To Everything, There Is A Season – Key Machine

It’s spring once again, full of blooming flowers and the sound of the byrds to remind us of what’s really important.

Key Machine is a sequential discovery (SD) puzzle designed and made by Alan Lunsford from Kinetic Crafts.  It is 3D printed with a sparkly black material and includes several tools, magnets, ball bearings, and of course a coin to be released.  All of the non-removable internal components are added while the part is being printed to provide a seamless cube.  Puzzles delivered in the US include a US 25 cent quarter while puzzles exiting the US have a 3D printed coin.

Key Machine is the 5th entry in a series of cubic SD puzzles that includes Unsafe Deposit (Hiding Money in Puzzles - Unsafe Deposit), Bolt Action (Screwed! - Bolt Action), Mighty Pin (A Puzzle to Save the Day - Mighty Pin), and Cash Back.  The initial 4 entries in the series have all been excellent, setting very high expectations for Key Machine.

When Key Machine arrives, don’t get too excited and throw the box out after grabbing the puzzle before finding and removing the instruction card.  It is probably located along the side of the box instead of being with the puzzle to keep it flat.

As with the prior entries in the series, Key Machine includes a variety of windows that allow visual and physical access to the interior of the puzzle.  As usual, you can see the entrapped coin to be liberated through the largest window.  This time there is also a metal bar across the coin to make double sure it’s not coming out through that square window.  I can only assume that someone bragged about bypassing the official steps and sucking the coin out through the window.

Picking up the puzzle and examining it, you can immediately hear ball bearings rattling around inside.  In fact you can see 4 plastic ball bearings through the openings with 3 of them blocking the coin from escaping through the obvious exit.

Anyone who has done any of the first 4 puzzles will immediately know what the first move is.  For newbies, welcome to the family!  You can cut your teeth on Key Machine.

After taking the puzzle out of it’s shipping configuration, the first tools are released and ready to be used.   The purpose of the second tool is immediately obvious and starts you on your journey.  It’s amazing on so many levels and puts a different spin on prior mechanisms used.

To free the coin, you obviously (I use this term lightly here being fully cognizant of the fact that obviously frequently translates to wrongly think you) have to move those impeding ball bearings.  Do all 3 of the balls restricting the coin from slipping out disappear at once?  Of course not.  It’s a bit like a gumball machine where you have to get all the gumballs out one at a time.  Of course, they keep disappearing and reappearing in no particular order as you play around with it.  Think of it as whack a gumball.  And along the way, things will mysteriously get stuck and stop moving and other times they will move just fine.  Eventually all the gumballs drop away and the coin does indeed slip out.  

The reset appears to be the same level of difficulty as the release except for the fact that you have a lot more experience with how things work.  Still, there were several times that I thought I was on a clear path to completing the reset when I had to back up and do something else to be able to more forward again.  Of course there are clues for you to accomplish this that you may notice AFTER you’ve made the required moves.  You can use them for the next time.

I can release the coin and reset it, but I’m not entirely sure I know how it works.  And since I haven’t figured out what’s going on inside, my attack is highly inefficient as I fish around to obtain the next state in the process.  I have an idea about what’s going on, but I could be completely wrong.  There seems to be more magnetic (feel free to read this as net magic if you so desire) action going on inside than I can account for.  I have some suspicions about the mechanism that I’ve failed to prove that I suspect can be used to avoid a somewhat blind approach.

One thing that isn’t immediately recognizable until you put it next to the previous puzzles in the series, is that the orientation of the lettering is reversed.  This puts the large window displaying the coin on what I would call the top side.  The prior 4 puzzles have the display window on what I would call the bottom side.  I seem to recall Alan initiating a discussion on the window orientation on the Mechanical Puzzle Discord (MPD) sometime in the past.  I don’t consider either way significantly better than the other.  They’re just different.  I’m assuming that Alan made the change now to streamline future development of the next hundred or so designs whereupon the original 4 will become highly sought after collector anomalies.

