In Mint Condition – Dr. Bell's Curiously Warped Mints

Dr. Bell’s mind is jam packed with mind-blowing packings.  Why, sometimes he’s imagined as many as 6 impossible things before breakfast.  His warped sense of humor has now brought us a minty fresh take on edge beveled cube packing.

Dr. Bell's Curiously Warped Mints was developed by George Bell and used as his exchange puzzle for the 41st International Puzzle Part (IPP).  Each of the 6 pieces is 3d printed in a different color and comprised of 4 warped edge-beveled cubes.  The objective is to artfully cram all the pieces within an accompanying tin.  The type of tin that you would expect to find a nice assortment of mints to enjoy.  However, you are not expected to enjoy these mints.  The tin explicitly warns to not eat them.  So then why are they made with yummy colors like grape, blueberry, raspberry, lemon, lime, and licorice?

To get you started, some of the pieces are already in the tin and you only have to add the remaining 2.  Of course, I dutifully took all the pieces out and separated them before starting on my journey of 1000 missteps.

Being warped always seems like it should make things easier but it always feels like the opposite.  Examining the pieces, I noticed some interesting clues that I filed for possible later use and proceeded on without them.

The first step in these types of packing puzzles is to determine what type of packing structure is required, i.e., how the web cubes are oriented.  I struggled a while working on a packing orientation that would allow the cover to go on.  Then I unfortunately discovered something significant.  I was proud.  Or I should say the puzzle was proud of the lip of the tin.  I thought that this was a problem until I finally realized that when you placed the lid on, it did not rest on the top lip of the tin and providing a little additional space.  And after considerable effort I was able to pack all the pieces except 1.

It turns out that what I thought was a problem that wasn’t a problem was a problem.  Eventually I reread the goal and it said that the cover has to be screwed down, which screwed the packing approach that I was trying to accomplish.  I hadn’t even realized that the lid was resting on threads.  I now had nothing to be proud about.  Dejected,  I went back to the drawing board mumbling to myself, screw it ... screw it … screw it.

I eventually discovered another packing structure with a lower profile that would allow the cover to be screwed shut.  I also made heavy use of the clues that I had remarked on earlier.  At one point, I had a 3 subassemblies that looked like they would go together to solve the puzzle but would require coordinate motion to accomplish that.  Of course it would require coordinate motion coming from Dr. Bell.  However no matter how hard I tried, I was not dexterous enough to get everything lined up and moving like I wanted it to.  Curiouser and curiouser!  I eventually convinced myself that they would not go together using coordinate motion.  I was so close to victory, I could almost taste it.  Stepping back a bit, a minor tweak allowed me to assemble the pieces within the tin and screw it.

Once all the pieces are assembled, it truly resembles a tin of mints that are all stuck together and won’t come apart as if they were one giant enticing gobstopper.

It’s a clever puzzle and by the time I finally solved it I have to say that I ended up licking it.  Thanks Dr. Bell.

A Solid Challenge? – NotchedTIC

ARC TICs are extremely cool puzzles and most of the ones that I have solved have been 4x4x4 cubes.  One notable exception being MagellanTIC (Space, The Final Frontier - MagellanTIC), which is a 5x5x5 apparent cube and an awesome experience.  And now we have NotchedTIC, which is a non-apparent cube.

There’s just something so satisfying about solving a Turning Interlocking Cube (TIC).  However, it’s been a while since I’ve tackled a TIC by Andrew Crowell, aka ARC Puzzles {https://arcpuzzles.com}.  In 2020, I reviewed a different TIC by Andrew each month, with December’s being CagedTIC 1 (Ending With a Beginning - CagedTIC 1).  That post also had the links to the other 11 TIC posts for that year.  Although there were more ARC TIC posts, they weren’t as frequent and eventually trailed off.  How did that happen?  Well sometimes I get easily distracted. SQUIRREL!!!  Squirrel? Squirrel squirrel squirrelsquirrelsquirrel…

NotchedTIC is a 3D printed 6-piece 5x5x5 TIC designed by Andrew Crowell.  It gets it’s name from each edge having a missing voxel in the center.  And the puzzle arrived disassembled, which is my preference for attacking most burr puzzles.

The pieces to this puzzle fell into place fairly quickly.  Piece placement was obvious and pieces were able to be added 1 at a time with backtracking where needed to add a new piece.  Assembling the puzzle takes 28 moves with about a dozen of them required to add the last piece.  Along the way, 2 rotations are required but you don’t need to worry as they are not complex and obvious when needed.  In fact when taking the puzzle apart, the rotations will execute by themselves as pieces scramble to evacuate the TIC infested region.

I would classify NotchedTIC as more fun than challenging for experienced puzzlers.

Although I bought my copy second hand, you can buy the 3D Printable STL files for NotchedTIC and 5 other 5x5x5 TICs as part of a 6-puzzle set from Andrew’s site, ARC Puzzles.

Mixolometragrobology – Get in the Spirit!

