Nothing Yet Designs Release: 7 February 2025, 12:00 PM EST

The next puzzle release from Nothing Yet Designs (NYD) will take place this coming Friday, 7 February 2025 at 12:00 PM EST.  Don’t forget to put it on your calendar and set your alarm.

In preparation for the release, I practiced some magic.  The type of magic that occurs when a box full of puzzles arrives at your doorstep.  This particular box was full of puzzles nicely wrapped in NYD’s signature packaging for the upcoming release.  The release consists of a variety of puzzle types that I’ve had the pleasure to play with for several days.  And now it’s time to share these puzzles with you.

Haeckel Sphere – Lee Krasnow

In 1971, Stewart Coffin designed a geometric puzzle named Jupiter, which was patented in 1974.  It is constructed of 60 sticks that are glued in sets of 5 to make 12 puzzle pieces.  Constructing the puzzle with the 12 pieces is not difficult, but the original puzzles were made using 6 different types of wood with the ultimate goal to assemble the puzzle with color symmetry.  Later, Stewart also made a version that used 10 different types of wood.

Decades later, Lee Krasnow decided to take advantage of 3D printing to make the pieces fancier as well as provide addition color schemes.  Inspired by the 1904 lithograph Blastoidea by Ernst Haeckel, Lee made the pieces more organic, specifically oceanic, and the Haeckel Sphere was born.  And in addition to the original 2 color schemes developed by Stewart, Lee added another 6.  

One of the really interesting things about the geometry of this Haeckel Sphere is that the underlying triacontahedral structure has its own icosahedral and dodecahedral symmetry, as well as several ways to get cubic and tetrahedral symmetry. – Lee Krasnow

Although creatures from the Blastoidea class are now extinct, you can still enjoy a deep dive into the challenges that they have inspired.  NYD is now providing 2 versions of the Haeckel Sphere – a 2-color easier version and a 5-color harder version.  Physically, the difficulty to assemble each puzzle is the same.  The difficulty is in achieving symmetry with the colors of the pieces.  And each of the puzzles has 5 solutions with color symmetry.  According to Lee Krasnow, you haven’t completely solved the puzzle until you’ve found all 5 solutions.  Good luck finding all 5 solutions with color symmetry!

The 5-Color Tetrahedral Haeckel Sphere from NYD looks amazing!  And that’s with a non-symmetrical random assembly.  It is 3D printed with 5 different eye catching colors – red, blue, purple, yellow, and orange with black tips.  All 12 pieces of the 5-color version are different and consist of 6 mirror image pairs.   

A little math before moving on.  There are 12 pieces with 5 arms (normally they’re called sticks but we’re taking the organic perspective here) providing 60 arms total.  When the pieces are joined, 3 arms come together to form a side, which results in 20 sides.  Thus you end up with something resembling an icosahedron – 12 vertices, 20 faces.

A solution where all 3 arms of each side are the same color (4 sides of each color) was certainly my first goal.  For my first attempt at assembling it with uniformly colored sides, I ended up with a couple of sides with mismatched colors.  For my second attempt, I took a bit more care and laid all the pieces out on the table in an unfolded state to get the colors where they needed to be before assembling them.  Once assembled, I finally had my first solution.

But where is the symmetry?  It took me a while to realize that the symmetry was for each individual color and not for the entire puzzle as an ensemble, resulting in 5 colors with tetrahedral symmetry.  One solution down, 4 to go.  However, I already know that not all of the symmetry solutions have uniformly colored sides and I expect the non-uniform ones to be a bit trickier.

Single Color + White Tips

The 2-Color Checkered Haeckel Sphere is 3D printed with light and dark green pieces and white tips.  Unlike the 5-Color Tetrahedral version, all 12 pieces are identical with 3 arms of one color and 2 of the other making this a significantly easier challenge.  A solution where all the arms of each side are the same color would have 12 sides of one color and 8 of the other.  And of course, there are 5 color symmetry solutions to construct.

In addition to these 2 Haeckel Sphere Options, NYD will also provide a single color version on request if you are simply interested in constructing the shape.  Just send them an email.  My wife wanted a color varying blue version with white tips, which turned out awesome.  And now I get to keep 2 Haeckel Spheres on display in my living room.  We call them Haeckel and Jaeckel.

Sliding Heart – Naoyuki Iwase (Osho)

It’s that time of year when our thoughts turn to all things heart related, specifically heart puzzles.  At least it will after THE GAME.

Sliding Heart is a multi-challenge 2D sliding puzzle designed by Naoyuki Iwase (Osho) and made from laser-cut acrylic with a white frame and black matte pieces.  The square piece is adorned with a red heart to complement the red text on the frame.  The goal is to put your heart in the right place, i.e.,  move it from the starting position of each challenge to the upper-right corner by sliding the pieces in the frame.  And even though there is sufficient room to rotate pieces within the frame, it is not allowed.

There are 10 challenges starting from a respectable 20 move challenge all the way up to an 85 move challenge.  And I’m sure many of you will avail yourselves to many more moves than necessary like I did.  I started with the 20 move challenge and knocked it out of the park.  I then jumped to the 38 move challenge and it knocked me out of the park.  1, 2, 3, 4, ...37, 38, 39, ...88, 89, … 163, 164, … 298, 299, … 568, 569, ...

I kept going around and around and around in circles, doing the same thing over and over and over again.  And then some more.  I even restarted a couple of times to no avail.  
Now I have a confession to make.  Doubting that such a simple looking puzzle could flumux my superior solving capabilities, I entered it into BurrTools to verify that there was a solution.  No it’s not cheating.  It’s verifying, ver-i-fy-ing!  Cross my heart.  Anyway, BurrTools sided with Sliding Heart indicating that I needed to up my 2D sliding game.  So if you find yourself in doubt, take heart, there is a solution.

