No Problem Puzzles, Update #11

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 #10), more No Problem Puzzles have become available.  All level of difficulty ratings are from the puzzle descriptions and are on a scale of 1 to 5.

Möbius Cut Rings

Möbius Cut Rings consists of 2 rings that are cut with a Möbius strip and then cut radially on one side to produce 2 halves that can then be separated with minor flexing.  The objective is to make a pair of linked rings.  It’s trivial to make a pair of separate rings but worth the effort to see exactly how the pieces go together.  I expected the linked rings to take just a little bit more effort and with the help of the difficulty rating of 3, I underestimated it.  More than once, I had to back out of a 4 half-ring tangle.  You really need a plan going into this one.  I had to sit down and examine this one closely to construct the interlocking rings.

SOS

SOS consists of 3 pieces that have to be packed within a frame with lots of openings.  The name comes from the shape of the frame as you descend through the layers.  It’s not difficult to add the pieces with a few rotations but the description indicates that it takes 21 moves to put in the last piece, which is way more than I originally used.  Yes, you guessed it, no rotations allowed although this is not specified in the description.

Solving this puzzle without rotations is much more involved and hence earns it’s level 4 reputation.  Without rotations, the orientations of the pieces are limited to how they can enter the cage.  This provides a lot of information on the assembly of the pieces within the available 3x3x3 space.  That along with the limited ability of the pieces to move will narrow it down to the winning assembly pretty quickly.  Then you just have to assemble the pieces within the cage.  I have to point out that now that you don’t want the pieces to rotate, they are prone to rotate on their own and you have to keep an eye and a grip on them.  It’s well worth the effort to solve it without rotations.

Ringed Tetra’s

Ringed Tetra’s is a restricted-opening 3D packing puzzle consisting of 10 pieces that need to be packed within a box.  The 4x4x3 box is entirely open on one side except for a half-voxel lip all around.  The ten pieces completely fill the 4x4x3 space within the box.  There are 2 rings and 8 tetracubes.  The tetracubes include 3 L pieces, 3 B pieces, and 2 Z pieces.

At first glance, and with a difficulty rating of 4, this puzzle appears daunting.  However, I found it fun to play with and was able to narrow down possible piece placements fairly quickly.  I was surprised that this one ended up being a one session solve.  The solution is very nice and I ended up liking it a lot.

Viking Shield

Viking Shield is a 2D packing puzzle with the goal of packing 9 horny helmeted vikings in a shallow shield shaped tray.  It’s not too difficult to squeeze 8 vikings within the tray but it takes some effort to get all 9 in.  Those horns keep getting in the way and are continually boinking their neighbors where they’re not supposed to.

After a short session I managed to get all the vikings encamped.  However the layout wasn’t clean.  The puzzle appears to use a triangular grid and my solution utilized 2 triangular grids that intersected with each other at an angle.  Another short session revealed a proper solution with a single grid.  The level 3 difficulty rating was spot on.




If you don’t have a 3D printer, you can obtain copies of No Problem Puzzles from Nothing Yet Designs based in the US or the PuzzleguyStore based in the EU.