Mixolometagrobologist Steve Canfield decided to go all out for his exchange puzzle in last year’s International Puzzle Party (IPP) and deliver a Sequential Discovery (SD) cocktail for us to savor.  After all, he was the host and wanted to make a big splash by leveraging his vast knowledege of puzzle Boxes and Booze to create an intoxicating journey with a bittersweet ending.  To aid him in this grand endeavor, he enticed puzzle genius and master craftsman Lee Krasnow to flesh out the intricate details that make this puzzle shine.

Get in the Spirit! consists of multiple layers of intrigue.  The outside is turned from aluminum with a Walnut and Hard Maple center ring to provide a classy classic look.  This shiny work of art may not look all that difficult but aluminum parts encapsulating various devious movements ring true.  After I solved it, I tested this in a manner that I’m sure will resonate with everyone.  I suspended both and struck them to verify the sonority of each.  Both produced a very nice tone with the top straining longer to sustain its note.

As for the goal, the shaker shaped tag simply said Get in the Spirit!  Preparing for just that, I happily embarked on my SD spiritual journey.  But where to start?  It’s a shaker!  You’re supposed to shake it, right?  Right?  Not so much.  Tilting and rotating will do.  As a matter of fact, I’d recommend not shaking it.

Through the holes in the top, you can just make out a red logo on a dark green background but don’t strain your eyes.  What could it be?

All three parts of the shaker seem to rotate freely and as you twist it and move it around you can hear things moving inside.  I was starting to fear that it might be one big marble maze and was particularly worried about the bottom portion.  I hear that people sometimes get lost in their cups.

With a little bit of exploration, the first move can be found, revealing the first glimpse of the interior.  I’m embarrassed to admit that this initial freebie move took me a full 10 minutes but I was going to savor this journey, by golly.  And with a little bit of additional work, the outer shell was peeled away to reveal … the next layer.

The interior is mostly 3D printed garnished with some metal hardware to facilitate making things more difficult.  Welcome to the inner circle, which sports 5 windows around it’s circumference.  And the inner circle has it’s own inner circle with it’s own set of windows.  It’s obvious that a lot of additional work went into making the design aesthetically pleasing instead of resulting in a strictly utilitarian design.  When the windows line up, you get a glimpse of what is waiting inside.  Through another opening, you can get a good look at a trapped coin although there doesn’t seem to be a way to easily remove it.  

Now you have a clear view of that red logo on top, which kind of looks like the top of a bottle.  With some effort you can get the top of the bottle to stick out.  It seems like it would make a great handle to rotate the bottle inside, which I did.  Rotating clockwise works great!  Rotating counter-clockwise not so much.  It really is a bottle and proceeded to dribble it’s contents in my lap.  I obviously don’t know how to hold my liquor.  At least I managed to limit the damage by quickly retightening it and vowing to never make such an obvious mistake again.

With just one drink under my belt, I stopped making progress.  I hit THE WALL!  At this point I kept trying everything over and over and getting nowhere.  There seemed to be a lot of enticing round holes that were trying to tell me something, but all I was getting was a buzz.  Eventually, I packed it back up and put it to the side for a while, a long while, months, in fact it’s been about a year.  How embarrassing!

After taking it back out after all that time, I blocked out a weekend and quickly (or at least quicker than the first time) found myself back at the wall.  After spending another considerable amount of time looking for a way forward, I finally succumbed and asked permission to do something that I was reluctant to do.  And I received the rare go ahead.  Usually this is followed by lots of laughter as I try it.  However, this time I was lucky.  In hindsight, the puzzle does provide a hint on how to get over that wall but like all good puzzles, you don’t recognize it until it’s already too late.

After a few more moves, you eventually end up with a token that is a bottle of your accomplishment.  Or is it a bottle that is a token of your accomplishment.  In any event, you wind up with both a token and a bottle of spirits.  If you are adventurous, you can take everything completely apart into the dozens of components that make Get in the Spirit!.  

The reset takes much longer than the solve but that’s basically because you just freed up a nice little bottle of spirits.

And that red logo on the dark green background?  Turns out it’s HUA for the H. Underberg-Albrecht company that Herbert Underberg started the day he married Katharina Albrecht to produce natural herb bitters.  

In addition to Get in the Spirit!, the puzzle, Steve also produced Get in the Spirit, the book.  The book provides a collection of fine cocktail recipes and wisdom.  Of course each recipe has a photo of the cocktail with an amazing garnish. 

It is also possible that Lee will make a companion cocktail shaker stand to hold both puzzle and book versions of Get in the Spirit!  Of course it will be a puzzle box and will utilize pieces from Get in the Spirit! in the solving process.  The CAD drawings look amazing and can be seen on Lee’s website, Pacific Puzzleworks.  However the fate of this project is still in flux as insufficient preorders didn’t provide the volume required for the originally projected price point.  Maybe offering an all 3D printed version of Get in the Spirit! for folks that don’t own one but would like the cocktail shaker stand could salvage the original plan.

Monumental – Markus’ Tetrahedron

Only the passing of the great ones are marked by a pyramid.  And a pyramid it was to remind us of the loss of puzzle master Markus Götz to the puzzle community in 2018.  His puzzle legacy lives on through his many designs generated over the years and I’m always happy to run across a new one that I’ve yet to discover.

