Nary a Problem – RecTangle - A Ternary Teaser

Nary an indecision, Nary a misstep, Nary a Problem.  The way is clear, the light is good, I have no fear, nor no one should.  

RecTangle - A Ternary Teaser was designed by Koh Pit Khiam and used by Lee Yee Dian as an exchange puzzle for the 41st International Puzzle Party (IPP).  It is a 2D sliding puzzle made from laser-cut acrylic in USA IPP appropriate colors: red, white, and blue.  The frame consists of 2 layers of white acrylic and the sliding pieces are made from blue and red acrylic.  There is also a clear acrylic panel that sits on top to hold the pieces in the frame when it is in its wrapper.  Of course, since it’s a sliding puzzle, it slides into the packaging.  

The objective is to move all 4 of the red pieces vertically from the bottom of their columns to the top.  The left three columns of the puzzle are ternary (i.e., the red piece can be in one of 3 positions), and the rightmost column is binary (2 areas for the red piece).  Advancing the red pieces vertically requires moving the blue pieces horizontally back and forth.  The 12 blue pieces could have been made using only 6 pieces but my guess is that it is more efficient to cut rectangular pieces in lieu of oddly shaped pieces and it obviously fits the theme better.

When I took the puzzle out, there appeared to be a few pieces that can be moved but the first move is obvious if you are even only a little familiar with these types of puzzles.  However, when I went to make that move, it failed to work.  Turns out that the puzzle comes with a clear acrylic spacer to keep the rightmost red piece from moving in the package.  Once it was removed, I was on my way.  With N-ary puzzles, it’s OK to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result.  And repeat I did.  And repeat I did.  Thankfully, RecTangle only has 4 columns to demonstrate the concept without becoming tedious.

This is not a difficult puzzle and only takes a couple of minutes to solve, but it is an excellent introduction to how a ternary puzzle works.  The pieces move easily within the frame and there isn’t much danger of losing track of which direction you are moving.  In fact, there is only one path and you are either moving toward or away from the solved state.  And the best part is that you can perform the reset by simply picking up the red pieces and putting them back at the starting point – or any other point that you desire.

 

Puzzle Within A Puzzle – Lone Star Burr

Steve Nicholls’ exchange puzzle for the 41st International Puzzle Party (IPP) was a plastic sphere.  After careful inspection, the sphere was determined to be comprised of 2 hemispheres, one red and the other transparent.  Further inspection revealed other clues such as a dimple in the middle of each hemisphere and some cryptic symbology on the transparent hemisphere.  After referencing my vast collection of books on hieroglyphics, I determined that it was safe to store food in this puzzle in the UK and EU - a good indication that there might by some candy inside as a reward for solving the puzzle.  The dimples turned out to be red herrings.

Having experience in opening many of these types of puzzles acquired from numerous gumball machines over the years, I quickly solved this puzzle and separated the 2 hemispheres from each other.  Secreted betwixt them were a makeup applicator and a card displaying 2 puzzle hamsters with guns drawn ablazin’.  The back of the card indicated that the 2 cuddly gun-totin’ hamsters prefer to be referred to as brass monkeys.  Although there is no indication of pronoun preferences, I can attest that at IPP41, it was required to address Steve as Your Majesty.  And yes, kneeling and groveling was encouraged.

Just when I thought that was it, I noticed that a single hunk of plastic had fallen out of the sphere as well.  For the most part, this starry object was red, white, and blue with some yellowing at the edges.  It looked a bit puzzly, so I decided to give it a whirl.  When this lone star burrst, I ended up with a small collection of colorful little pieces, kinda like caltrops but unexplainably juicy looking.

Lone Star Burr was designed and made by Steve Nicholls and used as his exchange puzzle for IPP41.  The burr consists of 5 pieces and has a red, white, and blue Texas star on each side.  Each piece is a multicolor 3D print.  It may be all gussied up with colorful starry bits but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a regular dodecahedron.

When viewed assembled, the burr appears intimidating.  However, when viewing the disassembled pieces, it definitely comes across as more tractable.  Spurred on by the opportunity of an easy victory, I tackled the challenge. Indeed, some trial and error, balancing pieces, a little swearing, getting things lined up exactly where they need to be, some more swearing, starting over when subassemblies fell apart, stuffing the makeup applicator in the mouth to stymie even more swearing, and then simply sliding things back in place, produces the original shape.  I was surprised about how the final glide path doesn’t look like it would work, but everything slides smoothly together in the end.  Of course, if you don’t have everything exactly lined up, it won’t go together and you may end up with some more swearing.

Lone Star Burr can be purchased on the Two Brass Monkeys website.

What’s The Bu? – Caching Zzzzzz

News flash!  There’s a new puzzle maker in the community!

You’re not going to catch Stefan Garcia sleeping on the job.  Stefan decided that for the 41st International Puzzle Party (IPP), he was going to make his exchange puzzles himself.  Having secured a nice design from László Molnár, he embarked on the journey of 100 puzzles.  With no experience in 3D printing, Stefan bought a 3D printer, learned how to create and slice model files, and produced a fine batch of puzzles for the exchange.  And he didn’t just knock it out of the park, he launched it into space.  

To say that for a first time 3D printing effort that Caching Zzzzzz was nicely printed would be an understatement.  The ZZZZZZs are what you would expect from a 3D printed puzzle, but Stefan put in extra effort to make the frame with color changing filament and deboss the design and puzzle information on the top and bottom.  Extra touches included debossing the IPP41 logo information on one of the pillows and 3D printing the puzzle directions.