After an eternity of being stuck on 38, I decided to be a little less cocky and try the 26 move challenge.  I worked diligently on this one until several hundred moves later I finally arrived at … the starting point of the 38 move challenge.  Aghhhhhh!  Basically, I spent a lot of time going from 26 moves from the end to 38 moves from the end! Crestfallen, I was fervently hoping that good ol’ number 38 would not be the black hole of challenges that would swallow all the others and myself along with them.  I finally manged to assure myself that this would not be the case since most challenges have different piece orientations.  Desperate for a confidence boost, I tackled the 33 move challenge and manged to solve it for a win.  Right now, I’m 2/4 for the 4 shortest challenges.

Sliding Heart may not look that difficult but it packs a punch.  I love it!  Very challenging and not for the faint of heart.  And I’m looking forward to solving all the challenges although there is slim chance of me solving them in the minimum number of moves.

Flying Heart – Naoyuki Iwase (Osho)

Never having officially played with a flying puzzle has never stopped me from making pieces fly.  You know what I’m talk’n about.  I’ve seen references to flying puzzles before, but this was my first opportunity to try one.

Flying Heart is a multi-challenge 2D flying puzzle designed by Naoyuki Iwase (Osho) and made from laser-cut acrylic.  Like Sliding Heart, it uses the same black, white, and red motif.  However, it is not a sliding puzzle but a flying puzzle.  For a flying puzzle, each move consists of picking a piece up from the 2D frame and placing it back down in another spot.  It may be placed down in a different orientation, but it cannot be turned over.

The goal is to mend a broken heart.  Unlike Sliding Heart, the heart of Flying Heart is divided across 3 pieces.  To solve each challenge requires reconstructing the heart on the bottom right of the tray.  And there are 25 challenges ranging from 8 moves to solve up to 21 moves to solve.  That may not sound like a lot of moves compared to a sliding puzzle, but it takes some mental adjustment to see several moves ahead with flying pieces.

Like Sliding Heart, I decided to start with the challenge requiring the least number of moves - 8.  Several hundred moves later, I decided it might be best to reset and start over.  Keeping in mind that the solution only requires 8 moves, I preceded more carefully.  Ta-Da!  I finally solved it although I’m sure that it wasn’t a pure 8 move solution.

Unlike Sliding Heart, Flying Heart is more suitable to seeking the optimal path.  The challenges require less moves and after having done several challenges, you will become familiar various configurations that you will use as waypoints.  However, these waypoints may not lie on the optimal path.  And seeking the optimal path will keep you from trodding the familiar path, which will keep the challenges fresh and exciting and set your heart aflutter.
 

Family – Lucie Pauwels

So what do you call a 2D packing puzzle where the pieces just don’t seem to get along or work well with each other?  Well, you call it Family of course!

I always enjoy seeing what puzzles Lucie Pauwels is creating.  She regularly posts updates on Facebook and at the end of last year she posted about a puzzle called Family.  This is one that you could quickly glance at and easily discount, but you would be making a mistake.  I’m guilty myself of passing this one over when I first saw it.  But NYD saw the value and decided to make it available to the puzzle community causing me to take a second look.  And with that second look, I saw the brilliance of the puzzle and the anticipated Aha moment to arrive.

Family is a 2D packing puzzle designed by Lucie Pauwels and is made from Laser-cut acrylic.  It consists of a tray with orange and red pieces.  There are 8 uniquely sized orange pieces that are each missing a single square and 4 identical red pieces consisting of 2 squares.  The tray highlights are orange to match the pieces.  The goal is to place all 12 pieces within the 2D tray with the pieces completely filling the tray.

I tackled this puzzle assuming that I knew what the Aha was and that I just didn’t know deep it would go.  After some time, I thought that maybe the Aha was that there wasn’t an Aha and I was outwitting myself.  And then, Aha, I got it and all the pieces were packed within the tray.  Was it the Aha I was expecting?  Was it as deep as I was expecting?  Was it the meta Aha?  I won’t spoil it for you but I’m glad that NYD picked this one up.  I would have completely missed it otherwise.

Animals Party – Frederic Boucher

The objective of Animals Party is to pack all the party animals in the provided areas so that they are all getting along.  However, they don’t really get along very well.  It’s like planning a large family gathering where Uncle Jake refuses to sit next to Aunt Sue, cousin Mabel can’t stand being around Grandpa Ben or Grandma Lucy, etc.  You may be tempted to look upon this situation as a logistics nightmare, but in reality, it’s a puzzle.  And if it wasn’t challenging, we would be disappointed.  

Animals Party is a 2D packing puzzle designed by Frederic Boucher made with laser cut acrylic.  It consists of 8 bestial hexanimals in a primal yellow that need to be packed on a verdant green field within a dark night black surrounding.  You can tell just by looking at this menagerie that they really don’t want to be next to each other.  And yet, you need to crowd them all together.  And you have to do it twice, since each side of the tray has a different challenge.

The front side consists of a field 8 cube-its wide by 7 cube-its high.  3 cube-its are already filled in opposite corners for you leaving 50 empty cube-its for entertaining party animals.  However, the 8 hexanimals only require 48 cube-its, although they would certainly disagree.  This leaves 2 unoccupied cube-its.

Let’s talk about those 2 spaces for a minute.  These extra spaces increase the puzzle difficulty.  Without these extra spaces, you would simply recognize situations where pieces will not fit.  With the spaces, they don’t have to fit exactly and this adds an additional level of uncertainty.  And the level of difficulty increases exponentially with each additional space until it hits a max and starts to decrease.  At some point, there are enough spaces to provide room where pieces can be packed in non-rectilinear orientations.  Thankfully, this transition point is greater than 2 for this puzzle.  And no, making 2 little square pieces doesn’t make this problem go away.