Markus’ Tetrahedron was designed by Markus Götz and used by Stan Isaacs as his exchange puzzle at last years International Puzzle Party (IPP).  The 4 identical bright shiny green 3D printed pieces can be used to construct a tetrahedron in 2 different ways.  And since these exchange puzzles were made by George Bell, the pieces are constructed from conjoined spheres.

Don’t let the small number of pieces lull you into a sense of complacency.  It took me some time to find the first of the two solutions.  Each piece consists of 5 spheres and the pieces don’t seem to want to go together.  And each piece consists of a string of 3 spheres and another of 2 spheres that are connected by a cube.  Keep track now – identical pieces of conjoined strings of spheres connected by cubes that form a tetrahedron.  I don’t usually give clues on how to solve puzzles but just this once I’ll let you know that the solution uses Face-Centered Cubic (FCC) Packing.  Your welcome!

It doesn’t take long to determine that each of the 4 tetrahedron edges will consist of 4 spheres with each corner sphere belonging to 3 of the edges.  4 edges, 4 corners, 4 pieces, maybe there’s some kind of correlation going on here.  And lo-and-behold, the first solution emerges.

When solving this puzzle, you can ignore the cubes that connects the strings of spheres like I did.  Or you can realize before you solve it that each cube has a sphere connected to 2 of its faces and maybe this is a clue to where the spheres of the other pieces have to go.

It took some effort to find the second solution.  I kept getting the first solution and couldn’t see past it.  I had to step back to give it a good think and I’m getting a bit long in the tooth for that.  Eventually, I thunk (I know, it’s less of a process and more of a sound that my aging brain makes, k-thunk, k-thunk, k-thunk) my way to the other solution, which unlike the first, snaps closed when you get all the pieces together.  Looking at the final assembly, I could easily see why the second solution is much more difficult to find than the first.  I basically needed to jettison all those great ideas that lead to the first solution. 

Of course, once both solutions are discovered, the next challenge is to pack the 4 pieces back into the rather non-tetrahedralish box.  However, this was a much easier challenge than the other 2.

Receiving this monumental puzzle at IPP last year reminded me just how much I miss seeing that energetic, smart, and entertaining puzzle genius at IPP.  He always make everything seem a bit more special.

Markus Götz (1974-2018) attended 17 IPPs, participated in 16 exchanges and hosted IPP31 in Berlin.  He invented over 100 puzzles and authored six CFF articles.  He wrote about this puzzle in CFF 66 (2005).  He is greatly missed!
        - From the Markus’ Tetrahedron Puzzle Insert

RIP Markus!

No Problem Puzzles, Update #2

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. 

Since the last review (Preserving a Legacy – No Problem Puzzles {https://www.zenpuzzler.com/2025/06/preserving-legacy-no-problem-puzzles.html}), the next 4 No Problem Puzzles have become available.  They consist of Unmatch Box, Turn Around, Quinta Cuboids, and Dizygotic.  For this batch of puzzles, each had a different specified level of difficulty.  On a scale of 5, there was a 1.5, 2, 3, and 4.

Turn Around

Turn Around has the highest level of difficulty of the puzzles that have been provided on Printables so far.  It is a level 4 puzzle and provides a very nice challenge.

The objective of Turn Around is to pack 6 pieces within a box.  The bottom of the box has an internal 3x4x2 void and the top has a 3x4x1 void.  Unfortunately, the top needs to be screwed on with a 45 degree turn that is impeded by the pieces.  However, it works just great without the pieces.

You quickly realize that there is no trivial solution where some pieces fit exactly in the top space and some in the bottom space so that they don’t cross the boundary and interfere with the rotation.  Fortunately, the pieces don’t completely fill the interior of the box and you can utilize the voids to accomplish the rotation of the top.  Or maybe I should say, you can try to utilize the voids to do the rotation.

Needless to say, I fixated on an approach to accomplish the rotations that turned out to be wrong.  However, once I abandoned that approach, I quickly latched on to the proper solution.  

An alternate set of 6 pieces that can be packed within the box is also provided.  However, the alternate set of pieces is just that, an alternate set and not a second challenge.  Once you solve the puzzle, it’s solved regardless of which set of pieces you use.  I really can’t say if solving the puzzle is easier with one versus the other, but I found that the original pieces provided a good challenge.

I was a little surprised that the second set of pieces did not utilize my original approach.  Of course my original approach is the obvious first attack designed to sucker you in and keep you from discovering the much more elegant solution.

Unmatch Box

Oh so simple.  And Oh so difficult I found it.  I should have noted that this is an unmatch box and not a match box and shouldn’t have expected it to be easy to put things inside it.  Although this puzzle has a difficulty rating of 3, I spent more time solving it than Turn Around with a difficulty rating of 4.

Unmatch Box consists of 2 loops that can be arranged to make an enclosed box like shape and 3 pieces that need to be cached inside when closed.

In hindsight, it’s not difficult to solve but I struggled with it.  The pieces are very well chosen with lots of almost possibilities that kept me going around in circles, continuously, over several days, sans solution.

