Plastic Picnic Plates – Three Plates Burr

Puzzles don’t have to be expensive.  Some nice puzzle can be had for the cost of 3D printing using sites such as Printables and Thingiverse.  Just hop on any of these sites and search for puzzle and you will be rewarded with a large selection of puzzles to choose from.  However, I would recommend avoiding puzzles that don’t appear to have approval from the designers if at all possible.

Three Plates Burr made an appearance at a Puzzle Picnic earlier this month and I ended up with it in my possession at the end of the day.  It is a level 14, 3-piece board burr made available by a mad gardener on Printables.

I ended up with this burr since I was unable to solve it during the picnic.  With only 3 pieces, I assumed that it would go together quickly.  And once it starts going together, it does go together rather quickly.  The only problem is getting it started.

There’s only one assembly for the pieces and a little investigation will convince you of that.  Of course, I always end up taking more time than necessary to accomplish this.  The real challenge is to determine how the pieces need to be placed to start that final 14-move sequence to get all the pieces to their final resting place.  Once you have successfully accomplished the first of the 14 moves, you’re pretty much set on track to completing the following 13.

Finding the start of the 14 move assembly was well hidden and I enjoyed spending quite a bit of time hunting for it.  Three Piece Burr isn’t that difficult but it is tricky.  It’s certainly worth checking it out for the price.