Symm-sala-bim

More 2D symmetry fun from Alexander Magyarics.  This one is is Symm-sala-bim and consists of 3 pieces that need to be assembled to form a symmetric shape.  Like most of his other symmetry designs, the type of symmetry that is required is not provided.  And as usual, the pieces don’t look all that complicated.  In fact, one of the pieces is symmetric itself and the other 2 easily combine to create a symmetric shape.  Those 2 pieces aren’t identical although they are close to being identical.  One just has an additional voxel compared to the other.  You think that this would make it easier but it’s just there to lead you astray. 

Without that extra voxel, the puzzle would be trivial and there would be many solutions.  Instead, there is only 1 solution and it is not trivial.  Thankfully!

I tried all the obvious things to create a symmetric shape but Alexander is too good a designer to succumb to the obvious.  This led me on a merry chase where I had to dig a little deeper and try the less obvious.  And then, there it was – Symm-sala-bim!  Very nicely done!

Alan Lunsford SerpentTICs

Working diligently to delay the release of Spin Head, the next engineering marvel in his sequential discovery coin release series, Alan Lunsford has begun carving his own serpentic path through the valley of TICs (turning interlocking cubes).  Apparent cubes – Doesn’t matter.  Square sticks – Doesn’t matter.  Many pieces – Doesn’t matter.

Alan has produced 6 TIC designs using a new approach.  Each is a 4x4x4 puzzle featuring a cubic frame and pieces that need to be packed within the frame.  The pieces include cylindrical sticks and rounded edges to facilitate rotations where they normally wouldn’t occur.  Once solved, the cubes sport many external visible holes.

To make things even more exciting, Alan has uploaded all 6 TICs to his Printables page allowing anyone to download and 3D print the models for themselves.  For those without a 3D printer, Alan has also started to make them available on his online shop, Kinetic Crafts.

Photos of the solved puzzles are not provided to avoid spoiling the complete experience.

Asp

I decided to start with Asp since it looked like a simple puzzle.  It’s easy to determine where the pieces need to go.  It has 3 pieces that need to be packed in a frame with one of the pieces based on a cylinder.  This will be a common but not completely identical theme throughout the series.  Determining the location of the pieces is not difficult and the fun begins when trying to work out the rotations needed to get all the pieces in place.  It was a quicker solve than I had anticipated.

Caduceus

Ignorance is bliss.  Unlike most of the other puzzles in the series, this one only has 2 pieces that have to be packed within the frame and both have cylindrical parts.  Since there were only 2 pieces to place within the frame, I spent some time ruling out assemblies that wouldn’t work.  Had I recalled what Caduceus means, it would have been obvious and a much quicker solve.  If you don’t know what it means, and why should you, do yourself a favor and wait until you’ve solved it before looking it up.  And also avoid the growing number of photos being posted of the puzzle in it’s solved state.  When I took this one apart a couple of days later, it was just as hard to get it apart as it was to solve it once I had determined where all the pieces had to go.  Some serious rotations in this one.

Cobra

Same but different.  The structure of the pieces seems like the others but the behavior of the solve is completely different.  I don’t want to say too much by giving away what the major difference is.  You need to enjoy it for yourself.  I felt that this one was one of the easier solves and when you take it apart, it seems to want to help you.

Hydra

Again, same but different.  With 2 pieces with cylindrical pieces, you would think that it would be similar to Caduceus, but it’s not.  Although I didn’t find it as difficult as Caduceus, there are still a lot of nice rotations in this one.  And for those of you wondering WHY?  Just Why?  Is there a reason why?  The answer is Yes!  Otherwise there would be a second solution.

Worm

The puzzle Worm sticks out because the name is separated across 3 pieces to let you know where they need to go.  This is the puzzling equivalent of painting by numbers.  However, it’s not giving much away since the placement of the pieces is easy to determine without the name of the puzzle lining things up for you.

Boa

While I was working on the previous 5, Alan expanded the series to include Boa.  It doesn’t appear to be a significant departure from the others, but for some reason, this one took me longer to solve.  I really don’t know why.  It has 3 pieces that need to be packed in the frame with one of the pieces based on a cylinder.  Right in line with the series.  However, it may be that the non-cylindrical pieces had a bit more movement during the play, which widened the field of possibilities.  Just more time to enjoy the solve.  This might be my favorite of the series so far.