Packing any 2 of the pieces within the box is not an issue.  Trying to get that 3rd piece in is the challenge.  The problem is that the internal space starts to collapse when you open the box.  Trying to figure out how the pieces need to be arranged to support that collapse is the issue.  It teases you by allowing pieces to poke through gaps in the partially rotated box sides but never opens enough to allow them to completely pass through.

After a few days, I finally decided I was overcomplexerizing things and tried to dumb it down a bit.  Eventually, I stopped trying the same things and had everything packed within Unmatch Box.  As with many good puzzles, it took a long time to finally discover how simple it was.

Quinta Cuboids

The difficulty rating for Quinta Cuboids is 2 and I found this one a very quick solve.  It consists of 5 identical rectangular parallelapipeds (fancy speak for cuboids) that need to be packed within a restricted-opening box.  And the box only accepts the cuboids in one orientation.  And the solution obviously requires the cuboids to be in other orientations.  Which makes this a great 3D packing learning experience for someone just starting out with restricted-opening 3D packing puzzles.

Dizygotic

Dzygotic, at difficulty level 1.5, is another puzzle designed for packing puzzle beginners and I found this one a very quick solve.  It consists of 2 pieces that have to have to be packed within a restricted-opening box.  Unlike Quinta Cuboids, the pieces aren’t simple cuboids and the box sports 2 openings that occupy 3 sides.  The interior of the box is 3x3x2 and the pieces can fit within that space in several different ways and orientations.  The trick is to determine which one can be formed by introducing and manipulating the pieces using the restricted openings.  And yes, this is an apparent cuboid puzzle where all the openings are blocked by the pieces.



This is the second blog that continues reviewing the No Problem Puzzles as they are released on the Printables site under the No Problem Puzzles collection.  The first blog is Preserving a Legacy – No Problem Puzzles {https://www.zenpuzzler.com/2025/06/preserving-legacy-no-problem-puzzles.html}.

Engage! – Clutch 4

Not long after Wood Wonders’ latest release, I happily had a new puzzle in my clutches.  It is the final member of a clutch of TICs that extremize rotations.  Thus, I was engaged on a new mission within the puzzle zone.

Clutch 4 is the fourth and (hopefully not) final entry of the clutch series designed by Girish Sharma and made by Wood Wonders.  I have to admit that I had high expectations after the last collaboration between Wood Wonders and Girish that I played with (One Person – Three Body Problem).  But with a Level 31 Turning Interlocking Cube (TIC) requiring 14 rotations, I knew I wouldn’t be disappointed!

As always, Wood Wonders did an awesome job bringing to life another one of Girish’s fantastic designs.  The puzzle is made from Poplar, Indian Laurel and Yellow Rosa with reinforcing dowels where needed.  The pieces are spot on and move like agile dancers.

The puzzle consists of 3 pieces: the chassis, the drive plate that happily rotates endlessly within the chassis, and the clutch that dictates when and how the drive plate can rotate.  It’s easy to determine where the pieces go and trivial to add the drive plate or clutch to the chassis individually.  The difficulty comes in adding both pieces without grinding them together – NO FORCE ALLOWED!

Ironically, when solved, the pieces aren’t really wrapped around each other.  They are just in each other’s way from being pulled apart.  However, the process of getting them together or apart requires a lot of entwining rotational movements.

To solve this one, I spent quit a bit of time determining how the drive plate and clutch work with the chassis individually.  All that was left was to determine how they intersected.  Easier said than done.

It’s all about finding that clutch move where you can add the third piece.  And what an awesome move it is!  Of course, once you’ve made that clutch move, there’s a whole lot of rotat’n left to solve this one.

Unfortunately, but not surprising, Clutch 4 was sold out.  However, I would not be surprised to see additional copies made available in the future.  If you like TICs, this one is a must-have.

F In L – Eleven L’s Puzzle

I recently had the opportunity to acquire a copy of the Eleven L’s Puzzle on an auction site.  What caught my attention was that the Eleven L’s puzzle consists of 11 F pentominoes.  Although I couldn’t track down the designer of this puzzle, perhaps there is a language translation issue here regarding the use of F and L.  In any event, there are a bunch of F’s invading the Eleven L’s Puzzle, Dagnabbit!

The puzzle consists of 11 L’s (aka F pentominoes) and a box that is divided into 2 sections.  One side comes with 2 of the L’s and the other is the what in 9 L’s? side.  The goal is to pack all 11 L’s on one side of the box.  Being lazy, I picked the slightly larger side leaving the other side for someone else to solve.

To solve this puzzle, I was immediately struck with 2 ideas.  The first was that since the packing space was larger than the space required by the pieces, I was suspecting a Coffinesque packing solution.  The second was the odd number of pieces, 11.  This made me consider how 11 pieces could be packed together and I simplified the approach by looking at it as a circle packing problem.  This gave me an initial concept of location and piece orientation to work with.  And I have to confess that this was done before the puzzle arrived as part of an anticipatory solving approach.  Doesn’t everybody do this?

