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.