 

These serpenTIC puzzles are fairly quick solves but all are fun.  The size of the series plus the number of rotations required for each will allow my goldfish mind to enjoy experiencing them for the first time, many times.  I’ll certainly be looking for others cough, cough, after Spin Head is released, cough.

Kevin also recently provided a nice description of the first 3 in the series over at Puzzlemad.  You should give it a read.  Just don't look at the photos until you've solved them!

No Problem Puzzles, Update #11

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.  Another contributor, Crab on Printables, has also tweaked some of the models to improve them.

This post continues the review of the No Problem Puzzles as the models are being released.  Since the last review (No Problem Puzzles, Update #10), more No Problem Puzzles have become available.  All level of difficulty ratings are from the puzzle descriptions and are on a scale of 1 to 5.

Möbius Cut Rings

Möbius Cut Rings consists of 2 rings that are cut with a Möbius strip and then cut radially on one side to produce 2 halves that can then be separated with minor flexing.  The objective is to make a pair of linked rings.  It’s trivial to make a pair of separate rings but worth the effort to see exactly how the pieces go together.  I expected the linked rings to take just a little bit more effort and with the help of the difficulty rating of 3, I underestimated it.  More than once, I had to back out of a 4 half-ring tangle.  You really need a plan going into this one.  I had to sit down and examine this one closely to construct the interlocking rings.

SOS

SOS consists of 3 pieces that have to be packed within a frame with lots of openings.  The name comes from the shape of the frame as you descend through the layers.  It’s not difficult to add the pieces with a few rotations but the description indicates that it takes 21 moves to put in the last piece, which is way more than I originally used.  Yes, you guessed it, no rotations allowed although this is not specified in the description.

Solving this puzzle without rotations is much more involved and hence earns it’s level 4 reputation.  Without rotations, the orientations of the pieces are limited to how they can enter the cage.  This provides a lot of information on the assembly of the pieces within the available 3x3x3 space.  That along with the limited ability of the pieces to move will narrow it down to the winning assembly pretty quickly.  Then you just have to assemble the pieces within the cage.  I have to point out that now that you don’t want the pieces to rotate, they are prone to rotate on their own and you have to keep an eye and a grip on them.  It’s well worth the effort to solve it without rotations.

Ringed Tetra’s

Ringed Tetra’s is a restricted-opening 3D packing puzzle consisting of 10 pieces that need to be packed within a box.  The 4x4x3 box is entirely open on one side except for a half-voxel lip all around.  The ten pieces completely fill the 4x4x3 space within the box.  There are 2 rings and 8 tetracubes.  The tetracubes include 3 L pieces, 3 B pieces, and 2 Z pieces.

At first glance, and with a difficulty rating of 4, this puzzle appears daunting.  However, I found it fun to play with and was able to narrow down possible piece placements fairly quickly.  I was surprised that this one ended up being a one session solve.  The solution is very nice and I ended up liking it a lot.

Viking Shield

Viking Shield is a 2D packing puzzle with the goal of packing 9 horny helmeted vikings in a shallow shield shaped tray.  It’s not too difficult to squeeze 8 vikings within the tray but it takes some effort to get all 9 in.  Those horns keep getting in the way and are continually boinking their neighbors where they’re not supposed to.

After a short session I managed to get all the vikings encamped.  However the layout wasn’t clean.  The puzzle appears to use a triangular grid and my solution utilized 2 triangular grids that intersected with each other at an angle.  Another short session revealed a proper solution with a single grid.  The level 3 difficulty rating was spot on.




If you don’t have a 3D printer, you can obtain copies of No Problem Puzzles from Nothing Yet Designs based in the US or the PuzzleguyStore based in the EU.

Vibrant Houston Flower

Vibrant Houston Flower was created by Jean Claude Constantin and used by Wil Strijbos as his exchange puzzle at the 41st International Puzzle Party (IPP).  It consists of a tray and 24 metallic beads.  The beads are divided into 11 pairs with each pair having a different color.  The tray consists of an outer ring, a middle ring, and a color key in the center.  The outer ring has spaces to hold all 12 pairs of beads while the middle ring can accommodate 9.  The color key in the center has a fixed set of 12 smaller beads matching the colors of the pairs along with how many spaces are required to exist between the pair of beads of that color when they are placed within a ring.  The number of spaces run incrementally from 0 to 11.