After it arrived and I spent a couple of minutes with it, I finally came to the conclusion that I was overthinking it and that perhaps it was a straight-forward cubic-dissection packing problem.  Or it could be a combination of multiple packing schemes.  Working between several potential packing arrangements, I finally managed to pack all the F’n L’s into one side of the box.  I won’t reveal the final packing configuration but the process involved the typical attempt to pack pieces as densely as possible without leaving major gaps and of course there was plenty of backtracking. 

If you want a go at it yourself, it is currently available at Creative Crafthouse if you’re interested in acquiring your own copy.  They have both this version and a fancier laser-cut version as well.

Preserving a Legacy – No Problem Puzzles

Theo Geerinck and Symen Hovinga teamed up to become the prolific duo behind No Problem Puzzles.  They provided over 100 amazing puzzles designs for the community between November 2020 and April 2023.  Unfortunately, this came to a tragic end with the passing of Symen on 7 April 2023.

To keep the No Problem Puzzles legacy alive, Theo decided to graciously allow the puzzle designs to be made available to the puzzle community for anyone to print their own copy.  He enlisted the help of Mr BurrTools himself, Andreas Röver, to verify and publish the stl model files.  These are being available on the Printables site under the No Problem Puzzles collection. 

Andreas will be incrementally adding the puzzles to the library over the next several months.  The initial 3: Sandbox, Swinging Lid Tray, and 3U Frame are currently available (Update: 2 more were added before this post came out).

Since I had 3 puzzles at once to print, I printed all the frames together using gray filament and then a separate print of all the pieces using a light blue filament.  Both Sandbox and Swinging Lid Tray came out swinging right out of the gate.  U Frame took some extra work to get it ready.  Tight connectors had to be sanded and loose fittings had to be glued. 

All 3 of the initial puzzles released have a difficult rating of 3 out of 5 so none of them are difficult.  However they are all fun and I enjoyed solving each them.  I managed to keep myself from binging them all at the same time and did one a day.

Sandbox

The first puzzle that I wanted to dig into was Sandbox because it has such a cool looking box.  I still like it even after my NPSO asked Why can’t you make nice boxes like that?  Not only does this supreme box announce the name of the puzzle and designers on the front and sport a rock’n curved top featuring a negative handle, it also includes an image of someone shoveling a pile of sand.

In addition to the amazing box, the puzzle also consists of 4 pieces that need to be packed within said box.  Of course, you just know that the swinging lid is going to be a problem since the arc of the back of the lid sweeps through a portion of the interior.  And this is what makes the puzzle interesting and appealing.

All that is needed is to figure out how the pieces can go together, how they can be put together such that they can be inserted in the box, and finally how they can be put together such that they can be inserted in the box so that the lid can be closed.  You may be thinking why not just jump to the final stage and skip all those beginning steps?  Call me old fashioned (I prefer that to dim-witted) but I find that the initial baby steps help me get to the end.

Swinging Lid Tray

The second puzzle that I attacked also has a swinging lid.  In fact, it’s called Swinging Lid Tray and not because it parties with all the pieces although the lid does swing both ways.

Swinging Lid Tray is a 2D restricted-opening packing puzzle with the opening on the side guarded by a swinging door.  The pivoting axis of the door is neither on the end nor the middle so that the arc through the interior depends on which way your rotate it.  The top of the puzzle has a nice honeycomb pattern with sizable openings that allow you to manipulate the pieces within.  Of course my wife wanted to know why I didn’t print it in yellow and black and add pictures of bees on the pieces.  Sheesh!

I’m embarrassed to say the trying to add the first piece to the empty tray stumped me for a minute.  I made a careless assumption and was reminded once again to pay attention.  Once I got past that, it was clear sailing.

With these types of puzzles, it’s all about determining the last piece to insert and how it’s done.  For Swinging Lid Tray, the first part was not surprising but the second was unexpected.

3U Frame

I left 3U Frame for last because it looked more intimidating than the other 2.  However, it was no more difficult than the others.

3U Frame is an apparent cube packing puzzle with the objective to make a 3x3x3 cube from the 4 pieces within the center of the 5x5x5 frame.  The frame is made from the intersection of 3 U shapes.  The best part of this puzzle is that 3 of the pieces require rotations to add them to the frame.

Many thanks to Theo, Symen, Symen’s Family, Andreas, and to all the people that bought every one of the No Problem Puzzles as they came out to inspire No Problem Puzzles to keep making them!

RIP Symen!

Amazingly Non-Burrish – Gravitational Burr

Yes, yes, it looks like a burr but when you get into it you’ll start to realize the gravity of the situation – it’s amazingly non-burrish.  So if burrs aren’t your thing, don’t worry.  If you can pull the contents out of the belly of a crocodile, you can solve this one as well.

Gravitational Burr was designed by Junichi Yananose (Juno) from Pluredro and made using American Black Walnut.  It consists of 6 standard burr pieces that look like they have been made from wood infested by boring insects.  However, the boring traces were intentionally added to provide a path for a ball bearing to meander along a dynamically changing path.  