The problem is not that it’s hard to generate spaces when packing the pieces, it’s that it’s hard to only generate 2.  My advice is to try to think of the spaces as gimme’s, like the 2 that you probably take in a round of golf.  As you place the pieces in the tray and end up with a trapped hole that can’t be filled, you just took one of your gimme’s.  Once you’ve used up both, every remaining piece now has to fill the remaining space exactly.

I started on the front side and quickly discovered just how unfriendly the hexanimals were towards each other.  All alpha pieces for sure.  And there was one in particular that had it out for me.  After spectacularly failing to find a solution after a good amount of time on the front side tray, I decided to try the other side.  

The back-side is a whole other kettle of fish.  It immediately has 2 things going for it that make it appear easier than the front.  The first is that there are 48 cube-its leaving no empty spaces when all the hexanimals are present.  The other is that the field has 9 islands that help separate the hexanimals, giving them some breathing room.  And for me, it indeed turned out to be easier.  I found an approach that revealed the solution in quick fashion.  As it turned out, my nemesis on the front side became my buddy on the back.  Truthfully, I needed this win before going back to the front-side challenge.

Heading back to the front side after my win on the back, I was in a better frame of mind and finally managed to knock out the solution.  Perhaps coming to terms with my prior nemesis aided my approach.  This puzzle from Frederic was a solid challenge and I would certainly recommend taking the same approach of starting on the front side and using the back as a break.

Minima Bauhaus – Frederic Boucher

NYD announced on the Mechanical Puzzle Discord (MPD) that they are working on providing a puzzle from the Minima series every month for 2025.  For this release, it’s Minima Bauhaus.

The Bauhaus was a German art school designed by Walter Gropius and operated between 1919 and 1933.  The school design approach was a marriage of form and function with an emphasis on simple geometric shapes like rectangles.

Minima Bauhaus, the puzzle, was designed by Frederic Boucher and is a marriage of form and function with an emphasis on simple geometric shapes like rectangles.  It is 3D printed with a black box and white and blue and white-and-blue pieces.

The first thing that I noticed about Minima Bauhaus was that it already came with all the pieces inside the box.  Is this a disassembly puzzle?  Maybe.  So I took the pieces out and examined them.  There are 6 gray dominoes and 9 blue tile pieces.  3 of the gray dominoes have a blue tile permanently attached to them.  The gray pieces certainly conform to the 2x2x3 minima format but what about all those tiles.  And the box is wide open on 5 sides with only a lip around the edges to hold the pieces in.

Packed But Not Solved

It was then that I heard that little voice in my head sounding like my wife saying maybe you should read the directions.  So I went looking for the box it came in and sure enough, it’s not a straight packing puzzle, but one that needs to meet 2 additional criteria.  1 – The dominoes can not touch each other, and 2 – Have the same number of dominoes appear in each opening.  So, we need a Bauhaus with 6 rectangular rooms separated by walls.

I put on my best bauhausian face and set about constructing a Bauhaus.  My first Bauhaus had 4 rooms visible through one of the windows.  With a little adjustment, I ended up with a winning combination that I successfully constructed in the box.  

I found this one to be on the easier side of the minima series but it could just be due to my bauhausian nature.  It’s fun challenge regardless.  And as a second challenge, try to restore it back to the unsolved state it came in when you’re done.

Square In – Frederic Boucher

Being square is in.   Or is it being in squares is in.  Or perhaps squares in square is in.  Maybe it’s making squares in Square In is in.  Yeah, let’s go with that one.

Square In is a multiple challenge puzzle designed by Frederic Boucher.  It consists of a 2 sided tray made from white acrylic and 8 blue laser-cut acrylic pieces.  The concept is totally square man.  Frederic dissected a square into 3 other squares consisting of an inner core, an intermediate square ring and an outer square ring.  He then dissected the 2 rings into smaller pieces to finally end up with the core square, 2 L triominoes, 4 L pentominoes, and 1 C hexomino.  The objective is to recreate these 3 squares in the front side of the tray.

But wait, there’s more!  The tray has an opening on the bottom and it’s a 2D restricted opening packing puzzle.  Realizing that you would be there forever trying to figure out how to slid the pieces in to make the 3 squares, Frederic decided to help you out by strategically placing dots on the pieces.  Note that the pieces are 2-sided and the dots are not the same on each side.  The first challenge is slide the pieces in through the opening such that when they are in place, the dots form the inner core square and the outer square ring.  You may have to rotated pieces once they are inserted in the frame.  The second challenge is to insert the pieces so that only the intermediate square ring is shown.

I enjoyed both challenges and I didn’t find either of them very difficult.  There is enough feedback between the dot patterns and restricted opening constraints to guide where the pieces need to be.  Personally, I like the open top since it’s easier to move the pieces than through finger holes in a top, but then again, I’m not tempted to cheat.  Just like I know that you would never be tempted to lift an edge as you move pieces around.

But wait there’s more!  On the backside is another tray with 36 color tiles, 4 tiles each of 9 different colors.  This additional challenge is to add all the pieces except the square piece to the tray so that 4 tiles of the same color remain visible.  And you have 9 colors, so that makes 8 additional challenges.  Wait a minute … 60 seconds later … What happened to the 9th color?  Well to make the process harder, one of the colors was designed to not have a solution.  However, you are not told which color that is.  Thus, until you have completed all 8 of the solutions, you can never be certain whether a color has a solution or not.  Do you give up on a color and move to the next one or do you keep trying to find a solution?