There are 2 challenges.  The first challenge is to place the first 9 pairs with required spacing from 0 to 8 within the middle ring.  The second challenge is to place all 12 pairs in the outer ring so that they meet the spacing requirements.

Lacking a real strategy, I started with the first challenge by placing the pairs from the shortest to longest distance between them.  Eventually, you get to the point where it’s not possible to add the final beads in the spaces that remain.  However, instead of backing up, it is possible to start shifting pairs around into the available spaces to arrange the vacant spaces for the remaining beads.

Having solved the first challenge, I proceeded with the second using the same approach.  After shifting a lot of pairs, I finally got it down to 1 pair left to place.  And after a lot more shifting, I still had not placed that last pair.  So I put it on the shelf.  Several days later, I took it down for another session and noticed after a few minutes that shifting 2 pairs at the same time opened up the space that I needed and I was done.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a nice algorithm to arrange any number of pairs.  However, the 9-pair and 12-pair challenges seemed to be good choice for solving it without such an algorithm.

Barcode Burr

I’ve finally gotten around to playing with Barcode Burr and what an amazing design it is.  It consists of 6 mostly identical pieces that form a mostly complete cube.  Mostly identical, because the pins and mazes on each make them unique.  Mostly complete since there are grooves in the pieces.

Barcode Burr was developed by Lee Krasnow and was originally made in wood with metal pins.  Each piece had an identical pattern on the outward facing sides that meshed with the other pieces to provide an amazing pattern when the cube was assembled.  It was entered in the 2004 IPP Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition where it won an Honorable Mention award.  Stiff competition that year.

To provide a more economical means of providing puzzles like this to the puzzle community, Lee eventually created his own 3D fab lab to print his fabulous puzzles.  Not only was Barcode Burr made available but also other code burrs using the same overall format but different mazes.  There are now 17 different designs in the Barcode Burr family.

For these puzzles, each piece is comprised of 3 components.  There is the main body of the piece that makes up the outer shell of the cube and 2 other components that allow for customizing the maze and pin configurations.  One is a long protrusion that mounts to the main body and the other is a plate that mounts onto a shorter protrusion on the main body.  Each of these pieces supports interacting with an adjacent piece on 2 sides providing a total of 4 other pieces that each piece interacts with, i.e., all but one other piece.  Since pieces on opposite corners move along the same diagonal line, albeit in opposite directions, it is not possible to have them interact via a maze.

Not wanting to bite off more than I could chew, I decided to start with the rainbow colored Barcode Burr.  Why rainbow colored.  Because, I was a bit concerned that if all the pieces were the same color, it would be more difficult to determine where each piece goes and the order that they have to go together.  AND, there are 3 solutions with 2 being non-intended solutions with shorter solution paths.

To be honest, once I started playing with it, the colors and the expected movements took away any intimidation I had expected.  It was just fun.  I’ve taken it apart and put it back together several times just for the fun of it.  When the pieces start coming out, it does get a little fiddly but never falls apart.  At some point, I’m going to have to try the single color version and scramble the pieces to determine how difficult it is to solve.

As of now, Barcode Burr appears to still be available in Lee’s shop Pacific Puzzleworks if you want to get a copy of your own.  It’s well worth playing with.

Three Caterpillars

How many caterpillars does it take to make a butterfly?  No clue!  But apparently, it takes more than 1 to make a symmetric shape.

Three Caterpillars is a 2D symmetry puzzle designed by Alexander Magyarics.  You may never guess that it consists of 3 caterpillars that need to be arranged to make a symmetrical shape.  The type of symmetry is not specified.  And if that is not enough, each pair of pieces can be used to make a symmetric shape as well.  Four challenges for the price of one.

The pieces are 3D printed and the heads are a different color than the rest of the body so you know which way they are looking.  The colors have no relationship with the symmetry constraints unless I completely misjudged it.

The 3 challenges for making a symmetrical shape with 2 pieces are not that difficult and make for nice warm-up to the main challenge.  The 3-piece challenge is a bit more involved than the 2-piece challenges but I didn’t find it as tough as some of Alexander's other symmetry puzzles.

Update: Alexander contacted me and indicated that the solutions do indeed have to take into account the symmetry of the colors. 

One Match Left

I recently had the opportunity to acquire some 3D printed hand-me-down puzzles from a kind soul on the Mechanical Puzzle Discord (MPD).  Among the nice selection of puzzles was a copy of One Match Left.

