No Problem Puzzles, Update #7

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 #6), more No Problem Puzzles have become available.

Squeezy

Squeezy consists of 5 pieces that have to be packed within a holey frame made from 2 identical pieces that slide together.  And the sliding is hampered by all the pieces that have to be stuffed inside.  Of course, this is one of those puzzles where you don’t have much to start with, find some things to hang your hat on, discover some key moves, realize what you had been missing, and end up saying - of course.  The things that I got right didn’t hurt me whereas the things that I got wrong led me astray.  In the end, after discovering some rather nice movements, I managed to get past my short-sightedness and strangle, I mean squeeze the frame together.  Squeezy provides a really good challenge for a level 3 puzzle.

I lied when I said that the 2 halves of the frame were identical.  One piece has the puzzle information debossed on it.  Ohhhh, is that a clue?  Maybe, maybe not.  But I did reverse the 2 halves after I initially solved it.  Make of it what you will.  Just for the record, my wife believes that I have no clue what clue really means and that I don’t give out clues because I’m clueless.

I Box

The goal of I Box is to pack 5 pieces within a box with a v-shaped opening.  It has the same difficulty rating of level 3 as Squeezy but is completely different.  For this one, I would recommend that you solve it before you solve it.  In other words, have a well defined plan when adding the pieces to the box since it is a bit fiddly to get pieces back out once they are in the box.  Especially since the pieces need to be rotated and enter/exit the box at a 45 degree angle.  Also, unlike Squeezy, it doesn’t have a lot of finger holes for manipulating the pieces - 0 versus 18 unless you count the opening.  However, I did find the solution much quicker and with a solid plan, manipulating the pieces into place was not that difficult.

Mecon

A truncated octahedron by any other name, such as macon, would look as wondrous.
    - Not Shakespeare

Macon is a level 3 puzzle requiring packing 12 truncated octahedrons, or macons, into a cubish form that can be displayed in the provided stand.  But wait, the macons are split in half resulting in 24 semimacons.  Groups of 4 are then reattached to make 6 semimacon tetraclusters.  Except the process was botched and they weren’t reattached where they were cut.  Of the 6 tetraclusters, there are 4 of one type and 2 of another.  It’s up to you to rejoin the unmated halves.  To make it a bit more interesting, not all semimecons are mated to lend it a more cubish appearance.

The puzzle is not difficult, but it does take some time to adjust to the geometry.  And having done it more than once, it didn’t seem to get any easier the second time around.

But why were the truncated octahedrons made hollow?  Probably because they make a cool pattern when the puzzle is solved.  But of course, now everyone is going to wonder if you place a space-filling cuboid in each mated center, would you still be able to assemble it?  I would go with no but they tell me you never no.

Multiplex

Multiplex consists of 4 square chipped tiles that need to be packed within a square tray.  In essence, you need to map the pointy bits into chips.  The description says that Multiplex is a level 2 puzzle with 196,608 theoretical combinations to try.  Not hard, just takes a long time to solve.  I don’t know how the number of combinations was computed, but lucky for us, it seems a bit inflated.  Disregarding the edge details of the pieces, I think there would be 12,288 combinations.  And if you’re observant, you can quickly knock it down to 3,072.  After that, you will certainly avoid trying every possible combination and only check the ones with matching edges to converge on the solution.  I appreciated the thought that went into this design that rewarded the solver with a significant clue in the beginning to avoid a lot of unnecessary and tedious tile swapping.


If you don’t have a 3D printer, you can obtain copies of these puzzles from Nothing Yet Designs based in the US or the PuzzleguyStore based in the EU.

King Of Red Herrings – Neptune

Neptune is a 3D packing puzzle designed by Osanori Yamamoto and made by Pelikan Puzzles.  The pieces are made from Maple and contrast nicely with the Mahogany box.  The box is very well made and has the name of the puzzle and designer identified on one of the sides.  The box also features 2 large opposing slots in the box for entering and manipulating the pieces.

I was a bit surprised that the puzzle consisted of 6 pieces to be packed within the box.  This is more than you would typically encounter for this type of puzzle, especially from Osanori.

I assumed that the goal was to make an apparent cube within the box.  Taking the 6 pieces, I was quickly able to make a cube outside the box.  It took me a minute to realize that it wasn’t just apparently a cube, it was a cube.  All 27 voxels of the 3x3x3 space are occupied.  I was completely surprised since that would mean that the first piece to be removed would have to come out in a single move.  Completely un-Osanori like.

So I did some googling and found a couple of reputable sites indicating that the level of difficulty for Neptune was 7.2.1.2.2.  This means that the first piece would come out after 7 moves.

What!!!  That’s not possible!  I’m certain it’s not possible.  It couldn’t really be possible could it?  Will this puzzle open my eyes and demonstrate some out-of-this-world physics to accomplish the seemingly impossible?