Caching Zzzzzz was designed by László Molnár and has 2 challenges.  The first is to fit all 6 Z pieces within the frame so that it makes an apparent cube.  The second challenge is to pack 4 of the Zs along with the 2 pillows within the frame to also make an apparent cube.  The frame has 4 double-voxel openings and 2 single-voxel openings, which makes it seem like there would be ample opportunity to insert the pieces within the frame.  Of course, when all the pieces are packed, these spaces need to be filled.

For the first challenge, you quickly realize that the last piece can’t simply be inserted without apparently leaving an apparent hole in the cube, which is no then longer apparent.  So apparently, there must be at least one more apparent move to complete the apparent cube.  And this is the thread that I pulled to work my way to the solution.  I found that accomplishing this exercise put me in an apparently solving frame of mind that made completing the second challenge easier than if I had simply attacked it cold as a single challenge puzzle.
 
Athough I didn’t find the puzzle extremely difficult, I wouldn’t say it ZZZZZ Z.  I’m looking forward to seeing what Stefan and László cook up for future puzzle exchanges.

 

Minima Meets Flop – Minima Flop

What happens when the Minima series crashes into the Flop series.  You get Minima Flop of course.

Minima Flop is the third puzzle in the Minima Series that I’ve solved after Minima Nest and Minima Ludique.  It was developed by Dr. Volker Latussek and make by Nothing Yet Designs.  The puzzle consists of 4 Mahogany V shaped pieces that have to be packed within a highly fenestrated frosted acrylic box.  And the windows are numerous and large enough to allow a school of red fish to flop through them.  The packaging for the puzzle is well-thought out and holds the box with 3 pieces trivially packed inside with enough space leftover to place the 4th piece on top of the box.

Minima Flop merges Dr. Latussek’s Flop series of puzzles with the Minima series started and mostly populated by Frederic Boucher.  Never having previously done a Flop puzzle, I’m assuming that it refers to how the some pieces can’t simply drop in but need to flop in.  Sorry for all these technical terms,

My experience with restricted opening packing puzzles is that the boxes are designed to add openings where needed.  Minima Flop seems to take an alternate additive approach and provides material where required to hold the pieces.  We’re accustomed to holes used to poke pieces out and offset holes to allow rotations.  Now we have extended holes that allow pieces to be flopped through them.  Before you get worked up and think that this is a spoiler, I can assure you that this is not a great revelation as the pieces you start adding to the box start flopping out within the first couple of minutes.

Solving the puzzle is simply a matter of applying drop, flop, and shift maneuvers with the four pieces to be packed in the box.  And technically, you just plop that last piece in when solving it.  If this is your first Flop puzzle like it was for me, it doesn’t take long to embrace the 1.5 voxel flop maneuver required to solve it.

I thoroughly enjoyed leveling up on the flopping skill and look forward to tackling some of the more maxima puzzles in the Flop series.

Looks Easy, There’s Just One – Hitch

Every once in a while, you run across an enticing puzzle while surfing the internet.  Ok,  maybe a little more often than every once in a while.  Maybe once a week – that I don’t run into an enticing puzzle.

This is the story of one particular puzzle called Hitch designed by Émil Áskerli.  I spied this one on the Pelikan Puzzles website and alas dear readers, it is no longer available.  It was a lovely looking puzzle in an interesting compact form.  I’m sure that you can tell from my choices of filament that the version made by Pelikan used Purpleheart and Zebrano.  

Having printed it myself, I obviously solved it as an assembly puzzle.  The pieces didn’t look that complicated and they were obviously divided by color into 2 sets of 4 pieces.  The tan pieces are identical and the purple pieces are 2 pairs of pieces that are mirror images of each other.

I expected the solution to be easy and I was moving along just fine when I developed a hitch in my gitty up.  I couldn’t see the magic.  I say magic because even when I accomplished it, I didn’t see the magic, it just happened - magically of course.  I find that as I get older, it becomes more difficult to see further down the path and I just hope that any unnoticed gaping holes in front of my feet lead to the destination.

Early on in the solving process, I figured out where all the pieces HAD to go, which is always a bittersweet moment because it is usually followed by a long tortuous period of time that is terminated with the realization that the pieces don’t really go that way.

It’s not that difficult to get 7 pieces where they need to go, but getting that last piece in eluded me for a long time.  Being noticeably more afflicted by nearsightedness as I age, I kept changing the orientation of the pieces, trying to get a configuration that could be morphed into an assembly that would accept that last piece.  And of course that last piece was not the piece that I expected.

After some time, I gave up trying to figure out how it would happen and just decided to move forward without expectations and low and behold, the path opened up and swallowed that last piece.  Whereupon, I quickly closed it up and claimed victory.  

It may be small but Hitch has nice moves and solving it is very satisfying.  Or would have been satisfying if I were able to project hypothetical movements better, or recurse multiple solution path branches faster, or maybe just simply curse better with more gusto.  Then again, maybe the pieces that I printed were just a little too tight.  Yeah that ‘s it.  The pieces were malformed, not my brain.  That’s the story that I’ll be sticking to!  

Hitch is a great puzzle.  Just make sure you get a good copy!

