? – W.D.I.G.M.I.

This year’s Christmas present from my friends Tanner and Geneva over at What Did I Get Myself Into HQ was, surprise – a W.D.I.G.M.I. puzzle.  In a recent puzzle gathering, everyone who had a copy confessed to not having solved it.  This inspired me to reshuffle my life priorities to get this one checked off.

W.D.I.G.M.I. was designed and made by Tanner in collaboration with Tye Stahly from NothingYet Designs.  The puzzle is a 2D restricted-opening packing puzzle made from acrylic.  The frame is in the shape of the question mark and made with smoky translucent top and bottom and a black middle layer for sides.  There are 3 openings in the frame but only the largest will admit the pieces.  The other 2 are to there to help move the pieces.  

In addition to the frame, there are 7 pieces made from opaque purple acrylic and represent the characters: W, D, I, G, M, I, and ?.  I particularly liked that it was based on a triangular framework, instead of a rectangular one.  Anyone familiar with Tanner should not be surprised that the color purple was chosen for the pieces.  Usually Tanner bends the phrase What Did I Get Myself Into so that it forms a question mark, but thankfully, we only have to pack the first letter of each word along with a question mark into the frame.

Now that I’ve made it seem easy, it’s not.  When I opened it on Christmas, I quickly found how the pieces could fit in the frame, but it was not possible to put them in the frame in that configuration.  And then almost as quickly, I realized that this was not going to be a trivial challenge.  I don’t want to provide any spoilers, but I will say that I spent most of the time determining how the pieces related to each other and how they could be nestled together in different places within the frame.  Once the proper assembly is found, inserting the pieces is straight-forward.

I can neither confirm nor deny if there is a sole solution or whether multiple solutions exist.  However, I can confirm that finding a solution was a challenge.

Tanner and Geneva are on a mission to spread puzzle joy to the world and I’m looking forward to seeing what they do next.