One Match Left is a 3D packing puzzle designed by Jorgos Anastasou.  It consists of 3 pieces that need to be packed within a cubic tube.  Both ends of the tube are open and there are 2 protruding obstructions on the inside that keep the pieces from simply falling out.  One is single voxel and the other is a double.  Two of the pieces look like burr pieces and the third is in the form of a match.  The version that I received was printed with extra attention to detail to make the match piece look like a match with a white body and black tip.

This puzzle is one of Jorgos’ easier puzzles and not difficult to solve.  Determining how the 2 burr pieces are oriented within the box and where the match goes is straight-forward and once you have that, putting them all within the tube is a quick process.  One Match Left is a great introduction for this type of puzzle and good warm-up for tackling more difficult puzzles of this type like 4 In Frame (Foreign Fame - 4 In Frame) or Wheel Lock (An Impediment to Rolling Along - Wheel Lock).

 

Gears

Not being much of a gearhead, I was a little apprehensive of tackling Gears designed by Hirokazu Iwasawa (Iwahiro).  It is a 2D restricted-opening packing puzzle made by Constantin Puzzles that Iwahiro used as his exchange puzzle at the 41st International Puzzle Part (IPP).  It consists of a frame with a hinged door on the side that can be opened to allow gears to pass through.  There are 9 gears in all.  2 of them are fixed in the center of opposite sides of the frame and can rotate freely.  The remaining 7 loose gears are the same size and have the same number of teeth as the fixed gears except for 1 that lacks teeth.  The frame also has a large opening in the clear acrylic top in the shape of an I to provide a means of manipulating the pieces when they are inside.  Lastly, there are a couple of pointy bits in the frame to throw a wrench in the gears.

The objective is to add all the gears to the frame and close the door.  I started to putter around with adding gears but it took a while to get the gears turning, in my brain that is.   It all starts out easy enough, but as more gears are added, they need to rotate as they pass through confined spaces eventually leading to gears disagreeing on which direction they should be rotating.

Shifting my brain into high gear, I finally settled on where the toothless wonder needed to be.  Of course I tried all the other places to rule them out for certain.  Even then it was not obvious to me how to proceed.  Eventually, I shifted gears and tried something a bit more complex that set the machine in motion and allowed the lid to close with all the gears inside.  A very nice AHA moment.

Holey 2D Symmetry, Batman – Rising Sun & LUV Potion

In a departure from the usual 2D Symmetry puzzles, I present Rising Sun and LUV Potion.  Not only do the pieces have to be arranged to make a symmetric shape but the holes in the pieces must support the symmetry as well.  Both puzzles were designed by Frederic Boucher and made by Nothing Yet Designs in acrylic.  And neither puzzle indicates the type of symmetry required to solve it. 

Rising Sun

Rising Sun consists of 2 pentominos and 1 tetromino, each with a circular hole through it.  I’m assuming that the holes are not simply decoration but there to single out a unique solution from multiple other potential solutions that may exist if the holes were not present.  However, I don’t recall finding any other symmetrical shapes disregarding the holes.  Although I didn’t find it too difficult, it was more challenging of the two.

LUV Potion

Similar to Rising Sun, LUV Potion consists of 2 pentomino pieces and 1 tetromino piece but the holes are shaped like hearts giving them directionality.  As with most 2D symmetry puzzles, the pieces don’t want to cooperate and seem downright unfriendly.  However, this is understandable since each lacks a heart.

Instead of making things more difficult, the directionality of the hearts provides additional information revealing the type of symmetry needed to solve this puzzle.  This turns out to be quite useful, making this puzzle one of the easier 2D symmetry challenges.  It’s not that difficult to find the solution among the many symmetrical shapes you can make disregarding the hearts.

I’m sure that it’s challenging to determine the optimal locations for each heart when designing the puzzle.  It would be interesting to see the 8 previous prototypes.

If you would like to get your own copies of Rising Sun or LUV Potion, Nothing Yet Designs has these puzzles available as well as other puzzles from Frederic Boucher and 2D symmetry puzzles from other designers.

No Problem Puzzles, Update #10

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.  Another contributor, Crab on Printables, has also tweaked some of the models to improve them.

This post continues the review of the No Problem Puzzles as the models are being released.  Since the last review (No Problem Puzzles, Update #9), more No Problem Puzzles have become available.  All level of difficulty ratings are from the puzzle descriptions and are on a scale of 1 to 5.

