3-Pronged Puzzling Approach – TritanIC Series (1-6)

A short while ago, just over 5 years, I reviewed a set of 3-piece 4x4x4 Turning Interlocking Cubes (TICs) designed by Andrew Crowell (Puzzle Candy - ThreeTIC, TriadTIC, TripleTIC, NeuroTIC, TriumviraTIC).  These TICs provided quick enjoyable solves to brighten the day.  Recently, a kind soul on the Mechanical Puzzle Discord (MPD) passed on another set of Andrew’s 3-piece TICs that I was more than happy to accept, but this time a 5x5x5 format.

The 6 TritanIC puzzles were designed by Andrew Crowell and like the prior 3-piece TICs, they provide a quick shot of TIC adrenaline to help get through the day.  I managed to hold myself back and do 1 a day over 6 days instead of binging them all in one sitting.
  

TritanIC

TritanIC, which I assume is the first of the series since it lacks a posterior numerical designator, is a nice start to ease you into the series.  One piece has more volume than the other 2 proclaiming itself as the base for adding the other 2 pieces.  The solution requires 1 straight forward rotation.  At least one other nice rotation is possible but not required and it made me wonder if it would be possible to alter the design to require it. 

TritanIC 2

I found TritanIC 2 to be twice as hard and then some as TritanIC.  I took this as a good sign that we were on a good trajectory.  TritanIC 2 has everything you would want in a 3-piece TIC where pieces have to added in orientations far from where they need to end up.  Determining how to simply put the 2 largest pieces together is not a gimme and takes some thought.  And trying to add the smallest piece to the mix is a challenge.

TritanIC 3

TritanIC 3 is a nice follow-up to TritanIC 2.  There are some nice rotations that have to be navigated to get the pieces in place before they collapse into a cube.  And you are almost guaranteed to have to back up and rethink the ordering of the pieces.

TritanIC 4

This is where the trajectory falls apart.  I found this one to be extremely easier.  Less than 2 minutes easy.  If you acquire the series, you may want to start with this one.  The most difficult part is getting the first 2 pieces together, which isn’t that difficult.  The third piece just flops in place before it it closed.  This one didn’t stand up compared to the others in the series.

TritanIC 5

TritanIC 5 gets things back on track.  In fact, it reminded me a lot of TritanIC 3 in terms of approach, rotations, and how the pieces go together.  It’s certainly it’s own puzzle, but has the same overall feel as TritanIC 3.

TritanIC 6

I found TritanIC 6 to be a tricky bugger.  Multiple rotations are required to get the pieces into position before they can start moving into place.  In fact, a few days later, it was non-trivial to determine how the pieces came apart.  A nice way to end the series!

Stuffing Puzzles – Xmas Stocking

I’ve seen references to the Xmas Stocking puzzle recently that caused my mind to wander a bit.  Since all the pieces were identical and packed in a fairly small box, I was wondering if I could solve it without having the puzzle.  After several minutes of determining how the pieces would need to be oriented due to the opening and rotation restrictions, I was able to visualize some assemblies but not how the pieces could be placed in the box.  I eventually resorted to using a piece of paper to map out the possible assemblies with no further luck.  It’s possible that this is one of those puzzles that requires some assistance like larger tolerances or beveling.  I was about to move on when I remembered that I had received some LEGOized hand-me-down puzzles from a generous soul on the Mechanical Puzzle Discord (MPD) server and sure enough, there it was.

Xmas Stocking is a 3D restricted-opening packing puzzle designed by Osanori Yamamoto.  It consists of 5 identical Z tetracubes that have to be placed in a 2x3x4 box with 2.5 voxels on the top closed off.  The triangular half-square is there to restrict pieces from moving through that square while forcing the voxel underneath to be occupied – assuming that the opening needs to appear completely filled.  I was unable to find verification of that requirement, but these types of puzzles seem to require that and it turned out to be the case for this puzzle.

Most of the 3D LEGO packing puzzles that I recently received came solved.  However, since they are made from LEGO bricks, you can simply rip off the bottom and dump the pieces without seeing how they are arranged or how they come out.   The LEGO bricks used to make the box also included portholes to view the interior of the box, but they are not needed to solve the puzzle.  