These challenges aren’t very difficult, but I did spend more time on the unsolvable color than any of the others.  I think that design decision worked well and was more interesting than if all 9 colors had a solution since I found them to be rather quick solves.

But wait there’s more!  Not satisfied with the double sided tray, Frederic decided to add another set of challenges.  He divided the 8 pieces into 2 sets of 4 and designed 15 shapes that can be made with the sets.  Each set can make 8 shapes.  Wait a minute … another 60 seconds later … That’s 16 shapes total!  Well it turns out that one of the shapes can be made by both sets.  But does Frederic let you know which one that is.  Of course not.  As you solve each one with one of the sets, you’re never sure if you can move on to the next one or whether you should try to solve it with the other set.

I found these to be quick solves and I have some advice for you on how to go about it.  Before looking at the target shapes, take the 2 sets and try to make the same shape with each.  This is basically a cover-up puzzle.  If you’re like me, you’re shape will look nothing like any of the target shapes.  Personally, I found this more challenging than trying to make a specific shape.  Once you’ve done that, find a set that works with each of the shapes.  When you are done, you will have 8 shapes with 1 set and 7 with the other.  You can then go back to each of the shapes associated with the first set and see if it can be made with the second set.  I found this the most interesting part of the this challenge.  If you’re like me, after the first couple of target shapes, you will be able to look at them and almost see exactly how the pieces would fit in.

Marble Cake + – Frederic Boucher

It’s 2018 and I buy a puzzle called Marble Cake Plus from Cubicdissection (CD).  It consists of 7 pieces that have to be packed into a restricted opening box.  The interior of the box has a 4x4x2 space for supporting 32 voxels and there is also a hole in the side providing another voxel making the total 33 voxels.  The pieces only require 28 voxels since each is comprised of 4.  I complete the puzzle and solve it stored with that hole in the side nicely filled.

Now it’s 2025 and NYD is releasing Marble Cake +.  However, the walls of the box are not as thick as a voxel and it would look rather strange to have one of the pieces sticking out of the side in the solved state.  It is now obvious that the hole in the side is indeed not a final resting place but a temporary one and I now had an additional challenge.

Really?  Not Solved?
(CD Version)

In 2015, Frederic Boucher designed a puzzle called Marble Cake.  The goal was to pack 7, 4-voxel pieces in a 4x4x2 space.  Three of the pieces have offset voxels adding to the challenge of tightly packing the pieces.  Not long after, the design was plussed up to make it a restricted opening 3D packing challenge with an additional hole placed in the side of the box.

The NYD release of Marble Cake + is made with exotic wood pieces and a clear frosted acrylic box.  The goal is to place all 7 pieces in the box through the 2x2 opening in the top so that the pieces are completely contained within the box.  And please feel free to solve the second challenge of all the pieces within the box with one poking out of the hole on the side.

With the discovery that I had not failed to solve the puzzle but solved an alternate challenge, I took the challenge to find the main solution.  It doesn’t take long to realize that the pieces with offset voxels don’t play well with the others or even themselves.  I was a bit nonplussed to discover how difficult it was to fit the pieces within the required space even without the restricted opening.

Both the challenges, the official one and my alternate one, are not trivial.  I won’t tell you how I eventually solved them, but I will say I went through the typical 3D restricted opening toolkit including the Endgame approach, the What’s this hole here doing for me? approach, the How can I even get these pieces in this shape approach, and most importantly the Never give up, Never surrender! approach.

Marble Cake + is a nice challenge and if 3D packing puzzles are your thing, you don’t want to pass this one up.

Blast-Hedron 12 – Nan Ma

First there was Blast-Hedron 4 (BH4), then Blast-Hedron 6 (BH6) and now Blast-Hedron 12 (BH12).  The latest member of the Blast-Hedron family continues the evolution of Coordinate-Motion (CM) dexterity challenges designed by Nan Ma.  If you are familiar with BH4 and BH6, you’re already familiar with the challenge of assembling BH4 and how much more challenging BH6 is with 2 extra pieces.  So how difficult would the 12 piece BH12 be?

The 12 pieces of BH12 are identical in shape and come in 6 colors with 2 pieces of each color: yellow, orange, red, purple, blue, and green.  After working on Haeckel Sphere, you may recognize the shape of BH12 as being a truncated icosahedron – an icosahedron with all the tips cut off.  However, unlike Haeckel Sphere, the challenge with BH12 is the physical assembly.  As a CM puzzle, you know that you will have to suspend all 12 pieces at an exact location and orientation in space and them move all them at the same time along a different vector.  With only 2 hands, you may need some additional help juggling all those pieces.

However, I can confirm that it is possible to assemble solo, even without suspending the pieces from the ceiling.  I did notice something unexpected as I added the pieces to the final shape.  It starts out easy as you match a single side, then 2, and then a little more difficult as you have to match 3 sides.  And then something interesting and unintuitive happens.  As you get to the last 2 pieces, it starts to get easier again.  The last piece that I was expecting to be the hardest to add, turned out to one of the easiest.

I’m really enjoying these Blast-Hedrons and they look amazing.  I wonder if Nan Ma has any other designs like this up his sleeve.  I’m not quite sure where you would go after a truncated icosahedron.

Ball Buster – Lee Krasnow

Sometimes a puzzle is a real ball buster.  And then sometimes, a Ball Buster is a real puzzle.

This classy looking 3D printed meta puzzle was designed by Lee Krasnow.  It is based on Stewart Coffin’s Cluster Buster puzzle after having undergone spherelizification.  The puzzle comes assembled and solving the puzzle is performed in 2 acts.  In the first act, you are the ball buster.  In the second act, you swap roles and the puzzle becomes the ball buster.