Drawbridge

Drawbridge is a 3D packing puzzle with 3 tetracube pieces that need to be packed within an articulated frame.  2 of the 3 tetracubes are identical.  The objective is to make a 2x2x3 cuboid with the 3 pieces pieces inside the frame, which is large enough to hold a 2x2x4 cuboid.  The frame consists of 2 joined parts consisting of a base and a top that can rock back and forth.  The frame has a lot of nice added detail to add character such as brick siding, decorative X-braces, and triangular patterned holes.

At a difficulty rating of 3, it makes for a nice challenge.  I tried various methods to insert the pieces past the tilting top until I landed on the correct one.  In hind-sight, the solution is more straight-forward than most of the ones I attempted.  Part of that was applying things I had seen in other puzzles but didn’t end up applying here.

Nest Box

Nest box consists of 5 polycubes that need to be packed within a box shaped like a bird house.  The house is complete with a perch, round doorway, cathedral ceiling, and a chimney. 

The only objective given is to pack the pieces within the box.  Even though this is a level 3 puzzle, I popped them in within minutes.  My rather inelegant solution lead me to believe that I was missing a constraint or two.  Considering that my solution had a piece stuck in the chimney, I decided to try finding a solution that had the chimney unoccupied.  And after some additional effort, I had them packed with the chimney unoccupied.  Was that the solution?  Maybe not since I used a rotation and I was beginning to suspect that if the word rotation is not used in the description then it’s not to be used.  Taking once last shot, I finally came up with a solution that packed the box with the chimney empty and without using rotations.  Whew!  BTW – the rotational solution was rather clever but difficult to undo.

Tumbler II

Tumbler II consists of 3 pieces that need to be packed in a 3x3x3 box with a bar across the middle of the open top that can rotate to each side.  And there are poke holes on all the other sides of the box including the bottom.  It has a difficulty level of 3.5.

I really should read the directions before solving these puzzles.  It requires no rotations and the 2 open rows on the top should be filled.  So much for tumbling the pieces in the tumbler.  The requirements removed some of the cool tumbling moves that I found.  In my defense, I have an expanding collection of these puzzles unsolved on my shelf and casually take them down to solve without going online and looking at the directions.  Perhaps I should consider writing the constraints down since the puzzle is really incomplete without them.

The solution to this one was nice and sneaky.  It took awhile before I groked the sneaky bit but after that it was quick going.

Slideshow

Slideshow is a level 3, 3D restricted packing puzzle with 4 pieces that need to be packed in a box with a sliding top.  However, the sliding top is at an angle and is not removable.  Unlike other puzzles, I knew exactly what to do here and proceeded to assemble the pieces where they needed to be.  Oddly enough, they couldn’t quite get there so I proceeded to tweak the assembly.  And I continued proceeding to proceed until I finally lighted upon a move that allowed me to further proceed.  At this point, I knew the movements needed to solve the puzzle but that’s only half the problem.  The other half is being able to accomplish those movements in a restricted space without access.  I’d like to point out that there are no poke holes in this puzzles since slideshows require darkness.  I finally manged to solve this one with my patented hopeful shaking technique.  But not to worry.  Unpacking is much easier than packing.



If you don’t have a 3D printer, you can obtain copies of No Problem Puzzles from Nothing Yet Designs based in the US or the PuzzleguyStore based in the EU.

Windows 2

Windows 2 is a 5x5x5 Turning Interlocking Cube (TIC) designed by Andrew Crowell.  This bicolor puzzle consists of 6 pieces that form a white shell around a blue 3x3x3 apparent cube in the center.  Each side of the white exterior has 4 windows that allow you see the blue core.

When I pulled Windows 2 out to work on it, I only meant to sit down with it for a couple of minutes to figure out where the pieces went.  However, I was having such a good time that I ended up solving it before getting up.  Rather a bittersweet finish since this was the last 5x5x5 TIC in my backlog.  Luckily for me, I think I still have some 4x4x4 TICs that got pushed further back into the back of the backlog.

Initially, Windows 2 reminded my of Templars Cross (A Spirited Journey – Templars Cross) with the corners still intact.  However, I found it quite a bit easier to solve.  The last 2 pieces weren’t nearly as difficult to get in place and pieces just seemed a bit more accessible for manipulating.  If you are planning on doing both (recommended), I’d suggest starting with Windows 2 as the warm-up.

