Merlon the Magician Apparently Fortified – Embrasures

Every once in a while, you run into some puzzle magic.  And puzzles invoking medieval times with swords, damsels in distress, and impenetrable castles are in vogue.  Particularly castles.  Castles with turrets.  Castles with turrets with embrasures.  And you can’t just create embrasures from nothing.  Or can you?  No!  Merlon magic is apparently needed to create embrasures.

Embrasures is a 3D apparent cube packing puzzle designed by Alexander Magyarics and made by Wood Wonders.  The box is made from Tigerwood and Avodire and the 3 pieces are made from Red Grandis.  The use of the 2 contrasting exotic woods for the box gives it a stunning look.  And the embrasures definitely lend it the appearance of a castle turret.

The objective of this level 10.9.4 challenge is simple.  Fortify the turret, i.e., pack the pieces within the box so that the all the openings are filled.  This includes the top with the 4 embrasures as well as the 2 other ports on the bottom.

I started by looking at possible ways to arrange the 3 pieces withing a 3x3x3 cubic space but quickly determined that there were too many to take that approach.

Depending on how you look at it, the top has 4 embrasures or 4 merlons.  Since this is an apparent cube puzzle, maybe it would be best to focus on the embrasures.  And don’t forget those 2 ports at the base.

Embracing an embrasure approach, I eventually found a promising candidate assembly.  Doing a little experimentation, I was able to see how the first piece could be removed from the box.  However, I was having a little difficulty finding how a second piece could be removed.  The last 2 pieces seemed to be in each other’s way, prohibiting either from exiting.

It was then that I discovered a tricky little rotation that would allow me remove a second piece and summarily, the last piece.  I successfully tested it and trumpeted my triumphal victory.  

As I started writing this blog I reread the puzzle description on the Wood Wonders website whereupon I noted that it explicitly states NO ROTATIONS.  Cheater, cheater, cheater!!!  I was seized with flashbacks of grade school and being reprimanded for not paying attention to directions.  Now I have a wife to keep me in line and I knew she was going to make me work on this puzzle until I solved it correctly.  I’m so lucky!

Of course, the fork in the road was at that problematic section in the middle of removing the second piece.  In my defense, the rotation path was about the same length at the non-rotation path.  However, the non-rotation path is a bit more elegant.  Had I been following directions, I would have never found the alternate path with the rotation.  It’s not obvious and will not occur inadvertently.  I’m just glad I got to solve it twice.  As with all of Alexanders designs, I really enjoyed this one.  If you’re lucky, you may find it in stock at Wood Wonders.

I was so amazed at the appearance and quality of Embrasures that it got me thinking of something with a bigger scope.  Maybe the next big castle puzzle project could include a packing puzzle within each turret.  That would be awesome!

No Problem Puzzles, Update #5

No Problem Puzzles provided over 100 amazing puzzles designs for the community between November 2020 and April 2023 until the tragic passing of Symen Hovinga on 7 April 2023.  Theo Geerinck, the other half of the No Problem Puzzles duo, decided to graciously allow the puzzle designs to be made available to the puzzle community for anyone to print their own copy to keep the legacy alive.  Mr BurrTools himself, Andreas Röver, is currently in the process of verifying and publishing the stl model files over the next several months.  These are being made available on the Printables site under the No Problem Puzzles collection. 

This post continues the review of the No Problem Puzzles as the models are being released.  Since the last review (No Problem Puzzles, Update #4), another set of No Problem Puzzles has become available.  They consist of Push Pull, Hash^3, Trio, Pakze!, and T On Top.  For this batch of puzzles, the specified level of difficulty varied between 2 and 4 on a scale of 5.

Push-Pull

What a monster.  I had intended to include this one in the last update but I was unable to solve it over several days.  You have to respect these difficulty level 4 challenges. 

Push-Pull consists of 5 pieces that have to be packed in within a 3x3x3 box with double swinging doors on the top.  The doors are situated such that each carves out a 1x3 space within the box as they move.  And once they are open, you end up with a 1x3 opening that is roughly a quarter of a voxel in from the side.  Thus creating an opening of about 2.5 voxels wide in the center of the 3 voxel space.

While trying to solve this one, many things seemed obvious to me.  And what was obvious to me, obviously changed as I went along.  My assumptions concerning the last piece to place in the box, how they would move, impossible orientations for pieces, etc., etc., etc., were all called into question.

I kept trying the same things over and over to gain some insight on how to proceed.  I found a couple of assemblies where 1 piece would be able to be removed but the others would be stuck.  I had assemblies where it would have worked if one of the pieces were replaced with its mirror image.  I even had inspiring assemblies where pieces slid nicely back and forth but wouldn’t allow both doors to close.