Panefull Puzzle – Window Packing

You will go through great panes to solve this puzzle.  Four of them to be exact.

Window Packing was designed by Koichi Miura and exchanged in this year’s International Puzzle Party (IPP) by Meiko Kimura.  The puzzle is made from laser-cut acrylic and consists of a window frame and 4 blue tetromino pieces (1-I, 1-Z, 2-L) that need to be packed into the frame.  The 2 outer layers of the frame are made with gray frosted acrylic and have 4 large openings that come in handy to manipulate the pieces within the frame.  The center layer is clear and made from 2 pieces, but I have to confess that I don’t know why it isn’t a single piece.  

You will immediately notice that the O-penings on the front of the puzzle are not the same shape as the pieces to be packed inside.  Hint -  One corner of the middle layer has a single voxel opening (2 sides) to allow the pieces to be inserted within the frame.

This puzzle is not difficult, but it’s not trivial either.  It does require the rotation of pieces within the frame.  However, it should be obvious which piece needs to go in last and that doesn’t leave too many assemblies to check.  The rotations required to get the pieces in position are not difficult and the large openings help accomplish this.
 
I found packing this window frame much more enjoyable than packing the window frame in my old storm door for the winter.  Window Packing is a good entry puzzle for 2D packing.

Octadecahedron by Another Name – Pinwheel Crystal

What was the last octadecahedron puzzle you played with?  I thought so.  You’ve never heard of one.  That’s because of the lack of publicity that octadecahedron receives.  Now if I asked you about a truncated rhombic dodecahedron puzzle, you’d all be jumping up and down shouting that you have one in your collection.  Maybe even the Pinwheel Crystal made by Dave Rossetti.  It’s all in the naming.

I’ve always wanted a puzzle made by Dave Rossetti and I finally got my wish at this year’s International Puzzle Party (IPP).  Dave’s entry in the IPP Puzzle Exchange was Pinwheel Crystal designed by Stewart Coffin.  This is a geometric shaped puzzle in the form of a rhombic dodecahedron with truncated tips.  And the interior is hollow in the shape of a rhombic dodecahedron.

The puzzle is made from Granadillo and Maple and gets its name from the nice pattern made by the contrasting colors of the woods.  The puzzle consists of 6 pieces that are used to construct the truncated rhombic dodecahedron (just roles off the tongue, not like octadecahedron at all).

I’m always amazed at the complexity of these types of geometric pieces.  My woodworking skills top out at cubic dissection constructions.  The jigs and setup up required to make the angled cuts for geometric puzzles like Pinwheel Crystal is a whole other game.

So Dave used his amazing geometrical angly cutting skills to make 24 identical pieces (12 each of Granadillo and Maple) which he separated into 6 piles of 4, sprinkled them with glue, and shook them in a bag until he had the 6 puzzly pieces with a nice finish.  A little more shaking and he had the assembled Pinwheel Crystal.  Repeat 99 times and you’re ready for the puzzle exchange.  Sounds like magic, but everything seems like magic until you know how to do it.

Pinwheel isn’t a difficult puzzle to solve but it is a very attractive puzzle and beautifully made by Dave.

 

Screwing Around With Flowers – Tulip Twist

What do you give a wife who doesn’t like flowers or puzzles for her birthday.  A flower puzzle of course!

Tulip Twist is a flower themed puzzle with a lot of eye appeal developed by GlennovitS 3D on Printables.  For anyone who would like to print their own copy, the stl files can be downloaded from the Tulip Twist Puzzle Printables webpage.

The puzzle has 2 tulips, a planter box, and 3 layers of soil for the planter box to plant the tulips in.  Each tulip consists of a root, a stem, and a flower.  The flower and stem are the same for each but the roots are different.  Each of the 3 layers of soil has pathways for the roots of each tulip and each layer is different. The goal is to determine how the layers of soil need to be placed in the planter box to allow the tulips to be planted so that the roots are no longer visible.

From a puzzle perspective, Tulip Twist is very simple.  It’s really more about the eye appeal than the complexity of the solving process.  It may not be the most complex puzzle on your shelf, but it will certainly do a good job of drawing attention.

The design of the pieces is very well done.  The 3 parts of the tulips screw together very nicely, but note that they are reverse threaded, which feels somewhat awkward.  This is an attempt to keep them from unscrewing when you’re screwing around with them.  However, they are nice and tight and the rest of the puzzle tolerances are so well done, they don’t seem to be at risk of coming apart.

I was very impressed with this freely downloadable puzzle from Printables and my wife loved it.  It makes a great gift for that special budding puzzler in your life.

Time to Smother – The Blue Bird of Happiness

With a name like The Blue Bird of Happiness, you would expect this puzzle to have an upbeat theme.  However, the goal is to have the other jealous (or if you’re Mr. Mark - envious) birds, Miserable, Wretched, Gloomy, Woeful, and Mournful, smother Happy until it can’t see the light of day.  Yes, it’s time for Happy to have a case of the blues.

The Blue Bird of Happiness was designed by George Sicherman and used by Nigel Croot as his exchange puzzle at the 41st International Puzzle Party.  The puzzle consists of 6 pieces, with IPP41 debossed on each piece.  The pieces are 3D printed with each having a different color representing their personality.  Be careful not to confuse them!

