ZenPuzzler: 2025

Wednesday, July 16, 2025

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}.

Wednesday, July 9, 2025

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.

Wednesday, July 2, 2025

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.

Wednesday, June 25, 2025

Preserving a Legacy – No Problem Puzzles

No Problem Puzzles by Theo Geerinck and Symen Hovinga

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!

Wednesday, June 18, 2025

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.

Wednesday, June 11, 2025

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:

Puzzle Hybrid Games – Included Merge and Blade.
Puzzle Adventure Games – These included Scorn, Escape Academy, Case of the Golden Idol, Superliminal, Botany Manor, and Indian Jones and the Great Circle.
Lemmings, But in 3D – 2 games were covered of which I only caught the name of Humanity.
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 !

Wednesday, June 4, 2025

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.

Wednesday, May 28, 2025

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.

Wednesday, May 21, 2025

Surprise! – Birthday Cake

Normally, I don’t get a cake on my birthday but this year was different. One of my daughters decided to ignore the normal advice to avoid trying to gift a puzzle that I don’t have and surprised me with a cake I didn’t already have.

Birthday Cake is a puzzle box made by iDventure and is one of several laser-cut wood puzzle boxes that they offer. Surprisingly, this is the first iDventure Cluebox that I have received.

Opening the box (i.e., the box box that contains the box), I was greeted with an elaborate mechanism complete with several gears. Happy Birthday is also nicely debossed between 2 of the gears. There are also 2 spots on the top designed to hold a digit for shaming the recipient. Adding each is a simple process. You just have to rub it in. In my case, I was given all the digits, 2 of each, to pick whichever would make me happy. And if you’re over 99, you get to start you’re second childhood. It’s a bit like Y2K.

Pulling the box from the box, you can see how the round cake is made by utilizing a pattern of a thousand little cuts to allow the wood to be bent into a cylinder. Although I’ve seen this used with many puzzles, I still find it amazing.

Also in the box box was a single candle that fit on the top of the cake. I know they look like candles but please don’t be tempted to light them when you present this Birthday Cake. Rotating the candle makes one of the adjoining visible gears rotate. Spinning the gear reveals several birthday party suggestions like DANCE, SING, SMILE, and LOVE that show up in the window as the gear rotates. Attempting to turn the other gears with this candle proved futile. This candle only fits 1 of the 3 candle holders on the top of the cake. It turns out that this candle was the first tool that dripped out of the bottom of the box as it started to solve itself in transit. Finding out where it came from and how to produce the other 2 candles was straightforward.

Armed with 3 candles, it is not too difficult to produce the party elements that are required to open the box. With the top released, there is a rather large space that can be used to put in other things like more puzzles, gift cards, and large quantities of money. Unfortunately, my daughter must not have been able to get the box open.

Birthday Cake is a challenge on the easy side, but is well thought-out and well made. Extra attention went into designing the appearance of the box. It could have been much simpler and still work the same but it is so much more attractive with the extra touches. On close inspection, it also appears that nothing is glued and if you were really adventurous, you could disassemble the box into it’s individual components.

In the event that you are unable to open Birthday Cake, there is a card included with a link to where you can find opening instructions. There is also a QR code if you don’t want to type the URL.

Wednesday, May 14, 2025

Happy Anniversary! – The Return of ZenPuzzler

It’s been 2 years since the last anniversary post. After having taken a year off, ZenPuzzler was reenergized by attending the 41st International Puzzle Party (IPP) (Gratitude For Those Who Work Up Through The – Eleventh Hour). In fact, many of the puzzle blogs were of IPP41 exchange puzzles. There were also many puzzles from the collaboration with Nothing Yet Designs (NYD) to announce their puzzle releases during the first 3 months of this year.

To wrap up the year, I have created a list of the posts and the puzzles that are mentioned in each. The name of each post is linked to the post entry so that you can easily jump to it by clicking on the name.

7 May 25 – To Everything, There Is A Season – Key Machine