Being made from LEGO bricks, you know that there are no rotations that can occur with loose tolerances or bevels unless very specific pieces are used or they are doctored in some way.  Armed with that assumption, I tested the pieces and could get no further than my pencil and paper analysis.  Yes, of course I realized that I was operating with a bad assumption somewhere but was having a difficult time identifying what it was.  And then I dropped a single piece in the box and it bounced it’s way into an orientation that I had thought was impossible.  Apparently, the Z tetracube has a nice property that gives it a possible rotation that I had not thought of.  Now that the secret was out, it only took a couple of minutes to get all 5 Z tetracubes nestled within the box.

I don’t know if it was intentional, but the LEGO version did have the interesting property of still being apparently filled even with all those holes.

Mail Call

April’s First Puzzle – Smelling of (M̶)Bums

Spring has sprung and the backyard is once again filled with the sounds of crows screaming Ka-Ka all day long.  All this cacaphony tilted my brain, dumping future puzzle ideas into the cesspool of my mind where thoughts of the recent rash of geometric dissection puzzles started to float to the top. 

Last year, one of the 2 brass monkeys dropped a puzzle on the community (New Puzzle Comes Out – Smelling Of Roses)  that is now developing into a series.  My goal was to develop the second of those droppings.  And a solid #2 at that. 

We all spend too much time running around to no avail.  So I wanted to design a puzzle where you could avoid the runs, take a sit, and solve a puzzle.  A puzzle for everyone.  Even the naysayers who proclaim: Puzzles?  We don’t need no stinkin puzzles! 

I decided that I had to bring this puzzle to life.  It’s my duty!

Design

Sometimes I have puzzle ideas up the wazoo, sometimes I have to work at it, and sometimes both.  I put myself under a lot of pressure to come up with this design but initially nothing was emerging.  Then, when I was sitting on my porcelain thinking chair straining to bring to light a brilliant puzzle idea, it just materialized out of nowhere.  What a relief!

To start the design process, I took one of my cubic dissection puzzle designs and decided to muck around with it.  I decided it needed to have a crapazoid shape resulting from a crapazoidal projection of a diminishing cylinder in a polar coordinate system.  It turns out that crapazoidal math is exceedingly complex and it’s very difficult to determine the feci of the curves.  But I persevered and created the optimum crapazoidal dissection.  It’s always nice to have another design in the can!  According to the Hordern-Dalgety puzzle taxonomy, it’s classified as an ASS puzzle.  

I did a data dump on it and it turns out to be a level 5.5.3.3.3.3 with 4 of those movements being rotational.  It’s certainly not one of those boring watered down NM-ary challenges. 

I originally decided to name it Smelling of Mums along the series theme but that M eventually evolved into a B.

Testing

Once I had the initial design, I went through several prototypes.  Halfway through the design process, I had a brain fart and lost my momentum.  The first 2 versions were complete failures but the turd one was a success.  The most difficult part was determining the oder of the pieces to be added to the assembly. 

Piece of Crap

Production 

Now it was time to get down to business.  I was originally planing to make it out of coprolite but using FDM where everything gets built from the bottom was much cheaper.  I also elected to go with a single color to avoid overtaxing the poop chute.

Unfortunately, Smelling of (M̶)Bums is a PITA to make and production is limited. I can only make one a day and sometimes the assembly line backs up.  Eventually, I got in the groove and I had the runs coming out like clockwork. 

Sales

I didn’t think that there would be any interest in such a complex puzzle but puzzlers are descending on this one like a business of flies as if it’s their duty.  I design great puzzles and people tell me: That looks fantastic but I’m not buying puzzles right now.  I make a piece of crap and I get: That puzzle looks like it stinks.  I’ll take 2 please!
 

Distribution

When you’re dealing with piles of puzzles or vice versa, you need to settle on a shitting service to get them in the hands of puzzlers. They’re all shippy, but you need some means of leaving little packages in front of houses.  Hopefully customs won’t require retaining a duty.  At least I don’t have to worry about them getting damaged along the way since they’re very turdy.
 

Conclusion

In the end, I was happy to create the puzzle.  It is comprised of several awesome movements and tolerances are dead on.  Everything slides nicely, slick as … what you’d expect.  Although I was initially worried about the theme, I was given some good advice a long time ago – Make your business, Your business!  After all these decades, I finally get it. 

Although I always try to make puzzles that look like something you want to have in your hands, this one may not be that puzzle.  It also turned out that it wasn’t the puzzle to entice my NPSO.  She reminded me once again that she won’t take any crap from me.

