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!