Minima Meets Flop – Minima Flop

What happens when the Minima series crashes into the Flop series.  You get Minima Flop of course.

Minima Flop is the third puzzle in the Minima Series that I’ve solved after Minima Nest and Minima Ludique.  It was developed by Dr. Volker Latussek and make by Nothing Yet Designs.  The puzzle consists of 4 Mahogany V shaped pieces that have to be packed within a highly fenestrated frosted acrylic box.  And the windows are numerous and large enough to allow a school of red fish to flop through them.  The packaging for the puzzle is well-thought out and holds the box with 3 pieces trivially packed inside with enough space leftover to place the 4th piece on top of the box.

Minima Flop merges Dr. Latussek’s Flop series of puzzles with the Minima series started and mostly populated by Frederic Boucher.  Never having previously done a Flop puzzle, I’m assuming that it refers to how the some pieces can’t simply drop in but need to flop in.  Sorry for all these technical terms,

My experience with restricted opening packing puzzles is that the boxes are designed to add openings where needed.  Minima Flop seems to take an alternate additive approach and provides material where required to hold the pieces.  We’re accustomed to holes used to poke pieces out and offset holes to allow rotations.  Now we have extended holes that allow pieces to be flopped through them.  Before you get worked up and think that this is a spoiler, I can assure you that this is not a great revelation as the pieces you start adding to the box start flopping out within the first couple of minutes.

Solving the puzzle is simply a matter of applying drop, flop, and shift maneuvers with the four pieces to be packed in the box.  And technically, you just plop that last piece in when solving it.  If this is your first Flop puzzle like it was for me, it doesn’t take long to embrace the 1.5 voxel flop maneuver required to solve it.

I thoroughly enjoyed leveling up on the flopping skill and look forward to tackling some of the more maxima puzzles in the Flop series.

Looks Easy, There’s Just One – Hitch

Every once in a while, you run across an enticing puzzle while surfing the internet.  Ok,  maybe a little more often than every once in a while.  Maybe once a week – that I don’t run into an enticing puzzle.

This is the story of one particular puzzle called Hitch designed by Émil Áskerli.  I spied this one on the Pelikan Puzzles website and alas dear readers, it is no longer available.  It was a lovely looking puzzle in an interesting compact form.  I’m sure that you can tell from my choices of filament that the version made by Pelikan used Purpleheart and Zebrano.  

Having printed it myself, I obviously solved it as an assembly puzzle.  The pieces didn’t look that complicated and they were obviously divided by color into 2 sets of 4 pieces.  The tan pieces are identical and the purple pieces are 2 pairs of pieces that are mirror images of each other.

I expected the solution to be easy and I was moving along just fine when I developed a hitch in my gitty up.  I couldn’t see the magic.  I say magic because even when I accomplished it, I didn’t see the magic, it just happened - magically of course.  I find that as I get older, it becomes more difficult to see further down the path and I just hope that any unnoticed gaping holes in front of my feet lead to the destination.

Early on in the solving process, I figured out where all the pieces HAD to go, which is always a bittersweet moment because it is usually followed by a long tortuous period of time that is terminated with the realization that the pieces don’t really go that way.

It’s not that difficult to get 7 pieces where they need to go, but getting that last piece in eluded me for a long time.  Being noticeably more afflicted by nearsightedness as I age, I kept changing the orientation of the pieces, trying to get a configuration that could be morphed into an assembly that would accept that last piece.  And of course that last piece was not the piece that I expected.

After some time, I gave up trying to figure out how it would happen and just decided to move forward without expectations and low and behold, the path opened up and swallowed that last piece.  Whereupon, I quickly closed it up and claimed victory.  

It may be small but Hitch has nice moves and solving it is very satisfying.  Or would have been satisfying if I were able to project hypothetical movements better, or recurse multiple solution path branches faster, or maybe just simply curse better with more gusto.  Then again, maybe the pieces that I printed were just a little too tight.  Yeah that ‘s it.  The pieces were malformed, not my brain.  That’s the story that I’ll be sticking to!  

Hitch is a great puzzle.  Just make sure you get a good copy!

Panefull Puzzle – Window Packing

You will go through great panes to solve this puzzle.  Four of them to be exact.

Window Packing was designed by Koichi Miura and exchanged in this year’s International Puzzle Party (IPP) by Meiko Kimura.  The puzzle is made from laser-cut acrylic and consists of a window frame and 4 blue tetromino pieces (1-I, 1-Z, 2-L) that need to be packed into the frame.  The 2 outer layers of the frame are made with gray frosted acrylic and have 4 large openings that come in handy to manipulate the pieces within the frame.  The center layer is clear and made from 2 pieces, but I have to confess that I don’t know why it isn’t a single piece.  

You will immediately notice that the O-penings on the front of the puzzle are not the same shape as the pieces to be packed inside.  Hint -  One corner of the middle layer has a single voxel opening (2 sides) to allow the pieces to be inserted within the frame.

This puzzle is not difficult, but it’s not trivial either.  It does require the rotation of pieces within the frame.  However, it should be obvious which piece needs to go in last and that doesn’t leave too many assemblies to check.  The rotations required to get the pieces in position are not difficult and the large openings help accomplish this.
 
I found packing this window frame much more enjoyable than packing the window frame in my old storm door for the winter.  Window Packing is a good entry puzzle for 2D packing.

Octadecahedron by Another Name – Pinwheel Crystal

What was the last octadecahedron puzzle you played with?  I thought so.  You’ve never heard of one.  That’s because of the lack of publicity that octadecahedron receives.  Now if I asked you about a truncated rhombic dodecahedron puzzle, you’d all be jumping up and down shouting that you have one in your collection.  Maybe even the Pinwheel Crystal made by Dave Rossetti.  It’s all in the naming.

I’ve always wanted a puzzle made by Dave Rossetti and I finally got my wish at this year’s International Puzzle Party (IPP).  Dave’s entry in the IPP Puzzle Exchange was Pinwheel Crystal designed by Stewart Coffin.  This is a geometric shaped puzzle in the form of a rhombic dodecahedron with truncated tips.  And the interior is hollow in the shape of a rhombic dodecahedron.

The puzzle is made from Granadillo and Maple and gets its name from the nice pattern made by the contrasting colors of the woods.  The puzzle consists of 6 pieces that are used to construct the truncated rhombic dodecahedron (just roles off the tongue, not like octadecahedron at all).

I’m always amazed at the complexity of these types of geometric pieces.  My woodworking skills top out at cubic dissection constructions.  The jigs and setup up required to make the angled cuts for geometric puzzles like Pinwheel Crystal is a whole other game.

So Dave used his amazing geometrical angly cutting skills to make 24 identical pieces (12 each of Granadillo and Maple) which he separated into 6 piles of 4, sprinkled them with glue, and shook them in a bag until he had the 6 puzzly pieces with a nice finish.  A little more shaking and he had the assembled Pinwheel Crystal.  Repeat 99 times and you’re ready for the puzzle exchange.  Sounds like magic, but everything seems like magic until you know how to do it.

Pinwheel isn’t a difficult puzzle to solve but it is a very attractive puzzle and beautifully made by Dave.