ZenPuzzler

Wednesday, October 27, 2021

Shhhh! She Just Turned – 6T

Someone just turned 60! But I promised my young (very young) wife that I wouldn’t say who it was. Over the years, as other distinguished family members received puzzles, 7T, 8T+, and 9T to commemorate significant milestones, she patiently waited to be bestowed the honor of yet another milestone puzzle. This year, I developed a 6T puzzle for her - for no specific reason. As my wife unwrapped her presents for yet another 29th birthday, she was delighted to finally receive her own milestone puzzle.

It may come as a surprise, but the 6T puzzle is comprised of 6 T-shaped pieces that have to be packed within a 3x3x3 box. The puzzle was 3D printed with each of the Ts in a different color and an open-top silver box with 6T debossed on the side. Immediately, you know there is some funny business going on if you are required to pack 6 Ts made with 5 cubes (that’s 30 altogether) into a box that can accommodate 27 cubes. It quickly becomes obvious that the triangular half-cubes of the pieces have to be leveraged to jam those Ts together.

Although practically a kid, my wife has been around puzzles for a long time and knows a thing or two about solving them. She tackled the puzzle and quickly demonstrated that the experience that comes with youth could be used to solve this puzzle in less than 30 minutes. She was very happy to discover that this was not one of those intractable designs (avoid celebrating 80!).

I should mention that Dr. Volker Latussek had designed a Six-T-Puzzle that was made by Rombol, but I don’t believe that it is currently being made. This puzzle was previously mentioned in the post, Puzzle-A-Month Challenge.

Wednesday, September 8, 2021

A Puzzle to Save the Day - Mighty Pin

Once you’ve had a couple of successes, people start to expect it from you. I’ve never had to worry about that, but after Alan Lunsford’s successful launch of Unsafe Deposit and Bolt Action, he must have been wondering if his latest entry in the series, Mighty Pin, would continue to garner the high praise achieved by its predecessors. If you haven’t yet had a chance to play with Mighty Pin, not to worry, it’s a worthy successor of the coin cube conundrum series.

If you have not been acquainted with Alan’s c3 series, each puzzle is a cube with a coin visible in a window that needs be freed from the cube. Each requires multiple steps, utilizing tools that become available during the journey. My favorite part of these puzzles is the engineering that Alan packs within these little cubes.

The Mighty Pin is 3D printed in black with the name debossed in grey. Similarly, the coin is black with grey debossing with Alan’s logo on the exposed side and a stylized “A” on the flip side. Of course, the box also has an assortment of mysterious holes to eventually be explored.

The c3 puzzles are more fun than difficult and Mighty Pin continues that trend. However, it took me a while to discover the second to last move of Mighty Pin. I danced around the correct move many times until I finally figured out what was required to be rewarded with yet another tool. It’s so well done (and so unobviously obvious in retrospect). I accomplished the last move much quicker, but you can’t fully appreciate it until you free the coin to see exactly how it works. That final “click” is very satisfying as it lets you know that you’ve arrived at your destination. As I mentioned earlier, the engineering is awesome!

As with the other puzzles in the series, Mighty Pin comes with a nice card that outlines the goal. My favorite part was the note: “small taps may be used to loosen misplaced tools”. This can be loosely translated as: “yeah, you may regret dropping tools in the bottomless dark holes”. However, I give Alan a lot of credit for coming up with a design that seems to preclude unrecoverable mistakes although I wouldn’t be surprised if some enterprising individual manages to wedge a tool somewhere it’s not supposed to be (force = frustration x time). {Unrefined comments about mighty pins in dark holes purposely avoided here – you’re welcome.}

Will there be a fourth in the series? One can only hope. My guess is that Alan has developed a cache of ideas during the development of this series that may get incorporated into new puzzles in or apart from the series.

You can get Mighty Pin and Alan’s other puzzles on his layerbylayerpuzzles Etsy shop. Since Mighty Pin just came out, you may have to wait for it to be stocked again.

Wednesday, August 4, 2021

Tooling Around With Puzzles - Sequential Discovery Cubic Box

Sequential Discovery Cubic Box by Junichi Yananose

Once again, Pluredro has released a sequential discovery (SD) puzzle that sold out in minutes – 140 in 4 minutes to be exact. This provides all the background you need to understand that Junichi (Juno) Yananose’s puzzles are well appreciated and coveted.

When the Sequential Discovery Cubic Box (SDCB) arrived, it looked like a nice 3x3x3 burr puzzle made from Fijian Mahogany. It also comes with a nice Spotted Gum stand. A little shake dispels that concept and gives you the first hint of other things waiting to be discovered inside.

Since spoilers of any kind are deeply frowned upon for SD puzzles, they can only be described in the vaguest of terms. So the first move is cool! I wish that I could say that it was the result of some brilliant thinking on my part, but like a lot of things in my life, it just happened. But it’s so cool! At this point you find yourself committed to the journey since there is no obvious immediate way to reset the first move.

The second move reveals that this is indeed an SD puzzle and not a simple 3x3x3 Burr. Several secreted caches of tools, compartments, and receptacles are revealed. However, most of it is just a tease, since they all seem to be safely nestled in their beds without an obvious way to release them.