Eventually, I ran myself dry and was clueless on how to proceed.  So I took a break to work on other puzzles.  Several breaks actually.  Many times, I would come back to one of the configurations that, like several other puzzles, just had the air of being The One.  But it just wouldn’t work.  Until it did!  With exact placement and a little nudge, I was able to close the doors on this one.  Whew!

Trio

Trio consists of 3 identical pieces with the objective to make 3 cubes simultaneously.  It immediately reminded me of the Impossible 3 Cube Triangle Puzzle by Andrey Ustjuzhanin although those pieces were all different.  It is not difficult to solve with a difficulty level of 2 but I did find that it took a bit more than negligible force to get the pieces together.  Once together, although they are very loose, they will not fall apart.  So loose in fact that it can be posed to look unsolved.

But wait, there’s more!  If you print another set of 3 pieces you can make 6 cubes simultaneously.  Yes yes, you could just make 2 sets of 3 cubes but the new challenge is to have all 6 pieces intertwined.  It’s not much more difficult than solving the 3 cube puzzle but does have the advantage of going together without any force.  Of course you can’t throw it around the room without it coming apart like the 3 piece version.

Pakze!

Pakze! is a ball packing puzzle with a difficulty level of 3.  There are 4 tri-ball pieces and 1 di-ball piece that have to be packed within a box through a large open slot in the middle of the top.  As with any of these types of packing puzzles, you need to start with determining what type of packing is required for the space provided.  Once that’s determined, it’s not to difficult to perform the packing.  However, I did have to backtrack to get the di-ball in the proper location.

T On Top

T On Top is a 3D packing puzzle with 4 pieces that have to be packed within a restricted opening box.  The box has openings on all sides except the bottom.  In the solved configuration, 3 pieces have to occupy the 3x3x3 space in center of the box while the long T piece has to block the short T opening on the top.  With a difficulty level of 4, I expected this one to be a challenge and I was not disappointed.  It always seemed like the box was forcing the pieces to be misaligned.  Although, I spent a lot of time trying to work out different morphing configurations, once the solution is known, it’s not that complex.  However, there are a couple of key rotations that have to be performed.  The only detractor is that it’s a bit fiddley when trying to move the pieces within the frame.

Hash^3

Hash^3 consists of 6 identical pieces that make a hash cube, i.e., a cube with each of the 6 sides showing a hash symbol.  Each pieces is constructed from 2 parts that need to be glued together.  I was feeling a bit Halloweeny when I printed them in 3 different colors.  I also decided to swap the parts of the pieces so that the pieces were bicolor.  Each piece is now different while still being exactly the same.  This allows for adding different challenges such as having each side a solid color, different colors, etc.  Even with these additional challenges, Hash^3 is not difficult to solve as it looks as it’s stated level of difficulty of 2 would suggest.

Unlike most of the other puzzles in this series, it does not have the name of the puzzle or the designers on it.  However, it does come with a stand with the No Problem Puzzles logo.  It is comprised of 3 identical pieces and relies on the thinness of the plates for the assembly.  And once together, it won’t fall apart.  Personally, I think the puzzle displays better without the stand.

This is the fifth blog post continuing the review of No Problem Puzzles as they are released on the Printables site under the No Problem Puzzles collection.  The prior posts and the puzzles that they cover are:

Preserving a Legacy – No Problem Puzzles
Sandbox
Swinging Lid Tray
3U Frame

No Problem Puzzles, Update #2
Turn Around
Unmatch Box
Quinta Cuboids
Dizygotic

No Problem Puzzles, Update #3
Boon
Sliding Doors
Pivot Window
Orange Perplex
Salmiak
Vixen’s Antlers

No Problem Puzzles, Update #4
Black Cat, White Cat
Pizza Panne
Donut Perplex Junior
Twist Them In


If you don’t have a 3D printer, you can obtain copies of these puzzles from Nothing Yet Designs based in the US or the PuzzleguyStore based in the EU.

Cranial Conundrum – Skull Puzzle

It’s that time of year again when the weather gets cooler, the nights get darker, and monsters roam the land.  Yes, Halloween had finally arrived!  Having friends that eschew Christmas and go all out for Halloween, it was time to play dress up once again.  I already had a bad reputation for being a puzzler, so being able to don a mask and go in disguise was a definite benefit.  However, I quickly blew my cover by handing out little puzzles as if they were Halloween treats.  I’m hoping that scaring all those people counts as a win for a Halloween party.