As mentioned above, the goal is to place the blue piece on a flat surface and completely hide it using the other pieces.  Given the nature of the bird-like shapes, it’s not too difficult to discern the orientation of the blue bird required for the bottom of the pile.  One by one, you heap the Miserable, Wretched, Gloomy, Woeful, and Mournful birds on top until The Blue Bird of Happiness has vanished.

I didn’t find it very difficult to smother The Blue Bird of Happiness and I felt kind of sorry for him.  However, I needn’t have worried.  There were plenty of cracks for Happiness to seep through and like the phoenix, The Blue Bird of Happiness rose again to taunt the next puzzler.

C’est Ludique – Minima Ludique

 

J’aime la série de puzzles Minima.  Chaque casse-tête est un petit défi et ludique, surtout le puzzle du jour – Minima Ludique.

Minima Ludique was designed by Frederic Boucher and made by Nothing Yet Designs.  The puzzle consists of 4 Wenge and Mahogany V shaped pieces that have to be packed within a holey frosted acrylic box.  The packaging for the puzzle is well-thought out and holds the box with 3 pieces trivially packed inside with enough space leftover to place the 4th piece on top of the box.

Apparently you don’t have to worry about the apparentness of this puzzle.  It goes without saying that this puzzle is an apparent rectangular parallelepiped since the 4 pieces are comprised of 12 cubes that have to be packed into a 12 voxel space.  This lets you know that the last piece will simply slide in through the only 2 voxel opening in 1 move.  All you have to do is find out how to pack the other 3 Vs in preparation.

And therein lies the dilemma.  Getting those first 3 pieces into position takes a bit of thinking.  There are 2 tricky moves involved.  The first wants to happen and will pull you along with it.  The second will be less obvious and will attempt to resist you.  However, once you’ve accomplished it, it’s all over.

A few weeks after solving it, I looked at it and decided to put it back in an unsolved state.  Unfortunately, after the first piece dropped out, I couldn’t immediately determine how to release the other 3.  It’s not as if there are a lot of moves that you can make.  And then I saw it.  As during the initial solve, the key move doesn’t lend itself to being easily discovered.

Minima Ludique is a fun puzzle with some replayability for guys like me with no memory capacity.  Maybe I should design a Minima puzzle with lots of holes in the box – Minima Cerveau anyone?

Corner Table – End Table

International Puzzle Party (IPP) Exchange Puzzles come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes (and colors and materials and textures and …).  Although End Table is larger than you would expect and smaller than the name would imply, the name refers to the shape/location of the red square piece in the tray and not its size.

End Table wa designed by Goh Pit Khiam and was Khuong An Nguyen’s IPP41 exchange puzzle.  It’s 3D printed with a marble PLA tray and 6 translucent PLA pieces.  I didn’t want to risk breaking the puzzle by undoing the clips that hold the top in place but it looks like a nice mechanism.  They clips appear to be hinged on the top but I don’t believe in unnecessary violence to puzzles (except for the ones that I make – in fact abusing them is a necessary part of the design/manufacturing process and therapeutic to boot).  The translucent PLA used for the pieces allows you to see the infill pattern.  

It’s immediately obvious that this is a multi-color, apparent-rectangle, restricted-opening, 2D tray-packing puzzle.  The 5x4 tray has a 2 voxel opening in the side.  The objective is to place all the pieces in the tray through the opening with the red piece in the upper left corner (assuming that the opening is in the bottom left corner).  Never fear, there is a red square printed in the tray where the red square piece needs to go.  The pieces consist of 2 blue Is, 2 green Vs, 1 purple N, and 1 red O.

Windows for manipulating the pieces are very large.  The size of the puzzle is much larger than you would expect for this type of puzzle.  It makes handling the pieces easy.  I also found solving the puzzle to be easy as well although sometimes you just get lucky.  Placement of the pieces seemed logical with the red square restricted to the designated corner.

Just for fun, I tried packing the pieces with the red square in the other 3 corners without issue.  None were difficult.  However, after looking at the solutions that I came up with for the other 3 corners, I decided that maybe I did get lucky on the official objective since that solution had a property that the other 3 didn’t.

Easy As – Duck Soup

How many puzzles can you say are as easy as duck soup and be completely correct irrespective of the person attempting to solve it?  Well this one’s Duck Soup for everyone!

Duck Soup was developed by Guy Loel and David Goodman and entered in this year’s International Puzzle Party (IPP) Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition.  Although it didn’t win any awards, I thought it was one of the top stand-out puzzles in the competition.  It was well-themed, well-made, and a good challenge.  

There are 2 goals: the ultimate goal and a waypoint goal for encouragement.  The waypoint goal is to make a bland soup by packing all 7 ducks in the pot without the bouillon cube (with the lid closed of course – no legs hanging out of the side of the pot like in the kitchen).  If and when you accomplish that, you can add the bouillon cube to the pot as well for the ultimate soup experience.

No names for the ducks were provided so I’m going with Rufus, Pinky, Chicolini, Bob, Gloria, Vera, and Zander.  I managed to pack these 7 ducks into the pot in the IPP41 design competition room without the bouillon cube.  It was enough of a challenge to realize that I wasn’t going to obtain the ultimate goal at IPP if I wanted to spend time enjoying the many other puzzles in the competition.