This continues to be a great series and Key Machine if one of my favorites so far.  I’m always looking forward to the next one.

Puzzle DNA – Edge Beveled Cubes

I recently received a magnificent box of elemental puzzle material synthesized from a wide selection of exotic woods.  The set consists of 130 atoms in the form of 35 unique molecules with each molecule consisting of 1 to 4 atoms.  In fact, these 35 molecules are the full set of all possible molecules that can exist with up to 4 atoms.  These molecules can then be pack together to make higher level structures.  The trick to packing them together is determining which ones will bond tightly with each other.

The Edge Beveled Cubes set was designed by George Sicherman and made by Wood Wonders.  It arrives in a laser-cut Walnut box with nice detailing debossed on the top.  Inside are nestled 35 molecular pieces that are the substance for many a challenge.  Each atomic edge beveled cube is made from an exotic hardwood.  130 cubes with 12 bevels each to give you 1560 bevels to keep you on edge.  

The pieces are formed via bonds between the cubes across the beveled edges.  My version has the cubes with randomly selected woods to form the pieces.  However, Wood Wonders also provides a fancier version made from 35 different exotic woods, where each piece is made with cubes of the same wood.  Each piece is also branded with a number that’s keyed to a list that identifies the type of wood used for each piece.

So what can you do with this set of oddly shaped pieces?  It turns out, quite a bit.  As a starter, the pieces can be used to make Stewart Coffin’s Distorted Cube and Pyracube puzzles.  But since I’ve done those in the past, I was looking to do something new.

As tempted as I was to just jump in and create a double helix, I decided to start by making some square based pyramids.  My original thought was to create a list of unique pieces that could be used to make targeted shapes but I abandoned that idea for two reasons.  The first is that I was enjoying making targeted shapes by wisely selecting pieces to be added from the entire set and I was not too keen being restricted to a unique set of pieces.  This would work well for small shapes that required a few pieces but not for larger shapes where more than a dozen pieces would be required.  Who really wants to do an assembly challenge with 35 pieces and a unique solution?  The second, as it turned out, is that BurrTools wasn’t too keen on it either.  The first shape I put in was the 6x6 square pyramid and BurrTools never even got to the point where it would only take ages.  Apparently solving a puzzle with up to 35 pieces that can each occupy hundreds of possible positions doesn’t make for good math.

So I embarked on a square pyramid journey working my way from a 1x1 to 6x6, the largest solid square pyramid that can be made.  I jumped right in and grabbed the single beveled cube to proclaim victory of the 1x1 square pyramid.  What a confidence booster!  Adding a 4 cube piece quickly produced the 2x2 pyramid.  I was on a roll and kept going as they got progressively harder.  

After completing the 5x5 square pyramids, I decided to skip right over the 6x6 square pyramid and attempt a 6x7 rectangular pyramid.  This one was a bit more challenging and ended up using 30 of the 35 pieces.  My overall strategy was to build from the bottom up and attempt to use the more complex pieces as soon as possible.  My rudimentary definition of complexity utilized how many layers a piece required.  Some require only 1, others 2, and a couple 3 layers.  As with the 4x4 and 5x5 square pyramids, there was a lot of backtracking involved as the dwindling supply of pieces failed to support filling the space remaining.  Eventually, I successfully summited the pyramid for the win.

And then I went to put them back into the box.  And failed.  The box holds 136 cubes with the square packing leaving 6 unused positions when it is packed.  Since there is only one single cube piece, there aren’t too many gimmes that you can take as you start to fill it in.  My strategy was to fill the box from left to right while conserving what I though were easy to place pieces.  However, as I got to the right side, my choice of easy to place pieces didn’t work very well in the corners.  Lesson learned.  I took half of the pieces out and modified my strategy to fill the right side of the box.  

After I go back and finish that 6x6 square pyramid maybe I’ll attempt the 6x8 rectangular pyramid, which would use 127 of the 130 cubes.  Sounds like a real challenge with no guarantee that it is indeed possible.  Then I’ll try my hand at the triangular pyramids where the cubes use a different packing mechanism.  I might throw in some double or triple triangular pyramids as well.  So many forms to try, So little time.