I always like to bring the hosts a gift.  Usually something puzzley to go with the theme of instilling fear in the guests.  Most years I have a difficult time deciding what puzzle to bring but this this year I was lucky and popped one off the top of my head.  It was a skull dissected into 6 pieces that I encountered on Thingiverse.

Skull Puzzle was developed and made available by DaveMakesStuff on Thingiverse.  It consists of 6 burrish pieces with a difficulty level of 2, i.e., it takes 2 moves to remove the first piece.  It may not be a difficult puzzle but it has an amazing visual appeal.  And as amazing as it looked online, it was even more amazing once printed.

Normally, I like to deliver puzzles unassembled mainly because that’s how I like them.  However, in this case I delivered the Skull Puzzle assembled so that it could be enjoyed in all its glory during the party.  My plan was to take it apart before I left so that the hosts could enjoy solving it themselves.  But when the time came to leave, I didn’t have the heart to disassemble it, fearing that next year I would return to a fractured skull.  I needn’t have worried.

Much to my surprise, the very next day I received a message that they had solved the puzzle.  It also reminded me once again how the level of difficulty varies between people.  It took me a few minutes to assemble the puzzle but took two other people working together a long time to reassemble it once they had taken it apart.  And they considered it far from easy.  I won’t repeat the descriptive language that they used to describe their joy of the process.

I suspect that next year I may need a better disguise costume.

Plastic Picnic Plates – Three Plates Burr

Puzzles don’t have to be expensive.  Some nice puzzle can be had for the cost of 3D printing using sites such as Printables and Thingiverse.  Just hop on any of these sites and search for puzzle and you will be rewarded with a large selection of puzzles to choose from.  However, I would recommend avoiding puzzles that don’t appear to have approval from the designers if at all possible.

Three Plates Burr made an appearance at a Puzzle Picnic earlier this month and I ended up with it in my possession at the end of the day.  It is a level 14, 3-piece board burr made available by a mad gardener on Printables.

I ended up with this burr since I was unable to solve it during the picnic.  With only 3 pieces, I assumed that it would go together quickly.  And once it starts going together, it does go together rather quickly.  The only problem is getting it started.

There’s only one assembly for the pieces and a little investigation will convince you of that.  Of course, I always end up taking more time than necessary to accomplish this.  The real challenge is to determine how the pieces need to be placed to start that final 14-move sequence to get all the pieces to their final resting place.  Once you have successfully accomplished the first of the 14 moves, you’re pretty much set on track to completing the following 13.

Finding the start of the 14 move assembly was well hidden and I enjoyed spending quite a bit of time hunting for it.  Three Piece Burr isn’t that difficult but it is tricky.  It’s certainly worth checking it out for the price.

Oh! – Omicron

Wood Wonders’ recent release included many enticing puzzles with several new designs from some of my favorite designers.  There is a nice selection of symmetry puzzles, 2D and 3D packing puzzles, burr puzzles, and Turning Interlocking Cube (TIC) puzzles.  Of course, I wanted to start with one of the TICs.

Omicron (aka Omicrom) was designed by Girish Sharma and made by Wood Wonders.  It looks absolutely beautiful with the contrast between the 4 pieces made from Bloodwood, Wenge, Maple, and Roasted Poplar.  As soon as it was released, Omicron went viral and is now sold out along with the other TIC in the release.  I always used to tell myself that the design was the most important aspect of a puzzle but the stunning look of those exotic woods makes me wonder whom I’m really trying to fool.  However, since Wood Wonders provides both, it’s a win-win.  And I’m always impressed with the little details like reinforced joints to provide durability.

There’s just something relaxing about spending time solving TICs. Om-Micro-On, Om-Micro-On… I can easily just drift through the puzzle-verse, sliding and turning pieces past each other as time continues to drag the real world down outside. 

Designed by Girish, you might suspect that rotational moves would be required and you would be right.  What you may not have anticipated is that the 4x4x4 puzzle would appear as a solid cube.   This is a departure from Girish’s previous TIC offerings and demonstrates his ticnacious dedication to the genre.  Especially since it is definitely more challenging to produce an apparent cube TIC without external voids showing.  However, I find it more aesthetically pleasing and worth the effort.  Having said that, I still love TICs with external voids as the additional space allows for more uncertainty in the assembly and additional complexity along the solution path.

Although it is straight-forward to determine where all the Omicron pieces need to go, it takes quite a few moves to get there.  Omicron requires more than a dozen moves to remove the first piece.  In fact, it takes 15 moves, which may or may not have anything to do with Omicron being the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet.  Of course, it’s provided unsolved, so that would be 15 moves to put the last piece in.  It is all part of a well-orchestrated dance of all the pieces to celebrate the grand finale of the solve.  Even with all those moves, including some rotations, Omicron is not overly difficult as you happily skip along the solution path.

