No Problem Puzzles, Update #8

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

Chain Stitch

This was Theo Geerinck’s exchange puzzle at the 28th International Puzzle Party (IPP).  It consists of 6 planer pieces that somehow form a 3D shape.  But what is that 3D shape?  Since it’s designated as a level 2.5 puzzle, I decided to make it extra challenging by not looking at the final shape.  Which was extra challenging.  Too challenging in fact and I resorted to peeking at the photo of the final shape.   Even knowing what the final form looked like, it wasn’t trivial.  Unless you have a crochet background, I’d recommend looking at the photo.  It also comes with a stand.  And it’s big, really big, so big!    

Nineveh

There are several puzzles that involve packing 9 V tricubes into a 3x3x3 cube.  This one stands it on end.  The goal is place the 9 Vs in a stand that is only big enough to hold a 2x2x2 cube.  Of course, you have to do it in such a way that the pieces overhanging the sides do not fall down.  At a difficulty level of 3 it’s not super challenging.  This is helped by the fact that there are 7 solutions.  Then again, if you’re objective is to find all 7, it may prove to be a little more challenging.

Quintessence

Who doesn’t like a good dodecahedron puzzle.  The objective of this one is to take 6 identical shell pieces, each configured with a different hook assembly, and make a dodecahedron with the hooks weaving around each other inside.  Doesn’t look so bad and with a difficulty level of 3, it should pop together quickly.  On second thought, maybe it’s a bit more involved.  Then again, after several interesting moves, it wasn’t that difficult to get together.  However, I have the nagging suspicion that I used a sketchy (off-axis) rotation.  I’m not considering this one done unless someone indicates that a sketchy rotation is required.

Rhomble

Here’s a puzzle that was skewed twice over.  Or is it thrice skewed over.  I wasn’t confident that I could immediately discern whether it was twice or thrice so I had to think about it for a bit.  In the end, I convinced myself that you lose a pair of squares for each skew performed and that Rhomble was a Soma cube that had been skewed 3 times.  This puzzle has a difficulty level of 2 and makes a nice little challenge to skew ya bwain a tad.


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.