Round Bevels – Petit Albert

There’s some severe beveling going on with Volker Latussek’s latest 3D packing puzzle.  Why?  Because it introduces the ability of the pieces to perform an additional rotation within the box.  Of course this extreme beveling is not beveling at all but rounding where the edge is rounded with a specified radius instead of a simple angled cut. 

Volker Latussek has been generating a plethora of petit packing puzzles in the 2xXx3 format.  The puzzles use a variety of box shapes, openings, piece shapes, holes, rods, spheres, drawers, trapped pieces, and more.  This is the story of Petit Albert.

Petit Albert consists of 5 pieces that need to be packed within a 2x3x3 box.  The box has a 3 voxel opening on one the 2x3 sides to add/remove/manipulate pieces.  There are no other openings in the box.  The pieces consist of 4 tetracubes and 1 dicube.  I’ll avoid naming the pieces to avoid aggravating any sensitivities that various readers may have due to the lack of a definitive naming convention.  I’ll just say that the 2 types of tetracubes are mirror images of each other and that there are 3 of 1 and 1 of the other.  AND!!! the 3/1 split is aligned with the shape of the box opening.  Don’t change one without the other.

Each of the 4 tetracubes has a rounded corner where the radius of the round is equal to the voxel size.  This allows an additional rotation that would have been blocked by an intact corner.  This extra degree of freedom provides one more tool in the bag for solving the puzzle.  Of course in reality, it’s really one more tool used by Volker to confound your solving process.

I found the hardest part of the solve was convincing myself that I had indeed found how the pieces are assembled within the box.  The assembly has some easy to recognize desirable features and yet still appears to fall short due to the difficulty in seeing how the pieces can be manipulated into their required positions.  I’d almost go as far as to say that the first piece to be added to the box is the most difficult to get in place.  Almost.

Petit Albert provides a good mix of assembly, piece interaction, and rotational movements that make this puzzle a winner.  I believe that it will be available as part of the next Pelikan release and I definitely recommend adding it to your collection if you have been enjoying Volker’s other petit puzzles.