If you missed out on getting a copy of Omicron, don’t despair.  More copies will be available at Wood Wonders in the near future.  You’ll definitely want this one for your TIC collection.

Round Bevels – Petit Albert

There’s some severe beveling going on with Volker Latussek’s latest 3D packing puzzle.  Why?  Because it introduces the ability of the pieces to perform an additional rotation within the box.  Of course this extreme beveling is not beveling at all but rounding where the edge is rounded with a specified radius instead of a simple angled cut. 

Volker Latussek has been generating a plethora of petit packing puzzles in the 2xXx3 format.  The puzzles use a variety of box shapes, openings, piece shapes, holes, rods, spheres, drawers, trapped pieces, and more.  This is the story of Petit Albert.

Petit Albert consists of 5 pieces that need to be packed within a 2x3x3 box.  The box has a 3 voxel opening on one the 2x3 sides to add/remove/manipulate pieces.  There are no other openings in the box.  The pieces consist of 4 tetracubes and 1 dicube.  I’ll avoid naming the pieces to avoid aggravating any sensitivities that various readers may have due to the lack of a definitive naming convention.  I’ll just say that the 2 types of tetracubes are mirror images of each other and that there are 3 of 1 and 1 of the other.  AND!!! the 3/1 split is aligned with the shape of the box opening.  Don’t change one without the other.

Each of the 4 tetracubes has a rounded corner where the radius of the round is equal to the voxel size.  This allows an additional rotation that would have been blocked by an intact corner.  This extra degree of freedom provides one more tool in the bag for solving the puzzle.  Of course in reality, it’s really one more tool used by Volker to confound your solving process.

I found the hardest part of the solve was convincing myself that I had indeed found how the pieces are assembled within the box.  The assembly has some easy to recognize desirable features and yet still appears to fall short due to the difficulty in seeing how the pieces can be manipulated into their required positions.  I’d almost go as far as to say that the first piece to be added to the box is the most difficult to get in place.  Almost.

Petit Albert provides a good mix of assembly, piece interaction, and rotational movements that make this puzzle a winner.  I believe that it will be available as part of the next Pelikan release and I definitely recommend adding it to your collection if you have been enjoying Volker’s other petit puzzles.

Two Lips Are Better Than One – Tulip 1

What do you call a puzzle with a large square corner opening that incorporates 2 lips constructed from triangular half-squares?  Perhaps 2 Lips or maybe even better Tulip.  And if there is more than one design like that, maybe they can be called Tulip 1 and Tulip 2.

Tulip 1 was designed by Osanori Yamamoto in 2019.  It is a 3D apparent cube packing puzzle where the objective is to assemble 3 pieces within a frame such that there appears to be a 3x3x3 cube within the frame although there may be unseen holes within the frame.  Spoiler/No Spoiler – there are vacant voxels when the pieces are packed in the frame.  The frame has a very large and very obvious open corner to add and remove pieces and a single voxel opening in the opposite corner.  My version was made by Pelikan with a Padouk frame and Wenge pieces.  It looks and feels fantastic and is a fun little puzzle with 13 moves to take the first piece out.  Of course, since I consider it an assembly puzzle, it’s really 13 moves to get the last piece in.

As already mentioned, the large opening in the frame has 2 lips.  Why is this of interest?  I would argue that each lip makes its corner open so that the adjacent internal voxel needs to be occupied to satisfy the apparent cube criteria while at the same time being closed so that pieces are barred from being removed there.  Open and closed.

To solve Tulip 1, my initial attempt was to find an assembly of the pieces that would fit within a 3x3x3 space but I ended up with too many assemblies that obviously wouldn’t satisfy the apparent cube requirement.  So I looked for assemblies with a solid corner to fill the large opening while simultaneously having cube in the opposite corner to fill the smaller opening.  This didn’t quite do it for me either, so I instead focused on ways to use the smaller opening.  Now sure, that opening could be there just to force a cube in that corner but I was going on the premise that one of the pieces would eventually have to stick out of that hole.

And thus I found a good candidate assembly that permitted a nice sequence of a few moves.  And if I’ve learned anything from these types of puzzles, if it makes a few nice moves, it’s probably the start of the solution path.  There were a couple of times that I thought I had it solved but there was a move in my path that was not realizable when actually in the box.  I could get it to what I estimated was the half-way point but I couldn’t free the first piece.   Eventually, I realized that the first piece to be removed was not the one I was trying to liberate.  With that new perspective, I completed the solve.

Tulip 1 is another great puzzle from Osanori.  Now to track down Tulip 2.