Since it arrives assembled, the first task is to take it apart.  Of course, all those boring paths are hidden and you have to blindly embark on this journey.  About halfway through, you can get a good look at the amazing interior and start to deduce what needs to occur to get to the finish line.  Unfortunately as I age, I find that my deducing is reducing.  But deducing I went as I tried to hold a dynamically rotating piston-driven image in my head.  Needless to say, there was a lot of backing up and restarting involved.  And lots of Oh, I’m back here again moments.

When I finally navigated the path to the end, I was super impressed that the ball bearing didn’t just come dropping out.  Juno designed it so that the ball bearing would be secure when it came to disassembling the pieces.  And this attention to detail is what makes Pluredro’s puzzles so special.

Once apart, you can get a good look at all the pieces to see exactly how they interact with each other.  You will also notice a compartment that could be used to store something inside. This internal space can be used to justify it as a puzzle box for those desperate collectors that only purchase puzzle boxes.  Or maybe as a poke to those that collect burrs and refuse to buy puzzle boxes.  I suspect that some people received it with a loaf of bread inside.  The puzzle description indicates that you can store the ball bearing in this cavity to inactivate the maze and reduce the number of moves from 56 to 2.  However, I wouldn’t recommend it since there is nothing to secure it and it will eventually fall out and roll into some dark and mysterious place where things go to never return.

Since this really isn’t a burr challenge, it’s not difficult to get the pieces back into the starting position for the return trip.  To get you started, 2 pieces have matching magnets to provide a nice tactile feel to the puzzle and the other pieces just seem to fall into place to provide the maze required for the ball bearing.  You just need to determine the order to add the pieces, which isn’t difficult.

Surprisingly, I found the reassembly more difficult than the disassembly.  Knowing and doing are really two different things.  Event though I had a mental image of the entire dynamic map, the blind traversal of the path took several tries before I had it back to the beginning.  Again, I was impressed with the design and how it avoided being reset at the mid-point.

More PPing in the Big Apple – NYPP 2025

The first PP of the year is always a welcome event. I always look forward to reuniting with the local puzzle community at the annual New York Puzzle Party (NYPP).  This year’s NYPP was held on 7 June 2025 and featured the usual mix of mingling with other puzzlers, attempting to solve puzzles, listening to prepared speeches, and the occasional puzzle selling/buying.  This year the event was also being filmed like last year’s International Puzzle Party (IPP) in support of a future documentary featuring the puzzle community.

It’s always nice to catch up with fellow puzzlers.  There were also a couple of new attendees from the Mechanical Puzzle Discord (MPD) that I enjoyed meeting in person.  And of course you can’t chat without working on a puzzle.  You know what they say about idle hands.

There were some very impressive puzzle collections brought by some of the participants and I had the opportunity to solve Free Me 7 by Joe Turner and Ring Case and Chubby Crocodile by Junichi Yananose (Juno) from Pluredro.  Despite the online warnings to be gentle to avoid scratching the puzzle, Chubby Crocodile had received some tough love prior to NYPP and had some pretty serious gouges to show for it.  It’s unfortunate that the pins used didn’t have rounded ends.  

There were more new and old Pluredro puzzles that were available to play with including Gentle Interlock, Grooved 6 Board Burr #7, Dial Case, Mittan, and Sequential Discovery Board Burred Box (SDBBB).  Other puzzles of note on the table to play with included The Louvre by Mr. Puzzle and Jack in the Box by Jesse Born.

Although I didn’t have enough time to play with it, there was also a Stickman Gordian Knot puzzle made by Lewis PD Puzzles using resin casting.

Haym Hirsh also brought along some of the Jigsaw puzzles that he has been working on including his exchange puzzle, Jigsaw 4, from the 41st International Puzzle Party (IPP) last year.  He had copies available for sale along with copies of his exchange puzzle from IPP40.

As usual, George Sicherman brought along some printed puzzles where the pieces could be cut-out to solve.  These included his Rock Garden symmetry puzzle with 4 pieces and his 2025 New Year’s Puzzle with 4 pieces that can be used to make various rectangles.  This puzzle is also still available in laser-cut acrylic from Nothing Yet Designs. 

In fine NYPP tradition, several attendees provided presentations.  This year’s talks included the following:

Snail Ball – Don: Since there were only 2 scheduled talks for this year’s event, it was suggested that participants could present their favorite puzzles either to the group or individually on camera to support the documentary being filmed.  Don took advantage of opening the discussions with a demonstration of the Snail Ball and a discussion of how it works.  It’s simply a ball that rolls down a ramp but it moves very, very, very slowly.  You just have to take his word for it that it’s moving.  This puzzle is available from Grand Illusions.  Don also demonstrated a keepsake box that could be used to store valuables.  I believe that he mentioned that is was an update to a version made on a lathe by a 10 year old boy.
 

Puzzle Video Games On Consoles (And Maybe PC, MAC, and Mobile) – Michael Cahill: This year, Mike gave an overview of a selection of video games and their objectives.  The presentation covered:

1. Puzzle Hybrid Games – Included Merge and Blade.
2. Puzzle Adventure Games – These included Scorn, Escape Academy, Case of the Golden Idol, Superliminal, Botany Manor, and Indian Jones and the Great Circle.
3. Lemmings, But in 3D – 2 games were covered of which I only caught the name of Humanity.
4. Deeper Dive Into Individual Puzzles – These included Arcade Paradise, Blue Prince, Balatro, and Chants of Sennaar.