When Duck Soup became available on Nothing Yet Designs, I grabbed a copy as soon as possible.  Continuing the theme, the puzzle arrives in a takeout box with everything you need to successfully make Duck Soup – a pot complete with lid, 7 ducks, and a bouillon cube just to spice things up a bit.  You don’t have to worry about the ducks making a mess.  The bottom of the box is filled with hay.  All the pieces are 3D printed and they are very well-done.  As well-done as the design competition version was, these are weller-done.  The ducks are so cute, who wouldn’t love them.  And the pot, most amazing pot ever!  Love that fuzzy skin.  However, I do have to say that I miss the magnets that held the lid on the pot in the competition puzzle.  Having 3D printed a few puzzles myself, I completely understand avoiding embedded magnets and I feel the tradeoff with the other enhancements like multicolor printing was worth it.

Working on getting that bouillon cube to dissolve in the pot at home, I think I discovered most of the 180 solutions of organizing the ducks in the pot without the bouillon cube.  And of course it was just as easy to add the bouillon cube and leave out Rufus (who was very grateful by the way).  

I failed to make the ultimate Duck Soup over several days.  The ducks were just not cooperating and free-ranging in my living room.  Did I mention that there is only 1 proper way to make Duck Soup?  At some point I stopped and decided that I needed to think like a duck.  If I were a duck, how would I cozy up to other ducks to waste the least amount of space.  Once I figured that out, it was Duck Soup!

The IPP design competition has so many great new puzzles designs that they can’t all be given a prize.  Duck Soup is one of those gems.  If you want one of your own, you can get it from Nothing Yet Designs when it is in stock.

Not ducks were harmed in the making of this blog.

 

One Person – Three Body Problem

At this year’s International Puzzle Party (IPP), I overheard Girish Sharma say that people smiled when he told them the name of his puzzle, Three Body Problem, during the IPP Puzzle Exchange.  I know it didn’t make me smile – maybe cringe-worthy.  All I could think about was complex coordinated movements in physics with no general closed-form solution.  Turns out I’m just socially stunted and not tuned in.  3 Body Problem is the name of a series on Netflix based on a novel by Liu Cixin.  However, I may have been on to something since the puzzle does indeed require complex rotational movements.

Three Body Problem was designed by Girish Sharma and used as his exchange puzzle at IPP41.  The puzzle is nicely made with Maple, Cherry, and Mahogany by Brian Menold at Wood Wonders.  And dowels were used to reinforce end grain glue joints.

The stated goal is to interlock the 3 pieces within a 4x4x4 space.  It also promises some rotational moves in the solve.  Removing the 3 pieces from the box, it’s obvious that they are not going to fill the 4x4x4 space and won’t even cover the exterior surface like the many amazing turning interlocking cube (TIC) puzzles created by Andrew Crowell.  I used to see this as a sign of an unfinished design but to be honest, this puzzle is awesome.

Although this puzzle calls for 3 bodies, I thought I would tackle it solo.  However, it took me 3 times longer to solve than I expected.  I sat down with it several times before I finally had all 3 pieces packed together.

The final assembly was never really much in doubt, although I was required to doubt it a little since it took so long to find the solution.  However, the rotation supported by the half corner cube pretty much forces you to believe in the assembly.  It’s that crazy dance of the third piece that eluded me several times.  The problem is that you need to envision it from the end back to the beginning and there are so many steps, it’s not easy to run through.  Along the way, I found some interesting moves that I thought would be required but didn’t lead anywhere.  Eventually, I found my way to the final assembly.

I also enjoyed coming back to it a couple of days later and found that it took me several minutes to get it back apart.  To say that rotations are required is an understatement.  Being a fan of rotations, I really found this to be a great puzzle.  I’m sure the Netflix series plot has many twists and turns if it is anything like the puzzle.

 

All Corners, No Corners – 4 Piece Jigsaw

4 Piece Jigsaw was designed by Haym Hirsh and used as his International Puzzle Party (IPP) exchange puzzle for IPP41.  As indicated by the name, there are 4 jigsaw puzzle pieces that have to be placed in a square area.  Of course none of the pieces have a straight edge, making them all edge pieces without an edge or since there are only 4, all corner pieces without corners.

The puzzle was made by Nothing Yet Designs using laser-cut acrylic.  Going with the US based IPP red, white, and blue theme (as opposed to, for example, a bleu, blanc, rouge theme for France), the puzzle was made with a white frame and red and blue pieces.  The frame consists of 2 layers of acrylic that are bolted together with the bolt caps acting as tray legs.  Mine needed some tightening, so make sure you don’t unexpectedly loose yours.

Typical jigsaw solving starts with separating edge pieces from middle pieces and then pulling out the 4 corner pieces from the edge pieces.  With only 4 pieces, you would expect all the pieces to look like corners, but you realize that this will be a puzzle without a clean exterior edge.  All the pieces are middle pieces.  It’s kind of like asking for an Oreo cookie without the cookie part.  Admit it, you know you wanted to.  Just the middle please!

Each edge of the puzzle pieces has either a knob or a socket with each piece having 2 of each on opposite edges.  The knobs and sockets come in either single or double size and can be located in the left, right, or center position, or in the case of the double size, 2 adjacent positions, which always includes the center. And unlike a typical jigsaw puzzle, the pieces don’t have a designated top and bottom, so they can go either way.

The first stage of attacking this puzzle is to rule out some often-used packing tricks.  After getting those out of the way, you basically know how the pieces are going to be packed in the tray.  I was anticipating an expected Aha while pondering whether the Aha was that there wasn’t an Aha.  Trying both Aha and meta-Aha assemblies, I eventually found myself at the solution – Ahahaha!

