A 10,000 Foot View Of - Cockpit

What could possibly be better than a board burr?  How about a board burr in a cage?  Osinori Yamamoto’s Cockpit puzzle is such a challenge.  With only 3 simple pieces within the frame, it is more a flight of fancy than a long-haul expedition.

My version of Cockpit was made by Brian Menold at Wood Wonders with a Canarywood Frame with Wenge Pieces.  The cage is completely open on the top and bottom and has openings on the other 4 sides in the shape of a plus.  Two of the pieces are identical and the other has one additional cubie.  The puzzle came assembled and the objective is remove the pieces from the frame and then put them back in at some point in time.

As with many caged board burrs, the trick is to figure out the pass.  This is the sequence of moves that will eventually allow one of the pieces to get pulled passed the piece that is running through it.  Once you have accomplished the pass, the puzzle is pretty much solved.  With a level of 16.3.2, the pass was well designed and fun to execute.

New Email Address is
bmenold@woodwondersonline.com

On the box that Cockpit came in, Brian added the caveat that the 16.3.2 level is with the unique piece placed through the top of the puzzle.  It turns out that there is a trivial solution with level 3.2 if one of the duplicate pieces is put through the top.  This may be good as an assembly challenge for a new puzzler.

This puzzle has been around awhile and you can read the Puzzling Times entry on Cockpit from 2013 here.  It’s about time I got this one off my to-do pile.