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.