Being a puzzle designer myself, after I solved the puzzle, just for the hell of it, for no particular reason at all, not that I would ever think about it myself, I checked the kerf angle of the pieces to determine if they were all aligned with the orientation of the solved puzzle and it looked to me like it was.  So don’t cheat and orient the pieces based on the kerf angle, not that you would ever think to do that.  This isn’t a real problem with laser-cut cut pieces like 4 Piece Jigsaw since you really have to go out of your way to determine which way the kerf angle is oriented, but it’s a huge problem if you 3D print the pieces where there is an obvious plate side and top side.

4 Piece Jigsaw is the first of a series of jigsaw puzzles designed by Haym and available at Nothing Yet Designs.  JIGS4W (all 4 pieces are the same color) appears to be the new name for 4 Piece Jigsaw and the next 2 in the series are JIG5AW (3 sets of 5 pieces) and J1GSAW (10 pieces).

Packing a Small Basement – Minima Nest

Minima Nest reminds me of my basement.  It’s a small space that you have to pack with a lot of stuff.  Once the basement is full, you then pile stuff on the stairs until you can no longer get to the basement.

Minima Nest was designed by Lucie Pauwels and made by Nothing Yet Designs.  The puzzle is 3D printed with a black and white box and orange pieces.  The print embraces the requirement of printing the box in 2 separate halves by using a big contrast of color between them, effectively hiding the seam by emphasizing it.  Well done!  The use of contrasting colors for the name and designer on the puzzle are a nice touch as well.  The lettering is raised to provide a nice clean background without crazy slicer fill patterns.

Minima Nest is part of the Minima puzzle packing series started and mostly populated by Frederic Boucher.  The original puzzles in the series had cool names like M1, M2, M3, …, but I’m guessing that they ran out of numbers and had to resort to names instead.  To be honest, I’m not sure what the requirement is for being part of the series other than being nice packing puzzles.

The first thing to notice about Minima Nest is that the stairs are steep – a full voxel up but with only a half-voxel tread.  This is also obvious with the pieces having half-voxel shifts.  Of course, this provides a significant clue on how the pieces get packed.

I found this puzzle to be on the easy end of the spectrum, although it was not trivial.  Even though I try to avoid it, it did require some thinking.  It doesn’t take too long to realize that one piece has to go on the bottom and another has to go on top.  From there you can determine that the other pieces need to go in between and around these two (hopefully, you didn’t need that last revelation).

Once solved, Minima Nest is filled to the brim, just like a typical basement.  My favorite aspect of this design is that it is easier to experiment bottom-up, but solve it top-down.

Frustrating Puzzlers – Cattle Frustration

You will immediately notice that today’s blog is not about a cast puzzle, it’s a frust puzzle.  So anywhere you would be tempted to use cast, it has been replaced with frust.

Cattle Frustration was designed by William Ja and Scarlet Park and used by William as his exchange puzzle for International Puzzle Party (IPP) 41.  The puzzle consists of a laser-cut body along with 3D printed parts for the head, hooves, and tail with some help from some string.  The top of the body is clear acrylic allowing you to peer in and see the bull’s innards including 2 sizable steel ball bearings.  One of the hooves on the bottom also appears to be attached to the internal pieces with a square opening large enough for something to pass through.  If I was going to be anal about describing all the features, I’d also mention there is a circular opening on the bottom between the hind hooves that looks like it could pass the ball bearings.  

Tipping Allowed

Your mission is to frustigate the bull, until it drops its balls so that you can remove them.  And then take a picture of your conquest and post it in a blog (I mean really, who would do that?).

I was a little slow in solving this one.  It’s possible that deep down, I was reluctant to remove the Bull’s balls.  Being a Taurus myself, I’m a bit sensitive to the theme of this puzzle.

I blew past the first step so fast I didn’t realize that it was a step until I had solved the puzzle.  I even mistook it as being something more involved and spent a bit of time trying to get more out of it.  While frusting about for the next step, there was at least one other questionable thing that I was trying to accomplish as I navigated the steel balls through the body, but it didn’t yield anything.  At this point it was just a matter of who was going to get frustrated first.

Senior Frustrato

Eventually, I exited the china shop with 2 balls in hand. When I was done, I was more than happy to return Signore Frustrato to his original state.

Although the puzzle is sturdy, it does tend to invite some abuse.  I’ve heard that someone has already broken the tail, which I can understand.  If I were lending it to someone, I’d definitely provide it with a couple of warnings.  Firstly, don’t abuse the tail.  I mean really, how safe do you think it is to yank on a bull’s tail.  Secondly, don’t try to decapitate the bull.  It’s bad enough that you’re trying to remove its balls.

 

THE END

Does This Heist Make Cents – Penny Bank

One nice thing about Penny Bank is that it is not delivered empty.  And the bank appears to be full to the very top.  Sadly, the bank doesn’t look like it could hold more than a couple dozen pennies.  At least the pennies are the British decimal one penny (1p) coin worth about 1.29 cents US (that’s a whopping $0.0129 each) at today’s exchange rate.  Just for fun, I checked with Wise and there would be a 1.08 GBP fee to convert 24p to US currency.  That’s a pretty heavy price to pay.  I think I’ll just keep the British decimal pennies.

