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.