Both versions of the Edge Beveled Cubes are currently available at Wood Wonders on the A Few More Copies, Last Chance page if you’d like to attempt any of the challenges mentioned here or create your own.  If you do create your own, be sure to share them with the puzzle community.

Triangular Pyramid

New Puzzle Comes Out – Smelling Of Roses

I’m lucky to have many friends like myself in the warped-mind community.  In an effort to appear as regular people, some have attempted to come close by becoming regular tetrahedron people.  This has resulted in several tetrahedron puzzle designs popping up of late and this is the story of one such great pyramid puzzle.

Smelling Of Roses was developed by that famous guy from Two Brass Monkeys, Steve Nicholls.  Not to be confused with that other famous guy from Two Brass Monkeys that designed Rock-It Burr that we gushed over in a previous post (Drill Baby Drill! – Rock-it Burr).  Smelling Of Roses is made using …  well that depends on what you use to make it.  Steve made the design available on Maker World for anyone to download and make their own copy.  My version is 3D printed using a single color of PLA.  Not for any aesthetic reason but simply because I was too lazy to change the filament for additional colors.

Smelling of Roses takes a typical 6 piece burr and transmogrifies it using tetrahedronagonyal geometry.  This is basically a process of weaponizing the pieces by providing many pointy bits.  It also has the advantage of making the pieces difficult to grip since they are no longer rectangular and squeezing them tighter just launches them from you fingers instead of securing them.

Thorny Problem!

You would think that having 4 obvious corners would make the piece placement a no-brainer. However, there were several times I was considering putting those obvious corners in some not so obvious places.  Although, I didn’t think it possible, the pieces support going together in many unhelpful ways.  It took me several tries to find the correct assembly and when I finally had it, it was an effort to figure out how to move the pieces to get them all in place without loosing track of the assembly.  All this while juggling the pieces and attempting not to launch them.

Steve did an excellent job in picking a 6-piece burr that requires multiple moves before any pieces can be removed.  No key piece requiring a single move here!  In fact the movements are nicely executed in the tetrahedral space that the pieces were developed in.  I have to give Steve a lot of credit for using the BurrTools tetrahedral-octahedral space grid.  I find it very unintuitive to use.

The copy of Smelling Of Roses that I printed is a bit tight (the description uses the friendlier term - snug).  When all the pieces are coming together, they have to be cajoled into position.  It also adds a level of difficulty during disassembly since the moves are not obvious and nothing moves with casual prodding.  You have to prod with intent.  And multi-piece movements require more intent than single piece movements.

This is an awesome take on the 6-piece burr puzzle and kudos to Steve for making it freely available to the community on Maker World!  So download Smelling Of Roses and give it a try.  But whatever you do, don’t leave this caltrop of a puzzle sitting on a chair!  Assuming that you can put it together of course.

Playing – Ketchup

Haym Hirsh has been a prolific designer of 2D packing puzzles of late.  I suspect that he has 57 varieties by now.  I missed out on one of his recent puzzle designs when it first came out but I managed to snag a copy from Puzzle Paradise.  Now I’m playing Ketchup.  I wasn’t sure how well it would go in my collection but people tell me it goes with everything.

Ketchup is a 2D packing puzzle designed by Haym Hirsh and made by Nothing Yet Designs (NYD).  It consists of a red bottle-shaped tray with black highlights and 4 sets of white pieces consisting of a 5 and a 7.  The tray has a dedicated space to store one pair of 5 and 7s when not in the solved configuration.  The goal it to pack all 4 sets of pieces in the square section of the tray.

I anticipated solving this one quickly, but it made me wait until I fully explored it.  You notice early on that the square packing area seems one unit shy of making things easy, forcing you to attempt different ways of packing those 5s and 7s.  Although the 5s seem harder to pack, it’s always a 7 that you’re looking to place at the end.  In fact, it’s not all that difficult to pack everything except for a single 7.