If you want to print your own copy of Windows 2, the model files are available on ARC Puzzles as part of the second volume of 5x5x5 TICs.

RMF

RMF is a 3-piece 2D symmetry puzzle designed by Alexander Magyarics.  Each piece consists of 3 squares but 1 square of each piece has been cut in half diagonally and the halves have been separated.

The goal is to place the pieces together to make a shape that you can rotate, mirror, or flip and still end up with the same shape.  Only one of those operations is required but you are not told which one.  And there is only 1 solution.

You can try to devise a robust mathematical framework for analyzing these these types of puzzles but it’s really more fun to use them as fidget puzzles.  They’re perfect for zoom meetings.

This one didn’t take me as long to solve as some of Alexander’s other puzzles I recently blogged about but I still appreciate how devious the solution is.  Maybe something is sinking in.

I wasn’t sure where the name RMF came from but thankfully AI cleared it up for me:

The RMF symmetry puzzle is named after its designer, the puzzle inventor Alexander Magyarics.  The letters represent the initials of his first name (R... [Alexander is often known by his surname]) and the M and F indicating Magyarics Family or a similar personal arrangement.

If you are interested in acquiring a copy, RMF as well as many other 2D symmetry puzzles from Alexander and other designers are available at Nothing Yet Designs.

HolopTIC

HolopTIC is a 5x5x5 Turning Interlocking Cube (TIC) puzzle designed by Andrew Crowell.  As with HoleyTIC and HolisTIC (Getting Everything Back Together – HolisTIC, HolopTIC has a hole in the middle of each side of the puzzle that runs through the cube.

This one was a lot of fun with some higher order rotational moves.  However, you need to make sure that you don’t cheat on the rotations.  It is possible to make some questionable rotational moves that bypass a sequence of other moves if you’re not careful.

As usual, the more pieces you put together, the more effort is required to add the next piece.  Until you end up scratching your head with one last piece to go.  One piece in particular required a lot of attention.  It didn’t play too nicely with the others and seemed like it would be better to add sooner than later.  Figuring out when and how to add it was the major challenge.

Fairly early on, I singled out a piece that could possibly be added last with a quick rotation but decided that the rotation would be blocked.  However, preliminary tests indicated that the rotation would work just fine.  When I had all the other pieces in place and just needed to add that last piece I verified that the tests were indeed preliminary and not conclusive.  Of course, the piece didn’t just rotate in and was indeed blocked.  Yay!  More puzzling to be had.  Not much longer after that, I had it solved.

I always enjoy solving these TICs and look forward to more to come in the future.  I’m almost at the end of my 5x5x5 TIC backlog.

Elbow Room

Elbow Room is a 3D restricted-opening apparent-cube packing puzzle designed by Goh Pit Khiam.  It was entered in the 43rd International Puzzle Party (IPP) Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition where it was deemed the Puzzle of the Year.  It won both the Puzzlers’ Award as well as the Jury Grand Prize.  Key considerations by the panel of judges include: innovation, physical design, and the fun of solving the puzzle.

The puzzle consists of a little bit more than 4 pieces that have to be packed within a box.  The box has a single corner missing to provide access to the interior.  The pieces are adorned with keys and keyholes and the trick is to get them all locked in place as they are added to the frame.

Needless to say, I had to try solving thee Puzzle of the Year.  It didn’t take long to get familiar with the pieces and determine what needs to be done to pack them in the box.  I found it to be a quick solve.  I would guess that many people had the opportunity to solve this one at IPP43 since it doesn’t take a lot of time.  The version in the competition was also made from wood, which would add to attraction to play with as well.  It also has a nice fiddle factor going for it as well.
 

Serendippity

Some amazing puzzles have recently come to my attention and I decided to adorn a round table with a nice selection of them.  All of these puzzles competing for my attention.  What serendippity!  For no particular reason, my goal was to spend Wednesday through Sunday solving them.

Canal

Canal was designed by Han Dongkyu and consists of 4 pieces that need to be placed in a tray so that there is a path between the pieces from the lower left-hand corner to the upper right-hand corner.  And the path can only be a single unit wide.  And there can be no other uncovered squares in the tray that are not part of the path.

