Entwining Pieces – Collator

Where other people say, please make it easier to put things in the box, puzzlers dare to say, please make the box opening smaller with malcontent contents that don’t like to work together.  Entwining pieces within a box with odd little openings is alluring.  Divining the correct sequence to bit-by-bit, slowly transfer objects that coalesce totally intertwined within the box - puzzle nirvana.

Collator was designed by Alexander Magyarics and made by Brian Menold at Wood Wonders.  It was made with a Flame Birch Box and the 3 pieces that need to be crammed in the box are made from Bolivian Rosewood (one of my favorites) with some very nice heartwood accents.

Putting the pieces in the box is as easy as 1, 2, 3 – or I should say 1.2.3.  However, that is not the true solution.  There are 10 possible ways to assemble the 3 pieces into a 3x3x3 cubic space.  Of those 10, 3 of them can be packed in the box.  However, only 1 of the 3 looks like a solid cube when it is inside the box.  It is this apparent cube configuration that is the objective and it has a difficulty level of 10.4.2.  The other non-apparent cube solution has a difficulty of 5.1.3.

I really don’t need to tell you that this is a good puzzle.  Designed by Alexander, made by Brian, 10.4.2 restricted opening apparent cube packing puzzle – you know it’s going to be good without even seeing it.  And it’s even better when you get your hands on it.  With a box at 3 cubic inches and pieces with a voxel size of 3/4 inches, it’s bigger than most apparent cube packing puzzles making it a pleasure to handle.  The beautiful Bolivian Rosewood pieces also have a nice heft to them.  And no, I wasn’t disappointed and thoroughly enjoyed the sequence of moves required to solve the puzzle.