 

BurrTools Tutorial – Haym Hirsh: Everybody who’s anybody in the puzzle community loves and uses BurrTools.  So Haym provided an overview and demonstration of it’s capabilities and how it can be used to solve and design puzzles for those who want to be in the who’s who of puzzledom or just brush up on functionality.  In fact, I learned that Source Forge has the 32 bit version and Git Hub has the 64 bit version.  The group also expressed gratitude to Andreas Röver for creating BurrTools and gifting it to the community 
 

City Challenge Puzzle – Joyce Michel:  During the gathering, Joyce distributed copies of the City Challenge that she developed.  It consists of challenges where you have to determine the city that is being referenced.  Each clue consists of a rhyme that identifies the city and each city contains the initials of the state where the city resides.  The example given is: This capital city’s a fine college town, The buildings are pretty and the Ivy is Brown.  The answer: Providence, RI.  The answers were reviewed at the end of her presentation and I believe that the collective group managed to solve each one.

Lights, Camera, Action !

Welcome To The Home Of Despair – DODECASOMA

What happens when you take a 3x3x3 matrix of cubes, attach identical pentahedrons to each side of the matrix so that each pentahedron completely covers one of the matrix sides, define a new cubic boundary to encompass the new shape, slice the space up into into 27 identical bits, and randomly glue up some of neighboring bits back together?  Well, you get a DODECASOMA obviously.  To save you the effort of doing that yourself, Rod Bogart has done it for you so that you can enjoy the formidable fiddly fun of constructing a dodecahedron from 7 dodecahedronized Soma pieces.

DODECASOMA was designed and made by Rod Bogart and used as his exchange puzzle for the 41st International Puzzle Party.  It consists of 7 green 3D printed Soma pieces that assemble into a dodecahedron instead of the normal cube.  The pieces are nicely scored with the outline of the 3x3x3 grid to provide some guidance on how the pieces are aligned.  The puzzle also comes with a stand for displaying the assembled puzzle.  The stand is also useful to hold partially assembled constructions.  And although it is providing a helping hand, don’t expect any useful advice from it.

It all appears innocuous enough but when someone hands you a puzzle that is an anagram for CASA DOOMED, you have to stop and consider the ramifications.  Are there 240 (or 480 – you’re welcome Nick) solutions?  No!  Which is good since you probably don’t need another regular Soma cube although you should have a least one.  Is the solution unique.  Don’t know!  But trying to solve it, it seemed like it could be.

Unlike a plain old boring Soma made from plain old cubes, the DODECASOMA ends up being made from 4 types of shapes which I’ve come to think of as corners, edges, middles, and the core.  They’re really misnomers, but I’m sure you’ll come up with better names when you start handling them.

I don’t know why I was surprised the first time I had 1 last piece to add and it didn’t fit.  Why would I think it would be any different from any other puzzle that I’ve solved?  A couple rounds of that wiped the smirk off my expectations.

It’s also a bit fiddly and you have to juggle the pieces in your hand as you try different piece combinations.  Unlike the typical Soma puzzle with cubic dissection pieces, not every piece will fit nicely anywhere.  However, there are enough places where they can go together making it non-trivial to solve.

Eventually I had it all together and with a bit more effort, I had it displayed on the stand.  At least I didn’t have to try all 10 sides to find one where it would stand without falling apart.

Crafty Sunflower Release: May 2025

I was recently asked if I would be willing to review the 3 new Grabarchuk puzzles being released by Crafty Sunflower this month.  I usually think of the Grabarchuk family as prolific creators of pencil and paper type logic puzzles but they have a long history of designing physical puzzles as well.  I was happy to hear that 3 new ones were being made available.  After a quick peek of them online, I immediately responded with a Yes Please!  Two things had immediately caught my eye.  The first was of course, the puzzling challenge.  The second was packaging.  I was amazed at the amount of effort that was put into the packaging.  Each puzzle comes in a tray with a clear acrylic top to store the puzzle.

A few days after my exuberant reply, I received a small but dense package in the mail.  It included the 3 puzzles for the May release plus 4 puzzles from previous releases that will be the subject of a future blog.  The paperwork within the box also included a nice thank you note.  This capped the attention to detail that Crafty Sunflower had previously demonstrated in the friendly status updates emailed during the shipping process.

All 3 of the Crafty Sunflower May 2025 release puzzles were designed by Serhiy Grabarchuk and made from laser cut wood and acrylic.  And they’re all completely different.  There is a 3D interlocking puzzle, a 2D assembly puzzle, and a 2D sliding piece puzzle.  And they are available now at Crafty Sunflower!

Plank Box

Plank Box is a 3D interlocking puzzle with 12 planks that comprise a box with 2 planks on each of the 6 sides.  This was the one that immediately caught my eye.  It is exactly the type of puzzle I like.