It may be a while before my next puzzle. I’m all pooped out. 

  

Uh Oh!

 

Forever In the Rough – 10 of Diamonds

It’s sad when you realize that you are not playing with a full deck.  In fact, my Molnár deck only has 2 cards, the Ace of Diamonds (Nothing Yet Designs Release: 13 January 2025, 12:00 PM EST) and the 10 of Diamonds.  Someday, I’d like to have a full Molnár deck or at least a royal flush.

10 of Diamonds was designed by László Molnár and used by Gergő Prémecz as his exchange puzzle at the 40th International Puzzle Party (IPP).  It is a 2D tray-packing puzzle made from red and white acrylic.  The 5 unique pieces each consist of 2 connected diamonds.   The front of the tray is designed to look like a playing card, the 10 of diamonds in fact, with a rectangular space to hold the diamonds.  It’s nicely made by Mr. Puzzle with the details inlaid in red on a white background.  The backside has a second challenge, where the pieces need to fit within a hexagonal area.  The backside also has the puzzle information etched on the tray.

A single-sided version made from wood was originally entered in the Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition in 2020 where it won a Top 10 Vote Getter Award.  Now the puzzle has double the fun of the award-winning version.

Both sides of the tray are challenging.  Since neither side is fully packed you would think it would be easier but you would be mistaken.  There is quit a bit of unused space that makes it more difficult to determine where pieces need to go.  And although the backside has 2 solutions, the front side has a single solution.  You may find it rough.  It may take you forever.  But you’ll enjoy solving it.  At least that’s what I kept telling myself.

Along the way, you may encounter situations where the pieces can be crammed in by force but this would not be the solution and you should not be tempted to use force.  The puzzle has been designed so that all the pieces can be nicely placed with no force.

10 of Diamonds is a nice challenge and I’m looking forward to seeing how László completes the royal flush.

Getting Everything Back Together – HolisTIC

After the last 2 Andrew Crowell spirit-crushing Turning Interlocking Cubes (TICs) that I worked on, 6 Face (Little Nightmares – Six Face) and Templars Cross (A Spirited Journey – Templars Cross),  it’s nice to take a step back and do a little HolisTIC puzzling.

HolisTIC is a 5x5x5 TIC designed by TIC master Andrew Crowell.  It consists of 7 unique pieces entwined in TIC magic.  It’s amazing how Andrew can just crank out all these complex puzzles with his TIC-it-tron.  As it’s name might suggest, there is a square hole bored through the center of each axis making it appear like a well-known Stewart Coffin design.  But this ain’t no Wookey Hole.

Unlike the last 2 TICs I worked on, this one falls on the lighter side TICdom.  I found it very approachable and the solving process moved along smoothly without any major hangups.  Of course, there are the obligatory backup and insert pieces in a different order, but for the most part, the piece locations are easy to determine as well as the movements and rotations needed to get them there.  It’s obvious where each piece enters until you discover that it enters from the other side.  You may also find that the last piece that you need to insert has to be added first.  And then when you do that, you realize that it’s in the way of other pieces forcing you to continually update the order of adding pieces.

Along the way, there are several very nice rotations that play out during the solution to add to the fun.  Some don’t become obvious until the end when you have to rotate pieces out of the way.  I’ve assembled it several times to enjoy the movements along the solution path.  

HolisTIC is obviously a puzzle designed to make you feel better.  And I appreciated restoring some of that confidence lost on 6 Face and Templars Cross.

Andrew’s puzzles can be found on his online shop, ARC Puzzles.

No Problem Puzzles, Update #8

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.  Another contributor, Crab on Printables, has also tweaked some of the models to improve them.

This post continues the review of the No Problem Puzzles as the models are being released.  Since the last review (No Problem Puzzles, Update #7), more No Problem Puzzles have become available.

Chain Stitch

This was Theo Geerinck’s exchange puzzle at the 28th International Puzzle Party (IPP).  It consists of 6 planer pieces that somehow form a 3D shape.  But what is that 3D shape?  Since it’s designated as a level 2.5 puzzle, I decided to make it extra challenging by not looking at the final shape.  Which was extra challenging.  Too challenging in fact and I resorted to peeking at the photo of the final shape.   Even knowing what the final form looked like, it wasn’t trivial.  Unless you have a crochet background, I’d recommend looking at the photo.  It also comes with a stand.  And it’s big, really big, so big!    