I’ve been seeing photos of Canal for a while and had always wanted to give it a try.  It seemed like a novel idea and how hard could it be with only 4 pieces that needed to be placed in the tray.  Well looks can be deceiving and it took me a bit of time to find the correct orientation and positioning of those pieces.  It was a very nice challenge and is currently available at Team JB Hobbies.  Canal was also an entry in the Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition at the 43rd International Puzzle Party (IPP43)

Bocca Della Verita

Bocca Della Verita is a 2D restricted-opening packing puzzle designed by László Molnár.  It consists of 7 L Tromino pieces that need to be packed in a circular tray.  Each piece has to be entered through the maw in the top.  Two other openings are provided to poke your finger into for manipulating the pieces inside.

I solved this one a while ago but without the fancy restricted-opening top.  With the top, it looks much move daunting with limited opportunities to move pieces around and I was wondering how much more difficult the dexterity aspect would make it.  Although certainly more challenging, it turned out to be quite doable.  And just like Canal, it was an entry in the IPP43 Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition.

Diasafe

Diasafe is a restricted, somewhat 2D’ish packing puzzle designed by Lucie Pauwels.  It consists of a variety of 8 pieces made from 3 to 9 squares.  Each piece has a button added on top of one of it’s squares.  And all 8 pieces are unique.  The frame that holds the pieces has a slot in the side to add the pieces and a Z-track on top for the buttons to slid through.  

The objective is to add the pieces to pack the frame by entering them through the slot in the side and moving them where they need to go.  Of course, the movements of the pieces are restricted by the Z-track on the top of the box.  Since all the pieces are different shapes and sizes, enter from the same point, and have to follow the same path, the challenge is to find how they are packed and the order to add them. 

On my initial solving attempt, I added all the pieces to the frame but subsequently found out that all the buttons had to be in the Z-track and not in the single-square entrance to the Z-track.  Backtracking a bit, I found a solution where all the buttons properly resided within the Z-track.  The addition of that final restriction added some nice additional properties to the solve.  And coincidentally, it was also an entry in the IPP43 Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition.

Elegant People

Elegant People was designed by George Sicherman and made by Wood Wonders.  It consists of 4 pieces, each constructed from 3 cubes with most cubes attached with an offset.  Each pair of pieces can be used to construct a symmetric shape resulting in 6 challenges.  I’ve been working on this one for several months and have still not completed it.  Of the six challenges, some are easy, some are more challenging, some are difficult, and one is downright impossible.  Apparently, some elegant people are more difficult to get along with than others.  This is a fantastic set of challenges that transports easily.  A must have for symmetry puzzle enthusiasts.  Eventually I’ll figure out that last one.  Stubborn little bugger – THE PUZZLE!  And as incredible as it is to believe, it was also an entry in the IPP43 Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition.

Loach Bed

Loach Bed is an apparent cuboid packing puzzle designed by Osanori Yamamoto.  It consists of 3 simple pieces that need to be packed within a 2x2x3 box with a single 1-voxel corner missing.  I solved this one last year at a puzzle picnic and took this opportunity to revisit it.  This is one of Osanori’s simpler packing puzzles but works well in a small format.  It’s a good packing puzzle for someone just being introduced to 3D packing puzzles since it has a simple entry point, few simple pieces, and takes several moves to remove the first piece once solved.  And to top it off, it was an entry in the IPP43 Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition.  And furthermore, it won a Top 10 Vote Getter award in the competition.

One Way or Another

One Way or Another, designed by Alaexander Magyarics, presents a nice 2D sliding puzzle challenge.  Not only do you have to solve it, you have to design it as well.  The ultimate objective is to move the small round piece from the upper right-hand corner to lower left-hand corner by finding a sequence of moves that allows the round piece to traverse the tray also holding the other 4 pieces.  However, the first and significantly harder objective is to discover how to pack the pieces in the tray to accomplish the ultimate objective.

Since there are multiple ways to place the pieces in the tray, especially since there are 4 unoccupied spaces, it looks quite daunting.  Maybe I got lucky, but focusing on the location and interaction of a couple of pieces, I zeroed in on a working configuration much quicker than I expected.  Of course, I was expecting the worst.  The final configuration provided a longer sequence of moves to solve the puzzle than I anticipated.  The length of the solve makes identifying the design less obvious.  Even so, the real challenge here is to design the puzzle rather than solve it.  The solve really serves to validate the design.  This was a very nice novel concept which resulted in a Jury Honorable Mention award at the IPP43 Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition.

