Little Nightmares – Six Face

It seems that I’ve been on a Turning Interlocking Cube (TIC) hiatus.  Not sure how that happened, but I’m glad to have recently acquired some new Andrew Crowell gems in the 5x5x5 format.  The first one that I decided to tackle was Six Face.  Not Six Faces, Sixth Face, or Six’s Face but Six Face.  I could only assume that it would be a significant challenge and reveal itself as a little nightmare.  Needless to say, it took me longer than expected to solve.

Six Face was designed by Andrew Crowell and my version is 3D printed.  The puzzle is not a complete 5x5x5 cube but looks like a 3x3x3 cube with each face extended outward.  One of these faces is debossed with the name of the puzzle.  The face was carefully chosen so that the name was on a single piece to avoid providing any additional placement clues.  In total, there are 6 pieces that have to be assembled into the final shape.  It only takes 28 moves and there are a couple of rotations along the way.

I took Six Face and several other puzzles with me on vacation to PA, which is ironic since they were sent from PA by kind gentleman looking to spread the frustration.  And by frustration, I mean joy of course.  As always, I overestimated the number of puzzles that I would need.  I started with Six Face and almost ended there as well.  At least I was able to bring it home solved.  YES it was me that solved it!  I’m disappointed that you would even think otherwise.

Solving Six Face took me several sessions.  Right out of the bag, you need to spend 1 of your rotations to get the first 2 pieces together.  Or are they not the first 2 pieces?  Only time will tell.

With the 3 biggest pieces, you can construct most of the visible shape leaving you with the 3 smaller pieces that need to fill the gaps.  Of course, the order of entering those pieces and movements required are what make the puzzle challenging.  Two of the smaller pieces are dancing partners and work nicely to build out the solution path.  But it’s that last piece that is the crux of the solve.  For whatever reason, I had a huge blind spot concerning the where, when, and how of this piece.  It could obviously exist in 2 different orientations, so there were twice as many avenues to explore.  Adding it earlier would provide more room for it to navigate but of course would reduce the mobility of the other pieces.  And just how could that crux piece be added and manipulated into position.

I’m sure it will come as no surprise that a lot of steps were repeated looking for a new avenue to present itself.  With all this experimentation, it became apparent that the final orientation of the crux piece would be different from the orientation that it would enter the framework with regardless of which of the 2 possible orientations was the correct one.  You would think that knowing this, it would be easy to find an orientation where it could be inserted within the frame.  However, I found this a difficult challenge.

Eventually, I found a way to add the crux piece and rotate it into place.  So simple!  How could I have missed it?  All that was left was to determine how to add the dancing partners with it.  Not easy.  Nope.  Not happening.  And it didn’t happen, leaving me to wonder if it was just difficult or if I was barking up the wrong orientation.  At this point I had to split my time between working this approach as well as trying to find an approach for the other crux piece orientation.

Eventually 2, I found a way to add the crux piece in the other orientation and rotate it into place.  So simple!  How could I have missed it?  All that was left was to determine how to add the dancing partners with it.  At least this time, I was able to get everything in place and finally solve Six Face.

Fast forward several months to now when I want to blog about it and take it apart.  No surprises.  The crux piece volunteers to rotate and comes out nicely as expected.  Mission completed!  Except I can’t get it back together!  Try as I might, I just can’t find the exact insertion trajectory.  Unbelievable!  (You’d think by now that I would find this believable).  I spent at least another hour if not 2 getting it back together.  Not only that, I had to check both crux piece orientations since I didn’t pay attention to which one it was when taking it apart.  I’m assuming/hoping that if I take it apart again several months from now, it will be smooth sailing but at this point, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it were a rough ride.

If you're interested in acquiring any of Andrew's puzzles, you can visit his online store ARC Puzzles.