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.