Although there are several steps that comprise the solution, you’re never really in danger of not knowing what the next step is. The path is well defined, mostly linear, and focused more on fun than difficulty. So how do you know when you’ve completed the journey? It’s over when you finally find Juno’s stamp – or I should say that this is the beginning of the reset process. Resetting the puzzle is straight-forward, including the first step, which is especially fun.

I didn’t treat solving the puzzle as a race and took my time enjoying and understanding how each step worked. Juno employed a lot of nice mechanisms in the design and its worthwhile spending some time to appreciate them. There was one move that I’m sure has a more elegant procedure than the one that I used. I searched for an alternative after solving the puzzle but was unable to find one. Everything else was so well thought out that I’m convinced that I’m missing some subtle nuance of the step. I’m looking forward to getting confirmation on that step someday.

Wednesday, July 28, 2021

An Acute Case of Soma Mangling - Halfcut Soma

After seeing all the abused, mangled, and broken Soma variants that came out, László Molnár came to the conclusion that 90/90 is so 2020. Using his acute sense of puzzle design mastery, he determined that something was wrong with the angles of these variants and decided that they couldn’t be right all the time. Utilizing the rombic tetrahedra grid of BurrTools, he found a cut that was above the rest and created Halfcut Soma - once again proving the adage that you can still appear sharp even if you’re not right.

Like so many unfortunate Soma cube victims before, the design process commenced with picking on the smallest piece of the group. The tri-cube was once again targeted and dissected into 6 pieces. This time however, László cut the 3 cubes at 45 degrees before gluing each triangular half-cube to one of the other 6 pieces. This could have been the end of it, but László obviously decided that this puzzle would be too easily solved by discriminating Soma puzzle enthusiasts who have been crunching through many variants over recent years.

Continuing on his 45 degree tangent, László decided to cut all of the pieces’ cubes at 45 degrees and throw half away. Now each piece was made with only 5 triangular half-cubes. Of course, now you can’t immediately identify which half-cube was the one that was added. Each piece looks like it could have been derived from more than one of the original Soma pieces.

The objective of the puzzle remains to fit the pieces into a 3x3x3 space. Of course, with all those half-cubes thrown out, there are a lot of holes in the resultant cubic space. László also ensured that there was a single solution to maximize your enjoyment.

Solving the Halfcut Soma is a nice challenge! Enough information is provided for you to solve it with a logical approach and a little experimentation. Even so, it takes a while to warp your mind for working with pieces made with triangular segments instead of cubes. Taking a logical approach is not mandatory and you’re welcome to disregard it and enjoy the puzzle for a longer time.

Wednesday, June 16, 2021

BBQ With Charcoal

It’s picnic basket season again and Akaki Kuumeri has a couple of new offerings to enjoy? The new baskets are BBQ Basket and Charcoal Basket. Shortly after being announced on the Mechanical Puzzles Discord, the models were released on Akaki's Picnic (basket packing puzzle series) Thingiverse page. I have to say that it’s extremely nice of Akaki to share his designs with the puzzle community as he develops them. It’s also possible that the new picnic baskets may show up in his AkakiKuumeri Etsy shop at some point.

BBQ Basket

BBQ offers some things that we’ve seen before as well as something new. I discovered a rotation early on that I thought would be part of the solution but it turned out not to be used. In fact, it turned out that this rotation occurs easily (and often) requiring you to unrotate (derotate, antirotate, counterrotate – it’s really just another rotate). Of course, rotating it back is not as easy as the originally unintended rotate. Once the solution has been found it is easily repeatable. Akaki has designated the difficulty of this puzzle as medium.

Charcoal Basket

The other basket offering from Akaki is Charcoal. Prepare to get burned on this one. I found this one to be much harder than any of the previous baskets (A Tisket A Tasket, Puzzles In – Akaki’s Picnic Baskets, And The After Dinner Mint – Peppermint Basket). I was a bit surprised to see on the Thingiverse page that the level of difficulty is 9.13.7.2. Those are some pretty serious numbers for such a small puzzle. Akaki’s translation of this difficulty level into English is: Unnecessarily Complicated.

This puzzle does a good job of seeming downright impossible. However, once you find a configuration for the briquettes (outside the basket), it’s a simple process to verify that it is correct by checking that you can remove the first piece in 9 moves. Yes, you could consider that a hint being provided by Akaki, but believe me, you will be happy to have received it. Removing the other pieces doesn’t look remotely possible.

One by one, I managed to figure out how to add/remove the final 3 pieces and accomplish the impossible. There are some epic moves within this basket that will amaze you. Little did I realize that I had just completed the easy part. Unfortunately, knowing how the pieces have to move and actually making them move that way are two completely different things altogether. Things have to be moved/rotated in places that are mostly out of reach.

I printed the contents of this basket in the same format as all the previous ones – small and tight. That was a big, Big, BIG mistake! Don’t do it! You’ve been warned. I have fairly thin fingers and really struggled to make the moves. If your mitts are adorned with large sausages, you don’t stand a chance.