I tried 2 ways to disassemble Ball Buster but I could only get one to work.  I believe that the design effectively shuts the other way down.  And no, using external tools including fingernails is not allowed.

During the intermission, you have the 6 pieces that together aspire to unite into a single perfect sphere.  Or spherical shell as it’s hollow.  The pieces are 3D printed using a metallic gray look with white and black highlights.  The highlights are actually screwed on the main pieces in krasnowian fashion.  The 6 pieces consist of 2 sets of 3 pieces each, one left-handed and the other right-handed.  The objective is to determine how to juggle 6 pieces with round ends using 2 hands and reassemble them into a spherical shape.  Having a lot of experience working on ball buster projects, I was able to assemble Ball Buster pretty quickly.  However, if you lead a more stress-free life, you may find this more challenging.

If you find that you can’t solve it, it does comes with a 3 piece consolation puzzle that you can put together that doubles as a stand for Ball Buster when and if you reassemble it.  The Ball Buster Base is a mini coordinate motion puzzle that comes in the same 3 colors as Ball Buster.  For a 3 piece CM puzzle, it’s a nice little challenge.  And together, they display quite nicely in the living room.

Ballsy Name for a Boxy Puzzle – Spherelation

I have several puzzles requiring the packing of 4 sticks in a box like 4 In Frame, Wheel Lock, and Quadripole.  They’re fun and I always look forward to solving them.

Spherelation was originally designed by Tom Jolly and improved by Zack Zieper.  It was used as Tim Udall’s exchange puzzle at the 41st International Puzzle Party (IPP).  Removing Spherelation from it’s packaging, you are presented with a dark brown open-top 3D printed box with 4 beige 3D printed pieces nestled inside, flush with the top of the box.  But it’s cubic.  The box is cubic, the pieces look cubic - calling it Spherelation is a little ballsy.

Since it comes assembled, the first task is to take it apart.  Turning the puzzle upside-down allows the pieces to move out from the top so that you can grab and start to move them while getting a peak inside.  It doesn’t take long to discover that there’s a shooter hiding inside to give you some trouble.  In addition to the shooter, there appears to be several nubs on the inside of the box to keep everything from simply falling out.

Disassembly requires moving the pieces around the nubs and each other while dodging the shooter.  Eventually, the box will be emptied, providing you with 4 burr pieces and an over-sized shooter.  The box is reminiscent of Pox Box with a couple of extra cubies on the bottom.

Once emptied, you need to leave it disassembled for at least 3 months before putting it back together so that you can completely forget how it came apart.  To be honest, this only takes me a couple of minutes but I dutifully waited the 3 months.

3 months later … I found a box with 4 burr pieces and a shooter.  Must be a puzzle (good thing it was sitting right next to a box with the IPP41 logo on it).  I immediately deduced that the pieces and the shooter had to be put in the box through the open end.  Since 3 of the burr pieces have non-solid ends they need to be located at the bottom the box since it’s obvious that the pieces have to go in vertically.  Further investigation revealed that the locations and orientations of 2 pieces are forced by the box.  This is a huge boost for a puzzle like this.  Given the nature of the shooter, there aren’t too many position and orientation combinations for the other 2 pieces.  The main difficulty is determining the order that the pieces, including the shooter, are introduced to the box.  However, I was surprised at how quickly it came together.  I found that getting the first 2 pieces in the box was the major challenge.  The last 2 pieces were much easier and the time to add the shooter wasn’t difficult to determine.

So is it more difficult to disassemble or assemble?  For the disassembly, the process starts out as a semi-blind experimentation process since you can’t get a full view of the internal structure.  From the assembly perspective, you have a full view of everything, but you’re not given the piece locations and orientations.  I found both to be roughly of the same difficulty and that neither was very difficult.

Drill Baby Drill! – Rock-it Burr

Demonstrating remarkable prognostic foresight, a brass monkey produced a future ubiquitous symbol from his well-oiled cognitive facilities.  And once such a thought has been brought into the world, it can never be unbrought.   The magnitude of this shared vision could very well end up defining a nation.

Rock-it Burr was designed by Ali Morris and made by Two Brass Monkeys.   It was used as Ali’s exchange puzzle at the 41st International Puzzle Party (IPP).  When I pulled it out of the box, I just spent some time admiring it.  It’s a masterpiece of 3D printed and metal parts.  The Sucker Rod Pump (the bird like thingy that looks like it’s pecking the ground) is nicely made and feels very solid.  It is mounted to the 3D printed terrain with the sucker rod disappearing underground.  It also has IPP laser cut on one side and 41 on the other, which serve as the pivoting point for the rod.  The cactus is also a nice touch supporting the Texas theme.  When everyone else was running with the Rock-et theme, Ali trod the path less traveled.  Well done!

Examining the ground portion of the puzzle, it looks burrowish with potential pieces that could be prodded to get things moving.  But nothing seemed to move and I was beginning to wonder how I was supposed to solve this frack’n puzzle.  And that was all the clue that I needed to dig in.  I drilled down to the core of the disassembly process and was soon pumped to have all the pieces laying there in a pile.  What a great idea!  And I wasn’t worried about getting the puzzle back together since the pieces are reminiscent of a typical Kumiki puzzle with a twist.  I solved it rather quickly but to be honest, the whole thing was rigged.

It can’t pump jack but it makes a good puzzle!  And they are currently available on the Two Brass Monkeys website.

A Very Attractive Puzzle – Tetracore

Sometimes you find yourself drawn towards a very attractive puzzle (I confess that I sometimes confuse sometimes with often).  Tetracore is one of those very attractive puzzles.  It consists of a stellar core surrounded by 14 heavenly satellites that have been captured in orbit.  In fact, the orbital shell is completely full and there is no room for additional satellites.  And as attractive as this puzzle is, needless to say, the satellites find each other repelling.

