey off your back and into the cage.  Andrew rates this puzzle as having a medium level of difficulty for assembling.  You should definitely attack this zoologist conundrum as an assembly task and not as a disassembly effort.  Letting the monkey out is a lot easier than getting him back in the cage.