After quite a bit of struggling, I managed to get all the briquettes in the basket. As nice as the solved basket looked, I didn’t want to leave the pieces in the basket too long, so I tackled the disassembly a couple of hours later. I was pleasantly surprised (not!) to find that reversing one of the rotations was well-nigh impossible. I must have spent at least 15 minutes trying to make that rotation. For a while, I thought that I bricked the basket. Yes, my basket handle is not glued on and could be pulled off but who would do a thing like that?

Besides getting burned on this one, why is it called charcoal? I believe that it gets its name from the nice sparkly black filament that Akaki had on hand to print the puzzle. I felt compelled to also use a sparkly black filament as well, but since I had already used it for the Salmiakki Basket, I used a Hilbert pattern top layer fill to distinguish the pieces. This gave the briquettes a rougher texture and ironically, a more charcoally look.

Wednesday, May 26, 2021

Need An SD Fix? CD With The - ResQ

ResQ by Frederic Boucher and Eric Fuller

I’ve been enjoying the Sequential Discovery (SD) puzzles that have recently been released by layerbylayerpuzzles and when Cubicdissection (CD) announced that they would be releasing an SD puzzle, it caught my interest. This puzzle, of course, is ResQ. It is based on Visitor Q by Frederic Boucher and extended by Eric Fuller at CD with additional challenges to extend the storyline.

The puzzle arrives in a very recognizable orange box. In this case, the box had a black bag attached to it. This bag contained a black towel, a description of the ResQ backstory and goals, and a Reset Guide.

The towel was a nice touch. Many SD puzzles are susceptible to having small pieces fall out and roll out of sight. Most puzzle gatherings aren’t complete without someone swearing at pieces rolling across the floor and groups of people on their hands and knees looking under the furniture. Oh, how I miss the look of horror on their faces. CD decided to preempt that experience and provide an official towel to work over.

Inside the orange box is another box nicely made from Hawaiian Koa. It has various square, rectangle, and rounded slots cut out of it. Inside the box are pieces made from Canxan, Catalox, Bloodwood, and Chakte Viga. So far, nothing unusual. It looks like a typical packing problem with the pieces already packed in the box.

The first odd thing of note is the face of an alien with a strange sparkling hair bun on the top of the puzzle. Apparently, this is a visitor from another dimension and the goal is to rescue the visitor as well as the components of his spaceship from the void (aka the inside of the box). There is obviously some time/space warping occurring inside the 3x3x3 box since you need to extract a spaceship (made from Paduak and Walnut), two antenna assemblies, a silver fuel disk, a gold reactor orb, and a six-orb navigation AI module. I was tracking it all until the end. How could you possible get a six-orb navigation AI module in there? Well, I was quite surprised when it unexpectedly showed up – on the towel – as if by magic – out of the void – Uh Oh!

I tried to acquire the ResQ version with all the vortex pieces made from Ebony, but failed. Somebody was looking out for me. After solving the puzzle, I’m glad that I had the mixed wood version. Having all the pieces made from the same wood would make it more difficult and not in a good way. Of course, that’s just my opinion and if I had acquired an Ebony copy, I’m sure that I would be crowing about that version. I’ll be interested in hearing about the solve experience from the Ebony owners.

It looks like there was at least one design change after the box was made. There is a feature that did not appear to be used and caused me to hunt around for something that I may have missed or lost. I guess that you could just call it a space fish on a long wavelength.

The SD aspects of ResQ are very well done and obviously required a fair amount of experimentation to ensure that everything worked as expected. However, the real challenge is manipulating the vortex to get things where you need them. Once you have that figured out, everything is much easier.

I can’t stress enough, that everything is so well made that it looks innocent when in reality, it packs a lot of puzzling in a small amount of space. The Mechanical Puzzles discord had several messages from puzzlers with difficulty finding out how to unlock the vortex at the beginning since it was so well hidden.

I was initially reluctant to look at the reset instructions to put everything back together, especially since it has a ** SPOILER ** warning, but I’m glad that I took a peak and looked at it. Although it does have some spoiler information that you wouldn’t want to see before salvaging everything from the vortex, it basically provides the initial configuration of the vortex. Of course, you can store the vortex in another configuration, but I’d bet that the initial configuration is probably designed to require the maximum number of moves to solve. Don’t be afraid to use the Reset Guide. In fact, the final goal recommends using the diagram to reset ResQ.

Wednesday, May 19, 2021

Happy Anniversary! - Another Year of ZenPuzzler

ZenPuzzler has reached the end of its second year. I was originally worried that there wouldn’t be anyone reading the blog, but I’ve since received confirmation that, indeed, there are people that have seen the blog. However, I’m not the least bit discouraged by the requests from designers and craftsmen requesting that I don’t blog about their puzzles.

To wrap up the year, I have created a list of the weekly posts and the puzzles that are mentioned in each. The name of each post is linked to the entry so that you can easily jump to it by clicking on the name. Puzzles not included in the photos were either borrowed, gifted, or just plain forgotten on the shelf behind me in plain sight.

28 APR 21 – Board With Puzzles - Trikado