Tetracore was designed by Jared McComb and made by Brian Menold at Wood Wonders.  It includes a 2x2x2 core with 4 magnets on each of the 6 faces.  The satellites are the 7 exotic planer tetracubes, T, O, I, L, and Z, and the mirror images of L and Z.  There are 2 of each and the top face of each has 4 magnets except for I, which has 2 since the outer cubes can never be in contact with the core.  76 magnets in all!

With all those magnets, Tetracore begs to be played with.  Whether you solve it or not, it’s meditative to just sit and snap the pieces to the core.  You can even push them from one state to another.

During the solve, I was surprised at the number of times I was left with a tetracube void that didn’t match the last tetracube in hand.  Sometimes they were the mirror of each other.  I also ended up in situations where the core was completely covered with no external magnets to capture remaining satellites.

Sadly, I eventually ended up with a celestial body in equilibrium.  But wait, looking back at the description on Wood Wonders’ site, there are 5 symmetrical solutions in addition to non-symmetrical ones and mine lacked celestial harmony.  Yay!  More fiddling time on the event horizon.

Celestial Tetracube Being

 

Nothing Yet Designs Release: 13 January 2025, 12:00 PM EST

The first puzzle release of the year from Nothing Yet Designs (NYD) will be this coming Monday, 13 January 2025 at 12:00 PM EST.  Don’t forget to put it on your calendar and set your alarm.

Recently, I received a box full of puzzle goodness from NYD with the puzzles for the upcoming release.  They all came nicely wrapped with NYD’s signature packaging that is now easily recognized in the puzzle community.  The release consists of a variety of puzzle types that I’ve had the pleasure to play with for several days.  And now it’s time to share these puzzles with you

Artefacts – Frederic Boucher

It all started a decade ago.  A puzzle designer named Frederic Boucher submitted a puzzle called Artefacts to the Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition at the 35th International Puzzle Party (IPP) where it won ... nothing!  However, a clever craftsman with a keen eye for great puzzle designs by the name of Eric Fuller (Cubic Dissection) recognized the brilliance of this puzzle and made a run of less than 50 the following year.  You can find the blog on it here – Digging Through Puzzles – Artefacts.  Cubic Dissection (CD) was planning to make another run in 2020 but it never came to pass.

The CD version had a single frame with 4 challenges – pack the pieces in the frame with the peg lying on its side (3 solutions) and pack the pieces in the frame with the peg standing up in the round recess at the bottom of the frame (unique solution).

Frederic Boucher modified the design for his exchange puzzle at IPP39 by flattening the pieces and making the packing frame double-sided.  The first side supported the original packing problem with the standing peg changed to a fixed disk mounted in the frame.  Since the pieces were flattened and the disk permanently attached, the other 3 packing problems were lost.  However, the reverse side had a different frame where the objective is to pack four of the pieces flat in the frame and you had to determine which piece needed to be left out.  

Fast forward to now when NYD is bringing Artefacts back in all it’s glory.  It has a double sided frame with the original 4 challenges on one side and the additional challenge on the other.  The double sided frame is made from acrylic with a nice matte finish with the name of the puzzle and the logos for NYD and Frederic Boucher debossed on one side.  The 5 pieces are nicely made from exotic hardwoods.  And the peg is no longer just a peg but a totem peg.  It looks awesome with a different face on each hemisphere depending on your mood.

There is a lot of puzzling packed in Artefacts with 5 challenges.  The pieces fit nicely in the frame within the frame and are nice and snug for the challenge where the totem peg is standing since the frame is specifically sized for this packing challenge.  Although the pieces are not loose in this solved configuration, you’re not permitted to tilt the totem piece in its resting place.  I’m soooo tempted to give you a hint.  Just a wee tiny piece of advice.  But nope, can’t do it.  Good luck!

Comparing all versions, it’s apparent that it’s all about the peg.  Frederic squashed it, CD weaponized it, and NYD made it art.  Those artistic touches are what I really like about NYD’s puzzles.  The decision to make a totem out of the peg to align with the theme of the puzzle is awesome.  And they made it out of 3D printed it out of Rosewood wood filament to keep the aesthetic.

Minima XIII – Frederic Boucher

Who knew that a 2x2x3 packing format could be so fruitful?  The Minima series of puzzles by Frederic Boucher and other guest contributors has put any doubt to rest.  This series continues to supply many awesome puzzles with no end in sight.

NYD has produced many puzzles of the Minima series and is now making lucky number XIII available.  The first thing you notice about Minima XIII is that it’s 3D printed.  The second thing you notice is the reason for the first thing.  Not all of the cubes are cubic.  3 of the 4 pieces have a cube with an angled cut.  And to continue the discovery process, you will notice that the Z piece has a dot on one end to match the box.

Minima XIII was designed by Frederic Boucher and made with a sparkly dark gray box and red pieces.  It should be noted that the box is very nicely made and printed as a single piece.  To complete the color scheme, the name of the puzzle is highlighted in red on the box and the dot on the Z piece uses the sparkly dark gray.  The pieces move very nicely within the box even though you may be tempted to wonder if a little force is warranted.  It’s not.  Don’t be tempted.

The object of Minima XIII is to pack the 4 pieces in the box.  Oh, and you have to ensure that the little dot on the Z piece is not visible in the packed configuration.  This helps you know where that particular piece needs to be placed.  It can be viewed as either a gimme or more appropriately as a gotcha since packing the pieces with the dot showing is trivial.  You can even store the pieces that way when you are done.