And then to my horror, I saw it!  No, not the solution.  The fact that this is just another S&L puzzle!  (Nothing Yet Designs Release: 20 March 2025, 12:00 PM EDT)  Aghhhh!!!  Haym is just sneaking that S in as a 5 and the L in as a 7.  Will this turn out to be another crisis?

Crisis?

No.  No crisis here.  'Cause these are the good old days.  Where all the doubters are wrong, all the solvers are hard-working, and all the puzzles are above average.

It may have taken me a little bit of time but I managed to slip that last 7 into the tray.  All 4 sets of pieces where now nestled in the square area.  It was worth the wait.

And speaking of ketchup, the April release from NYD was yesterday with a couple of new designs and few restocks.  As mentioned in the last release post (Nothing Yet Designs Release: 20 March 2025, 12:00 PM EDT), this release was significantly scaled back as day-job requirements reduced production capacity at NYD.  However, NYD has just acquired another laser-cutter to widen the production pipeline a bit for future releases.

One Tɍough – Ditch

Ditch was designed by Alexander Magyarics and entered in the Nob Yoshigahara puzzle design competition at the 41st International Puzzle Party (IPP).  Although it did not win a prize, it looked like an interesting concept worthy of spending time on.  And spend time on it I did!

Ditch consists of 12 bi-color pentomino pieces where each piece is comprised of a tetromino of one color and a monomino of a different color.  The goal is to make a 4x4 square outline with the 12 monominoes.  The problem is that all those tetromino bits get in the way of accomplishing this.

The first Aha comes early on to get you started followed by a long period of learning how the pieces can interact with each other.  Some off these relationships will help form the solution while others will lead you astray.  There were some relationships that I was unwilling to ditch that kept me from finding the solution for quite a while.  I found myself reluctant to divorce myself from these poisonous relationships and I found myself in rut with Ditch.

I eventually gained the willpower to break off some of those relationships, giving me the freedom to engage in some new, healthier relationships.  With something old and something new, I successfully managed to extract the solution from the Ditch.

There were many times where I had one piece leftover that would not fit in the available space. The natural reaction is to start moving pieces around to see if you can change the space to something more receptive.  I can certainly attest to that.  However, if you end up with the same troublesome pieces multiple times, it's worth taking some time to find them a good match and treat them as a couple.

Much nicer versions of Ditch in a selection of exotic woods are available at Wood Wonders if you would like to acquire your own copy.

It’s Simple Karma – Bram’s Hinged Cube

A long time ago in a land far away, an emerging puzzle designer attended an International Puzzle Party (IPP) with a collection of new puzzle designs.  Ensconced in a nook of the hotel lobby, this puzzle master wannabe commandeered a table to artfully arrange his new creations for attendees to play with - much to their delight. At one point, someone asked if a puzzle was difficult and after no considerable reflection whatsoever, the hapless designer pronounced that the puzzle was easy.  This seemingly innocuous response would come to haunt this young ignorant but well-intentioned individual for many years.  Watching that unsuspecting victim struggle over an extended period of time to save face made a lasting impression.  However, it was a lesson well-learned.  Puzzles are not easy or hard but one may be easier than another.  A puzzle that may be easy for one puzzler may be difficult for another.  Everyone gets inexplicably bogged down on an occasional puzzle.  There are many different types of puzzles and some puzzlers are naturally better at some types than others.

Fast forward to now where I am delighted to find myself struggling on a puzzle that others on the Mechanical Puzzle Discord (MPD) have declared SIMPLE!  This puzzle is Bram's Hinged Cube - not to be confused with the Hinged Cube designed by James Storer that made the rounds at last year’s IPP.

Nope!

Bram's Hinged Cube was designed by ... wait for it ... BRAM!!!  Bram Cohen that is.  It consists of 8 cubes that are connected with hinges so that they can be folded into a single 2x2x2 cube.  Bram said the solution is hard but various MPD members have countered that it is easy.  Personally, although it looks like it should be easy, I found it quite a challenge.