Does it make cents to perform this heist?  Of course it does.  This hobby is a financial black hole and nearly impossible to extract money out of it.  Here’s your chance to accomplish the seemingly impossible.

The Penny Bank is a heavy (really heavy, it must be packed) chunk of metal that was designed and made with a manual lathe and mill by Phil Wigfield of MetalPuzzlesUK (MPUK).  It was used by Asher Simon as his exchange puzzle for International Puzzle Party 41 (IPP41).

The puzzle is a petite (and heavy) cylinder with a slit in the top as you would expect with a coin bank.  You can see from the slit that the top of the bank is quit thick.  Through the slit, you can see a coin right up against the top of the bank.  For anyone that has experience with piggy banks, you recognize this as problematic situation.  The bottom of the bank has a disk stamped with year, 2024, fixed to the cylinder and is the only visible seam on the puzzle.

If I failed to mention it before, this puzzle is heavy.  You can get a nice little workout as you solve it.  You also don’t want to drop it.  It could do quite a bit of damage if it impacted something unprotected.

My first impression was that this Penny Bank would be impossible to burgle.  However, it turned out to be a rather quick solve.  I attribute this to the fact that there aren’t a whole lot of options to try.  In the end, I succeeded in burglarizing the Penny Bank, although to be honest, I’m not much of a hard core criminal since I ended up restocking the bank when I was done.

The puzzle is well made and I found the mechanism to be simple yet quite clever.  Of course, what looks simple to the user may in fact not be simple for the implementer.  And even though, I solved it rather quickly, I could see where others may find it more difficult.  However, if you can’t solve it, it would make an awesome paperweight – because it’s heavy!

3Y + 1W Conjecture – Collatz

A puzzle being solvable is only conjecture until it can be proved that it is possible.  Some folks use fancy shmancy mathematical proofs while the rest of us just bash our heads against it until it yields.  Or doesn’t, in which case, Q.E.D., it is relegated to the obviously unsolvable pile.

On the mathematically unsolvable pile lies the Collatz Conjecture.  The objective of this puzzle by German mathematician Lothar Collatz is to prove that any positive integer can be reduced to 1 in a finite number of steps where at each step the number is divided by 2 if it is even or multiplied by 3 and added to 1 if it is odd.  Yes, puzzlers aren’t the only community to dedicate time to solving capricious whims and fancies.

Taking inspiration from this unsolved mathematical puzzle, Dr. Volker Latussek transmogrified the 3n+1 transformation into 3Y+1W with the objective of reducing it to 1 restricted opening square space.

Collatz by Volker Latussek was Hendrick Haak’s exchange puzzle at the International Puzzle Party (IPP) 41.  It consists of 3 Y pentominoes and 1 W pentomino.  The objective is to place all 4 pentominoes in a 5x5 square.  To help you do this, a 5x5 tray is provided.  To further help you, there is a top on the tray to keep pieces from jumping out while you solve the puzzle.  A small slot in the side provides a convenient way to add the pieces to the tray.  Of course it is slightly offset to keep pieces from simply sliding out.

The puzzle is a nicely made ensemble of 3D printing and Laser Cut Acrylic.  The tray is 3D printed and the 4 pieces and top are laser-cut from Acrylic.  The top has 4 sizeable holes that can be used to manipulate the pieces within the tray.  And it can be slid off so that you can easily store the pieces in the tray so that they don’t fall out.  I came to the conclusion a while ago that all the packing puzzles that I print would have a sliding opening and I’m glad to see others embracing this as well.

So my solving experience went like this: This looks like it might work but I’ll be disappointed if it’s that easy.  Nope, the offset opening doesn’t allow that.  OK – maybe it’s like this, but it would still be too easy.  Nope #2.  Maybe I should think about it for a minute.  How about this – Yup.

It’s not difficult, but you do need to determine how the pieces interact with each other to get them correctly into the tray.  And I wasn’t disappointed!

Puzzle Meta-Storage - Clip Box

I store most of my puzzles in clip boxes and I find it amusing that I will now have to store a Clip Box in a clip box.  In one fell swoop, my storage solution just got elevated to a meta-storage solution.

Clip Box by Yavuz Demirhan was Klaus Kestel’s exchange puzzle at the International Puzzle Party 41 (IPP41).  The Wenge box is nicely made with corner lap joints and a Mahogany floating bottom.  Each of the 2 Padauk (if it’s not Padauk, let me know) clips are cut as a single piece of wood and then beveled.    It’s possible that the 4 pieces are made from White Oak.  But of course, it’s just as possible that they’re not.  Lastly, the steel ball bearing may be made from …. Steel?

Step 1: Figure Out What The Objective Is

The puzzle doesn’t come with written instructions and after hearing 72 puzzle descriptions during the exchange, I hope that I can be forgiven for not remembering the directions for each.  The puzzle consists of 4 wooden pieces and a ball bearing that need to be packed into a box with a clipped opening.   It comes with one of the pieces sticking out of the top of the box.

My assumption was that this is an apparent cube puzzle (good guess considering all the voxels are filled) and that the ball bearing would be on the bottom layer (or at least under one of the clips).  With all the voxels filled, you know that the last piece will just drop in with 1 move.