Nineveh

There are several puzzles that involve packing 9 V tricubes into a 3x3x3 cube.  This one stands it on end.  The goal is place the 9 Vs in a stand that is only big enough to hold a 2x2x2 cube.  Of course, you have to do it in such a way that the pieces overhanging the sides do not fall down.  At a difficulty level of 3 it’s not super challenging.  This is helped by the fact that there are 7 solutions.  Then again, if you’re objective is to find all 7, it may prove to be a little more challenging.

 

Quintessence 

Who doesn’t like a good dodecahedron puzzle.  The objective of this one is to take 6 identical shell pieces, each configured with a different hook assembly, and make a dodecahedron with the hooks weaving around each other inside.  Doesn’t look so bad and with a difficulty level of 3, it should pop together quickly.  On second thought, maybe it’s a bit more involved.  Then again, after several interesting moves, it wasn’t that difficult to get together.  However, I have the nagging suspicion that I used a sketchy (off-axis) rotation.  I’m not considering this one done unless someone indicates that a sketchy rotation is required.

 

Rhomble

Here’s a puzzle that was skewed twice over.  Or is it thrice skewed over.  I wasn’t confident that I could immediately discern whether it was twice or thrice so I had to think about it for a bit.  In the end, I convinced myself that you lose a pair of squares for each skew performed and that Rhomble was a Soma cube that had been skewed 3 times.  This puzzle has a difficulty level of 2 and makes a nice little challenge to skew ya bwain a tad.


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.

Decadent – Triple Dip

What do you do when you go to make a symmetry puzzle from a highly symmetric shape cut into 10 congruent isosceles triangles and then lose one of the those triangles?  Well, if you’ve been at this for a while, you randomly glue the triangles up and hope nobody notices.  And just to be sure that no one catches on, you theme the whole thing on 3s – 3 triangles, 3 pieces, triple ...
 
Triple Dip, designed by symmetrologist George Sicherman, is a 2D symmetry puzzle consisting of 3 pieces, each consisting of 3 isosceles triangles.  All 9 triangles are identical and are one tenth of a decagon.  Most 2D symmetry puzzles are laser-cut or 3D printed but the Triple Dip puzzles offered in Wood Wonders last release are of the decadent variety, made from a selection of exotic woods.

I got the triple Triple Dip made from 3 different types of exotic woods.  The choices where 1, 3, or 9 different types of exotic woods.  Having each piece with the same 3 different types of woods seemed like the most mind-bending option.  We’re all used to symmetry puzzles in a single color.  9 different colors would start to shake things up a bit.  But having each piece made from the same 3 different woods starts to pull the brain out of whack as it tries to align the colors.  Already possessing a herniated brain, I simply enjoyed the swirling colors in my mind as I ceaselessly shuffled pieces in front of me. 

Triple Dip arrives in a nice drawstring pouch with the name of the puzzle lasered on the bag.  Of course, the object is to arrange the 3 pieces into a symmetric shape once you have stopped admiring the eye candy.

I’m always amazed with how non-straightforward solving 3-piece 2D symmetry puzzles are.  I just know that there is a mathematical approach to solving them but I haven’t cracked it yet.  It always looks so easy and I always end up spending way more time than I expected on solving them.  Needless to say, they are awesome and I have quite a few of them.  Perfect fidget puzzles and they travel nicely.

After working on Triple Dip for a while, I discovered that I could make a symmetric shape with just 2 of the pieces.  The third piece wasn’t really needed after all.  Pretty sneaky I thought as I put the puzzle on the solved pile where it sat all alone.

Missing the swirling colors in my mind, I took Triple Dip back out for another twirl.  I spun those bits around like there was no tomorrow until it looked like it was ready to take off.  It was then that I noticed something peculiar.  The left side looked kind of like the right side but reversed.  Checking to be sure that a mirror hadn’t slipped in during the frenzy, I concluded that I must have come across a 3-piece solution.  Undaunted, I quickly scrambled them back up and continued twirling them around with a big smile.  Pretty wood ...

If you want to dip into symmetry puzzles, Triple Dip is still available at Wood Wonders.  And you can choose between having the puzzle made from either 1, 3, or 9 species of exotic woods.