Since this particular Minima puzzle had a 4-cube piece, I placed it in the box first and started to work out ways that the other pieces could be added.  And then I remembered that 3 of the pieces had malformed cubes that must serve some kind of purpose.  Thought I had it – nope.  Thought I had it again – nope.  This is the time where you need to refrain from the temptation to force a move and rethink.  During one of these sessions where I was doubting my underlying assumptions, I discovered that one of those assumptions was indeed wrong and that the misshapen cubes had opened up another path.  Once that hurdle was cleared, the function of all the misshapen cubes eventually (note I didn’t say immediately) became apparent and with some fiddling, Minima XIII was packed.  Awesome!

Frederic Boucher is puzzle wizard being able to create so many of these amazing packing puzzles.  If you enjoy 3D packing challenges, don’t miss getting this one.  And if you’ve been collecting the Minima Series puzzles, you certainly won’t want to skip this one.

Ace of Diamonds – László Molnár

In 2020 László Molnár entered a 2D packing puzzle called 10 of Diamonds in the 2020 IPP Nob Yoshigahara Design Competition where it was in the top-10 in voting for the Puzzlers' Award.  It was also used by Gergő Prémecz as his exchange puzzle at IPP40.  The goal was to pack 10 diamonds, 5 pairs of 2 conjoined diamonds into one of the 2D frames on each side of the puzzle.  Although the original competition copies where made in wood, later copies utilized more colorful acrylic with a white frame and red diamonds.

László’s new puzzle, Ace of Diamonds, follows suit with another diamond level challenge.  It ups the ante by being a restricted 2D packing puzzle with the goal to make a red diamond on a white background.  Not only do you have to find a configuration for the pieces to fit in the tray, but you need to determine how to add them through the restricted opening.  And with 68 possible piece configurations, you not only have an issue finding one but finding THE one and recognizing that it is THE one is a bit more of a challenge.  That’s what makes the puzzle interesting.  I don’t recommend that you try to find solve this puzzle by finding and trying all 68 possible configurations.

Ace of Diamonds is made from laser-cut acrylic.  The frame is white with a clear acrylic top providing visibility as pieces are moved inside.  The name of the puzzle, designer, and NYD logo are provided around the border in red on the underside of the clear top, which really stands out especially after the puzzle is solved and there is a nice red diamond in the center.  Of course that red diamond is composed of 7 red pieces that need to enter the restricted opening in the top and moved into their correct position.  Initially, I thought that they pieces were made from triangles but silly me, they’re diamonds and half diamonds.  

As with many puzzles, Ace of Diamonds looks daunting upon initial inspection.  This initial phase is when your brain is trying to find a handhold to start the climb to the solution.  I’m here to confirm that such handholds exist and there is a route to ace this challenge. I found that applying a little thought morphed the solving process from an endless lets try every combination process to more of a where does the next piece go approach.  This approach starts with identifying the location of a couple of key pieces and the rest start to fall into place from there.  Finding and exploiting those opportunities are what makes puzzling fun and interesting.

I usually work on these types of puzzles with the pieces outside and when I think I have a solution, test it with the frame using the sequence of insert, rotate, move, tilt operations to get everything in place.  Everything worked great with Ace of Diamonds without any binding of pieces but if you find yourself in trouble, you can always remove the fasteners and take the top off.  Just make sure you don’t loose the spacers between the top and the rest of the frame that permit the pieces to move freely.

I really enjoyed solving Ace of Diamonds and found 2 solutions.  So there’s a double challenge for you.  I’m looking forward to seeing what’s in the cards for the future!

Blast-Hedron 4 & Blast-Hedron 6 – Nan Ma

These puzzles are a blast, figuratively, no literally, maybe a bit of both.  These are both a take-apart and a put-together challenge.  The AHA moment for solving this puzzle is awesome – if you know, you know, if you don’t, you don’t but you’ll love it when you do.  If you’re not in the know, you’re pretty much obligated to get at least one of these to join the knowers.  I used the term solving casually above since you’re only half-way there after you take it apart.  The second AHA (pronounced Uh-Oh this time) moment comes in play when you realize that you have to reassemble it.

I originally thought that the numbers in the names were associated with their placement in a series but quickly realized that it identifies the number of pieces in each puzzle.  BH4 is a regular octahedron, although it is rather special here, consisting of 4 pieces and BH6 is a truncated octahedron consisting of 6 pieces.  The pieces within each set are identical and remind me of flowers.  My wife said that it’s OK to leave those pieces laying on the living room table.  That’s one way to solve the reassembly problem.

Of course the elegant disassembly process does not require any external tools and I was specifically warned that this included fingernails.  So I dutifully cut my nails before taking these apart the correct way, AHA!

Assembly takes a little dexterity, but I didn’t really have an issue with either although BH4 is a little easier with only 4 pieces.  Both puzzles are 3D printed and operate exceptionally well.  Between the design and the implementation, I was impressed how impossible it seems to take them apart.  I believe that one of the contributing factors to how well it operates and feels is the addition of the extra inner shell.  And it certainly adds to the how nice the pieces look.  For the versions that I received, BM4 uses vibrant contrasting colors and BM6 uses color changing filament.  I think they both look fantastic and I still can’t decide which one I like best.

Even if you know you know, you may want to consider picking these up.  They’re really good!

2025 Puzzle – George Sicherman

I always start the year with a George Sicherman puzzle.  George has provided a New Year Puzzle since 2017.  This year’s New Year’s challenge utilizes 4 pentominoes to make a rectangle.  The pentominoes are P,L,T, and Y and together they provide PLenTY of challenges – 4 to be exact.  Each challenge is to build a rectangle with a specific number of holes in the interior of the rectangle.  0 holes, 1 hole, 2 holes, and 3 holes.  The holes can be any shape and separate holes may have touching corners.  And yes, you can turn the P, L, and Y pieces over to use their mirrored forms.  You can think of them as being 2-PLY.