I solved James Storer's cube at IPP last year and found it a very enjoyable challenge.  And I jumped at the chance to try Bram's Hinged Cube when it became available this year.  After having solved both, I would consider Bram' s version more difficult although both are excellent.

With Bram's Hinged Cube, there was an easier solution but it was rendered invalid with the addition of faux hinges that attempt to occupy the same space in the easier assembly.  This leaves only the more difficult configuration as the only solution.  To be honest, it took me quite a while to determine how the connected cubes could occupy the 2x2x2 space in any configuration much less a second more obscure one.

Hot Off The Press!

After finding the faux solution multiple times, I finally manged to figure out where the cubes had to go.  Then I finally manged to find a folding sequence where it was not necessary to strain the hinges providing me with the solved 2x2x2 cube.  Then I finally managed to unfold it back to the starting position.  You would think that this last bit is a no-brainer shake-the-cube-back-out process but it’s not.  Of course, I even found myself forgetting where the cubes had to go in the middle of the folding process and had to start back at the beginning again.

Bram has generously made the puzzle available on Printables for anyone who would like to 3D printed copy of their own.  The stl file was created by Brian Pletcher as a print-in-place model.  One MPD member recommended using tree supports with the angle threshold set to 20 degrees and I found this to work amazingly well.  Print-in-place models still seem like magic!  You can download the stl file here - Bram' s Hinged Cube.

Lacking QC – Messing a-round

Messing a-round is a 2D packing puzzle was designed by Alexander Magyarics and made by alienpuzzles.  It was 3D printed and used by Alexander as his exchange puzzle at the 41st International Puzzle Party (IPP).  The tray is white and each of the 8 pentominoes is made with a different color giving it a vibrant look.

The puzzle consists of 8 pieces that need to be packed in the tray although not all at the same time since the tray can only accommodate 7 of them.  The pieces are rounded and fit together nicely with each other.  However, 2 pieces are missing a couple of rounds and the pointy corners don’t fit nicely in the inside corners of other pieces.  Really, what has become of quality control these days?  At least these unrounded corners were discovered before distribution and the solution statistics were duly updated.  With these unrounded corners, the number of solutions for packing all the pieces except the T piece dropped from 128 to 1.  Similarly, the number of solutions without the Z dropped from 95 to 2 and the solutions without the L dropped from 19 solutions to 1.  It’s almost as if the corners weren’t rounded on purpose.

Although those unrounded corners are initially awkward, you quickly get a feel for what pieces won’t go together well.  Given that roughly 99% of the potential configuration are going to be eliminated by the unrounded corners, you begin to suspect that finding the valid 1 or 2 working solutions is going to be tough.

I experienced the expected almost solved situations several times.  The case where the last remaining opening for a piece matches a piece that was already placed and not the one in your hand.  And the case where the last piece in your hand would fit if only one of those unrounded corners had been properly made.

Of course, I started with the missing Z challenge since there were 2 solutions and it would be like finding 1 of 2 needles in a haystack instead of a single needle.  And sure enough, even though it took some time, I eventually found 1 of the solutions.  Challenge complete.  No, I didn’t feel compelled to search for the other solution.  It’s always there if my conscious starts to nag me but she’s usually after me to do other non-puzzle related things.

I did the missing L challenge next since T pieces are usually a real pain in these types of packing puzzles.   I found this one much more difficult than the missing Z challenge and it took a lot longer to solve.  In fact, I sat down with it several times without success.  I was relieved when the last piece finally went in to complete this challenge.

I saved the missing T challenge for last since I find that the T piece in 2D packing puzzles usually don’t work well with other pieces.  However, the T is so restricted in how it can work with other pieces that it actually supported finding the solution.  There isn’t much you can do with that T so it helped to narrow things down rather quickly.

If you like Messing a-round, Alexander has designed other puzzles where he’s forgotten to round the corners of some pieces.