Not a Little Challenge – Monster

What a cute little puzzle!  It only has 3 little pieces that you have to put in a frame.  Bwahahahaha!

So how do you define a Monster puzzle?  81 moves to put the last piece in?  A total of 105 moves to solve with 81 moves to put the last piece in?  Over 1000 moves to solve a 105 move puzzle with 81 moves to put the last piece in?  Over 6 hours to perform over 1000 moves to solve a 105 move puzzle with 81 moves to put the last piece in?

Monster was designed by Girish Sharma and made by Tom Lensch using Mahogany and Maple.  The pieces are constructed with doweled joints to strengthen them although you really shouldn’t need to test their durability.  The tolerances are perfect and if you’re using force, you’re doing something wrong.  I also appreciate that the puzzle arrived unassembled so that I could enjoy the full solving experience.

Although I really didn’t have any time to allocate for working on the puzzle when it arrived, I got sucked in and spent 1-2 hours fiddling with it after I took it out of the box.  2 days later, I had a couple of spare minutes and sat down work on it for a bit.  Once again I disappeared into the puzzle zone to finally reappear 5 hours later with a solved puzzle.  Yes, this is a real thing.  During a good solve, you slip out of normal space-time into the mind-bending puzzle continuum where all your senses are laser-focused on a single objective.  I once had someone apologize a couple of hours after putting a puzzle in my hand.  Too bad I couldn’t hear him.

This puzzle may only require 105 moves but I’m sure that it took me over 1000 moves to solve.  Maybe 2000.  I have to say that for a 3 piece framed puzzle, it was a challenge to solve.  However, I already knew that Girish's goal was to exceed the movement count of Climburr (50+ moves for the first piece).  It took me thousands of moves so I can't attest if the 81.19.5 level is accurate or not, but it looks about right.  As tough as it was, I enjoyed working on it.  It's not as hopelessly impossible as it first appears.  I pretty much knew what I had to accomplish at each step even though accomplishing each step was not easy.

I 4 1 thought Monster is a tough but fair puzzle.  The big unknown for me was the order of introducing the pieces to the cage.  I was fortunate in that my educated guess worked out.  However, I can't be sure that other orders wouldn't work just as well.  All the rotations that I made were well behaved, but there was one that was more than a simple rotate to add some spice in the solving process.

The first step in tackling this Monster is to determine the final configuration of the pieces within the frame.  This was not difficult and was greatly appreciated.  For each of the 3 pieces, you pretty much know where they go and how they are oriented within the frame.  You only need to determine how to move them around to get them in place.  During this process, I found that all 3 pieces are (mostly – hahaha) in 1 of 2 orientations, rotated and unrotated.  And you will be going back and forth between them, more than once, many times, so many times.

Having solved this Monster, the puzzle fibers that comprise my body were definitely sated.  I even thought my 6-7 hour solve time was quite respectable until I found out that someone else had solved it in a few hours while watching TV.  Sigh.

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 Goh 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.