Thyor

Thyor is a 3D restricted-opening puzzle designed by Volker Latussek.  It consists of 6 pieces that need to be packed within a box with a single opening.  But open it is.  The largest side of the box is entirely open except for a single voxel overhang on all sides.  You can just start dropping the pieces in up to a certain point.  

The pieces are made from 3x3x2 cuboids.  There are 3 types of pieces: 1 of the first type, 2 of the second, and 3 of the third.  I found this one quite challenging and was happy to eventually end up with all 6 pieces packed inside the box.  And would you believe, it was also an entry in the IPP43 Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition.

Petit Albert

Petit Albert was designed by Volker Latussek and 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.  Each of the tetracubes sports a rounded corner that allows an additional rotation within the box.

I originally solved Petit Albert last year (Round Bevels – Petit Albert) but it was definitely worth a revisit.  The second time around, it was still a good challenge and I had to rediscover the Aha moment.  There are quite a few rotations and a bit of dexterity involved.  Just like the first time, I found it a challenge to repeat the sequence of rotations within the box that were found outside the box.  A winner for sure.  I can’t wait to see Fat Albert.  Hey, Hey, Hey!

And believe it or not, this puzzle was also an entry in the IPP43 Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition.  Where it didn’t win anything.  Which is a shame because I found it a tough little nut with the rotations that were required.

No Problem Puzzles, Update #9

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.  Another contributor, Crab on Printables, has also tweaked some of the models to improve them.

This post continues the review of the No Problem Puzzles as the models are being released.  Since the last review (No Problem Puzzles, Update #8), more No Problem Puzzles have become available.

Slats

To get back to solving the No Problem Puzzles that have been coming out, I grabbed Slats simply because it looked like the easiest solve in the expanding collection of puzzles yet to be solved.  It consists of a frame and 4 slats that have to be added and centered withing the frame.  It also comes with a heart that needs to be transplanted inside.  It has a level of difficulty rating of 4 out of 5 but I found it much simpler than that, especially considering how much trouble some of those other level 4 puzzles are giving me.

Staying true to my take a whack at it approach, I jumped right in by trying to add pieces to the frame.  Even with a cavalier attitude, it is evident that there are only a couple of ways to add the pieces to the frame.  With some fancy maneuvering, I had all 4 slats in the frame.  All that was required was to add the heart.  Whereupon it became evident that the slats were not configured correctly to accept the heart and had to be reorganized.  Once I had them in the correct position, it was a simple procedure to add the heart.  Truthfully, the steps required to add the slats in the correct configurations required by the heart were simpler than the first configuration that I found.  It may be worth your while to determine what your heart is telling you before getting engaged with Slats.

Bunk Bed

Bunk Bed consists of a frame with a rotating top and 6 pieces.  The bunk bed consists of an upper bunk and a lower bunk.  The upper bunk can be rotated downward for storage, which is the required position for the solution, creating a 2x3x4 enclosed space to contain the pieces.  The pieces consist of 3 pairs of identical pieces, two of which are planer.  The non-planer ones are there to get in the way.  The objective is to get all the pieces within the frame.  Of course that is easier said than done requiring shifting pieces as well as rotating the top to get them all packed within the bunk bed.  A quick calculation indicates that there will be no voids when the beds are packed providing the first significant clue to the solution.  This one was not very difficult but that is to be expected with a difficult rating of 2.5.

Toolbox

Toolbox consists of 4 tools that have to be placed in a toolbox tray to make an apparent 2x3x4 cuboid.  And the tray is even equipped with a swiveling handle.  There aren’t many ways to fit the pieces within a 2x3x4 space, resulting a very restricted search space.  You just need to break through that Aha moment to find the solution.  It has a difficult rating of 2 and it reminded me of Akaki’s easier Picnic Basket puzzles (A Tisket A Tasket, Puzzles In – Akaki’s Picnic Baskets).

Toggle Box

Toggle Box is a 3D restricted entry packing puzzle with 4 identical pieces that make an apparent 2x3x3 cuboid.  The restricted entry has a rotating door that toggles the opening between 2 configurations.  I found Toogle Box to be a quick solve, which is reflected in its difficulty rating of 2.  A great choice for introducing someone to 3D restricted opening packing puzzles.

 

If you don’t have a 3D printer, you can obtain copies of No Problem Puzzles from Nothing Yet Designs based in the US or the PuzzleguyStore based in the EU.