The 12 planks come nicely packed in a tray with a clear acrylic lid that can be rotated to the side allowing the pieces to be removed.  The top of the tray has your typical puzzle information consisting of the name, designer, and manufacturer.  The bottom has the solution engraved on it, so don’t look at it until you’ve solved it.  The other interesting piece of information that is included on the bottom is that Plank box was designed in 1977.  That’s almost 50 years ago!

Removing the planks from the box, you can see that the pieces are neither all identical nor all unique.  2 of the pieces are marked.  One has the name of the puzzle and the other has the name of the manufacturer.  I decided to build the box with the information on the outside although I assume that it is just as easy to build it with the information on the inside.

How would the pieces go together?  Would it go together as 2 sliding halves, a sequence of sliding together multiple subunits, or simply a sequence of adding the individual pieces one by one?  Would it perhaps require coordinate motion?  Would pieces need to slide back and forth to add other pieces?

My first goal was to determine how the pieces would slot together, so I built a corner of the cube to test it.  Simple enough, so I decided to see how much of a cube I could build before getting stuck.  Needless to say, I was not able to build a complete cube using such a random process. 

Taking the unfinished cube apart, I laid out the pieces to give them a good look.  A quick tabulation exposed a discrepancy that hinted at a possible locking mechanism.  Starting with this mechanism, I started to build out the cube again – only to end up with mismatching pieces at the end.

In addition to not completing the cube, I was lacking a concept for what happens after the first step of the locking mechanism.  Giving it some further thought, I came up with a second move as well as what would be available for a third move.  I starting to rebuild the cube from here – only to end up with mismatching pieces at the end.

At this point, I decided that the best approach was to lay the pieces flat on the table as an unfolded version of the box.  This allowed me to see where pieces would match or not and easily shuffle them around until I had a workable layout.  Of course, once I had a layout, I hoped that it would be possible to construct.  And lo and behold, there was a sequence of moves where the planks could be assembled into a cubic box.  Awesome!

Plank Box is a great design and I thoroughly enjoyed the process of solving it!

Octamion

Octamion is a multi-challenge 2D assembly puzzle.  The objective is to make various shapes with the 8 pieces that are provided.  There 2 types of pieces with 4 of each.   Each of the types uses a different wood type to provide a nice contrast between them.  Of course, the pieces arrive nestled within one of those nice trays with a rotating clear acrylic cover.

In line with the name, the 8 pieces arrive in the form of a regular octagon.  The bottom of the tray has silhouettes of 7 additional shapes (for a total of, you guessed it, 8 shapes) that can be made.  I found them fairly simple to solve and consider this one more targeted to a new puzzler.

The back of the tray also suggests that you create your own new shapes.  I highly suggest doing this.  In fact, the shape identified as a diamond, I would consider a kite, and I created my own diamond shape for your pleasure.  If you create interesting new shapes, share it in a message below.  Or better yet – send it to Crafty Sunflower!

Diamond

Correct Order

And now to flip the final puzzle of the release open.  Wait a minute!  There’s a note indicating that a bolt needs to be removed first.  No problem – bolt removed.  It still doesn’t open!

Unlike the prior puzzles of this release, Correct Order doesn’t have a hinged cover that opens up.   This one is meant to stay closed with the entrapped pieces manipulated by techniques other than direct contact.

Behind the acrylic cover, you can see 9 square pieces with the digits 1 to 9 cut out in a 3x3 array with the digits arranged in reverse numerical order.  The digits are cut completely through the pieces so that they are highlighted by the red base of the tray.  The pieces are nice and thick to give them some mass as they move around in their trapped space.  The corners of the pieces are also rounded to keep them from binding as they slid past each other.  Beneath the matrix of digits is a 1x2 piece that is in the middle of the bottom row which arrives with a bolt through it to ensure that the puzzle arrives in the reverse order starting configuration.  Removing the bolt allows pieces to start moving and the fun to begin.

Correct Order adds an element of dexterity challenge to a sliding puzzle challenge.  It’s easy enough to slide an entire row or column but when you want to move part of a row or column, you need to get a bit more creative.  However, the techniques used to split rows and columns are a good skill to add to your puzzling toolbox for other puzzles that you will eventually encounter.  Using these techniques, I managed to put the digits in the correct order.

As I was going to release with this blog, I was suddenly struck with the uneasy feeling that I may have not solved this puzzle as intended.  What if the puzzle could be solved without splitting rows or columns.  Dropping a digit into the bottom right side pocket would force all the pieces to rotate clockwise until that digit was popped back out and another dropped into the left-side pocket forcing all the pieces to then rotate counter-clockwise.  The 5 in the center would never move.  Could these alternating right/left clockwise/counter-clockwise moves be used to reverse the digit order?  If so, this would be a much more elegant solution not requiring any dexterity techniques.

Unfortunately, I was unable to verify if this alternate approach produces a solution, in time for  this blog but I’ll consider this one unfinished for now until I give it some more thought.  If you have any insight into this, please add it the comments.

So I enjoyed solving this one and it may be even better than I initially thought.