Taken in by this claim, I spent an hour revisiting my assertion that the first piece must come out in 1 move and tried to find a flaw in my logic that would allow a move that did not free the first piece.  Try as I might, I was unsuccessful and decided that something fishy was going on.

Starting over with the assumption that the first piece comes out in 1 move, I rather quickly had the pieces packed within the box.  It wasn’t that difficult.  Most of the time I had spent with the puzzle was trying to envision the impossible.

So did I really solve it?  I believe so.  I dug a little deeper and found that puzzlewillbeplayed.com had the same level that I experienced – with the first piece coming out in 1 move!  I should have checked there first.
 

Missing The Point – Aztec Pyramid Of The Sun

The Aztec Pyramid Of The Sun is located in Teotihuacan, Mexico.  It was originally built around the year 200 by the Aztecs and is approximately 70.556667 meters tall.  Although archaeologists are puzzled by the warren of tunnels beneath the pyramid, beneath the Aztec Pyramid Of The Sun puzzle, you will find jigsaw pieces providing clues on how to enter the pyramid.

The Aztec Pyramid Of The Sun puzzle made by iDventure is a sequential discovery jigsaw puzzle box.  It arrives in a nicely decorated pyramid-shaped box that unfolds like a 4-petal flower with each side dropping down to reveal the pyramid in all it’s naked beauty (no pictures for obvious reasons).  There are visible interactive mechanisms on each of the 4 sides of the pyramid with no indication as to their purpose.  The directions advise against playing with the mechanisms until the jigsaw murals are complete, when all shall be revealed.  It then points you to where the jigsaw pieces are cached in the base of the pyramid to get you started.  The parting advice is to follow the stars.

All the jigsaw pieces are jumbled together and need to be separated into the side that they support.  The instruction manual has a picture of the mural on each side if that is how you like to tackle your jigsaw puzzles.  Once separated, you start with the first mural.  Yes, there is a first one.  Surely you haven’t forgotten to follow the stars so soon.

The sides of the puzzle are quite a bit steeper than the actual pyramid, 75 degrees vs. 32 degrees. The puzzle comes with the sage advice to carefully avoid tipping the pyramid.  However, once you start filling in the pieces on the sides, you won’t be too tempted to tip it.

As each side is completed, you can interpret the clues for manipulating the mechanisms to get you closer to the goal, which is?  A good guess would include opening the top of the pyramid to access the inside.  Along the way, various tools are released to be used in conjunction with the various mechanisms.  And yes, eventually the pyramid reveals it’s secret and one last puzzle to complete.

I worked on the pyramid with my wife and we got the full SD experience.  We thought that there would be clues where there weren’t, missed clues where there were, and still managed to stumble to the end.

I’m embarrassed to say that some of the clues were more clever than I was.  I missed the point and bungled through at least one part where I used trial and error instead of finding the elegant path.  However we both had fun and enjoyed working on it together.

Tubular Boxification – Tube It In 2

If you’ve been involved in the puzzle community for a long time, you have certainly heard of the puzzle Tube It In designed by Wil Strijbos.  The original version was made by Wil using square metal tubes.  It was later made by Cubicdissection using a variety of exotic woods for each of the 14 pieces.  It was so popular that Cubicdissection put out a release every few years for a total of 6 releases, starting with a small release made by John Devost in 2006.

Fast forward to today where William Hu has revisited and tweaked the design to make it more challenging.  William 2 extended the difficulty by trading compactness for complexity.  It also trades more expensive exotic woods for more affordable 3D printed plastic although I wouldn’t be surprised to see an exotic wood version show up in the near future.

It’s been a decade since I acquired a very nice exotic wood version of Tube It In from Cubicdissection (Totally Tubular Dude! - Tube It In).  My sketchy recollection is that the solve was straightforward and on the easy side.  However, recent feedback that I’ve seen on Tube It In 2 has indicated that the new version is more of a challenge.  And so I decided to 3D print a copy and give it a try.  The one change I made was to turn the 2 outer tubes into a box.  Less aesthetic but more practical.  It doesn’t change the solve.

The objective of Tube It In 2 is the same as the original – pack the tubes so that they are all nestled within the largest tube.  After an hour, I hardily agreed with the comments that this version was much tougher than the original.  It doesn’t take long to realize that there are many ways to pack all the pieces except 1.  In fact you can pack them all except for the smallest piece without too much effort.  Some of those almost-packings are trivial and others are more involved.  The thing that they have in common is the inability to add that last piece.

One of the things that makes this version so much harder is the large amount of unused empty space.  It’s a real challenge corralling those empty bits together to accept another piece.  Of course to get from the trivial packings to the more advanced ones, it seems that you have to waste more space.  But take heart in knowing that there is a lot of unused space when it’s solved.

Needless to say, I spent a lot of time revisiting the same potential configurations over and over again until I finally saw the light at the end of the tube.  This is a significant update to the original Tube It In and I would recommend getting a copy.  Especially if it becomes available in a variety of exotic woods.