Step 2: Solve The Puzzle

The first assembly that I tried had a piece in an impossible orientation within the box, so I decided to analyze the various orientations for that piece.  For this particular piece, I found a nice rotation that I thought would be integral to the solve, but of course, I was wrong.  After looking at some possible assemblies, it turned out that the solution was straight-forward and didn’t require any fancy moves.

Step 3: Doubt The Solution And Perhaps the Objective And Make Up Some New Objectives

I felt like I was missing a constraint with this puzzle.  The solution that I found required only 5 of the 7 open voxels at the top of the box.  So I thought maybe I should try to make an apparent cube with any 3 of the four pieces with the ball bearing trapped inside.  Although all 4 combinations are possible, none of them were very challenging.

Step 4: Continue Doubting And Keep Strategizing New Objectives

I then used that nice rotation I found and built an apparently overflowing cube with pieces sticking 1 voxel higher than the top of the box for the 7 voxels not covered by the clips.  However, there were other solutions to this format that didn’t require that fancy rotation.

Step 5: Seek Advice And Completely Solve The Puzzle

I reached the point where I thought it best to get some advice and placed a post on the Mechanical Puzzle Discord (MPD).  In hindsight, I should have guessed the response that I received.  My assumption about the objective was correct but there are 2 solutions!

Dedicating a little more time, I discovered the second solution, which turned out to be more interesting than the original solution that I found.   Altogether, I got a lot of puzzling out of this little guy.

Not Curly Burl – Curly Burr N8

I like all sorts of puzzles, but I still consider myself to be a burr guy.  As such, I always look forward to Frans de Vreugd’s International Puzzle Party (IPP) exchange puzzle every year.  This year’s puzzle, Curly Burr N8, was designed by Frans himself and made by Pelikan using Maple and Merbau.  Should have been Curly Burl Maple – just sayin.  However, one of my pieces is curly on the end.

The information that comes with the puzzle indicates that it has a unique level 8 solution.  This means that it takes 8 moves to remove the first piece from a fully assembled puzzle.  Unfortunately (or fortunately), it comes unassembled and there are quite a few required moves before the last piece gets put in.  And they forgot to mark the piece the goes in last.  Of course, being the expert burr puzzler that I am, I started with that piece as the first piece.

I always enjoy solving 6 piece burrs.  I start by taking the pieces and examining them.  Each piece is new and has its own specific role to play in the solution dance.  This ensemble has a pair of twins, which helps to reduce the complexity a bit.  While experimenting with the pieces, you develop a feel for how the notches and nobs are used and given the nature of these particular pieces, how the pieces have to move to start a disassembly process.

I worked on one assembly for a while, but was not able to get to the finish line with it.  As difficult as it is to break away from a potentially promising assembly, I reversed some of the pieces to successfully solve the puzzle.  Along the way, I discovered that the piece that I started out with needed to be the last piece, and I found it a bit of a dexterity problem to hold all the pieces in place as I juggled the remaining pieces to swap it out and then reintroduced it later.  Once it was added, it was just a matter of manipulating the pieces to close it up.

This puzzle does have a red herring.  I was continually puzzled by an aspect of one of the pieces.  After solving the puzzle, I was left wondering if it had been used without me noticing it.  So, I carefully disassembled it while keeping a close eye on this piece and I was left with the impression that it had more capability than was being used.  Next, I looked at all the pieces.  It was then that I realized that this feature was not there for the solution but for the manufacturing.  I approve - well done!

As of this writing, there are still copies available for purchase on Pelikan’s website.  If you are a burr person like myself, I highly recommend getting it.

SPLIT ASUNDER, RE – CONNECTING CUB3S

This puzzle is cubular dude!  Albeit a bit broken.  

You might be able to determine the number of cubes from the name of the puzzle.  Each of the cubes is split in twain and your mission is to reform the cubes asunder.  There are also some rectangular tubular pieces to be cached in rectangular receptacles of the cubic halves, each half having half of a whole hole.  Magnets were also added to make this a very attractive puzzle.  

This puzzle was designed by Tanner Rayes, that famous celebrity from the YouTube show What Did I Get Myself Into? and used as his exchange puzzle for IPP41.  New episodes of W.D.I.G.M.I.? have been temporarily put on hold for the development cycle of this puzzle, but I’d expect them to restart again after Tanner and his co-hostess Geneva open their new studio.

When I first saw the pieces for CONNECTING CUB3S, I was immediately reminded of the Impossible Triangle of Three Cubes puzzle by Andrey Ustjuzhanin and thought it would have a similar solution.  It didn’t, so forget that I mentioned it.

Tanner 3D printed the CONNECTING CUB3S himself and they came in a sturdy plastic box for storage.  The cubular pieces were black and the tubular pieces were Red, White, and Blue, keeping in theme with IPP41 which was held in the US.
 
Although constructing the attractive tri-cubular-cached-tubular shape was not difficult, the though process was enjoyable.  To be honest, I think that I found it easy because I had a good guess what the target shape would be.  For less experienced puzzles, it may provide more of a challenge.  My biggest problem was 2 pieces not wanting to go nicely together.  This was due to a rogue magnet that crashed the party and was hanging out with a buddy in one of the hole halves.  Once it was removed, the pieces slide nicely together.

I ended up laughing during the second challenge, which is to place the pieces back in the box.  I thought I would be able to just dump the pieces back in, but it required placing them inside with a little thought.  Not difficult, but you can’t just drop them in either.

Altogether, a nice package from W.D.I.G.M.I.? H.Q.