Although not difficult, this puzzle provided a nice warm-up to a year full of puzzling.  It’s amazing how 4 simple pieces can be so engaging.  What surprised me most is that I solved them in order, 0 to 3 holes.  I assumed that after the solid rectangle, I would stumble on the others randomly but that was not the case.  It makes a nice to carry around in your pocket for challenging others.

New Tiles –  Frederic Boucher

There’s no getting around it.  New Tiles is a scary looking 2D packing puzzle.  Simple looking frame, simple looking pieces, exudes a sense of easy victory – all signs of a great challenge to a veteran puzzler, especially from a designer like Frederic Boucher.

Frederic Boucher originally designed New Tiles in 2016 but ramped up the difficulty for NYD’s release in 2021.  Comments from solvers on the MPD indicated that Frederic had successfully increased the challenge.  NYD is now releasing another run for those who may have missed out on the first one.

New Tiles has a classy look with it’s black and white motif.  It is made with laser cut acrylic with white pieces on a black tray with matte finish.  The name and logos debossed on the tray are highlighted in white to match the pieces.  The 9 pieces are rectangles of various sizes with 2 opposing corners chipped off to make the packing easier – Bwahahaha!

I was able to spend a little time working on New Tiles but can’t tell you how I solved it since I haven’t.  I can attest to the fact that Frederic has certainly made it challenging.  I’m looking forward to solving this one and will let you know when that happens.

Muñiz Bundle – Alexandre Muñiz

It’s simple math: 2, 2D packing trays + 4 sets of piece = 10 challenges.  How are they? –  They’re great!  How are they to solve? – Haven’t solved a single one.  Zip.  Well mostly zip.  I did get one of the warm-ups before the challenges.  Maybe it was a mistake to save these for last.

The Muñiz Bundle is made from laser-cut acrylic.  Each of the two 2D packing trays are white and support 2 different sets of pieces with the debossed names on the tray color-coordinated with with the pieces.  The smaller tray fits nicely in the larger one and each set of pieces comes in it’s own bag.  Each set of pieces also has an instruction card with the directions for the challenges.  The 4 sets are:

• Slash Mob
• Little Pypsum
• Big Pypsum
• Symmetrominoes

Slash Mob

Slash Mob consists of 8 red pieces that need to be packed in the smaller tray.  These 8 pieces are divided in half to provide 4 unmarked larger pieces and 4 smaller pieces marked with daggers.  All the pieces have angled cutouts in them that are addressed in the challenges.  They are also all cut off at an angle on one end through the cutout leaving one half of the cutout where the cut is.  For all the challenges the daggers must be face up.  The direction that they point in is not important.

Each of the challenges requires the configuration of the pieces within the frame to meet a symmetry constraint.  They are 1 – reflection symmetry along the vertical axis, 2 – reflection symmetry along a diagonal, 3 – 180 degree rotational symmetry.

 

Little Pypsum

Little Pypsum uses the same tray as Slash Mob.  You just need to rotate it 180 degrees.  It consists of 6 purple pieces divided into 4 L triominoes and 2 dominoes.  Each square of the pieces also has 0, 1, or 2 pips.  There are 2 challenges: 1 – pack the pieces so that each row and column has 3 pips, and 2 – pack all the pieces so that each row, column, and main diagonal has 3 pips.  Of course successfully completing the second challenge also completes the first.

 

Big Pypsum

Big Pypsum is the big brother of Little Pypsum and uses the larger tray.  It consists of 9 dark blue pieces with 4 L triominoes, 4 straights, and a single square.  Each cube of the pieces also has 0, 1, or 2 pips.  It works exactly like Little Pypsum except everything has to sum to 5.  So the challenges are now: 1 – pack the pieces so that each row and column has 5 pips, and 2 – pack all the pieces so that each row, column, and main diagonal has 5 pips.  And again, successfully completing the second challenge, completes the first.

Symmetrominoes

Symmetrominoes uses the same frame as Big Pypsum.  It consists of 12 pieces in 3 different colors with 4 pieces each, which are made from blue, green, and orange transparent acrylic.  Each set has 2 L and 2 Straight pieces.  No wait, The orange set is malconfigured with 3 L’s and 1 Straight.  Each piece also has laser-cut markings that are used to support the challenges.  These markings restrict how you can place a piece in the tray by requiring that all pieces of the same color have all their markings in the same orientation.  The markings are configured such that blue pieces can be rotated 180 degrees, green pieces can be flipped over but then need to be rotated 180 degrees to align the markings, and orange pieces can be flipped over but then need to be rotated 90 degrees to align the markings.

Symmetrominoes comes with a warm-up in addition to 3 challenges.  Normally I scoff at warm-ups but decided to try it anyway.  The warm-up was to simply pack the pieces in the frame ignoring colors and markings.  Did I mentioned that there was a malformed set resulting in an odd number of L’s and Straights.  After several minutes of being scoffed at by this warm-up, I finally had them all in the frame.  Whew!  At the conclusion of this grand success I was out of time and had to start thinking about putting out a blog.

The 3 main challenges for Symmetrominoes are: 1 –  Place all the pieces in the tray with the markings of the pieces of each set in the same orientation, 2 – Same as 1 with the pieces of each set forming a connected group, and 3 – Same as 1 with no 2 pieces of a set touching along an edge.

Although I didn’t get very far in solving the Muñiz Bundle challenges, I definitely think that they are well thought out and made.  There is a lot of value in this 10 challenge bundle and I’m looking forward to a deeper dive after this blog goes out.  These seem like they will be serious challenges.