A Very Attractive Puzzle – Tetracore

Sometimes you find yourself drawn towards a very attractive puzzle (I confess that I sometimes confuse sometimes with often).  Tetracore is one of those very attractive puzzles.  It consists of a stellar core surrounded by 14 heavenly satellites that have been captured in orbit.  In fact, the orbital shell is completely full and there is no room for additional satellites.  And as attractive as this puzzle is, needless to say, the satellites find each other repelling.

Tetracore was designed by Jared McComb and made by Brian Menold at Wood Wonders.  It includes a 2x2x2 core with 4 magnets on each of the 6 faces.  The satellites are the 7 exotic planer tetracubes, T, O, I, L, and Z, and the mirror images of L and Z.  There are 2 of each and the top face of each has 4 magnets except for I, which has 2 since the outer cubes can never be in contact with the core.  76 magnets in all!

With all those magnets, Tetracore begs to be played with.  Whether you solve it or not, it’s meditative to just sit and snap the pieces to the core.  You can even push them from one state to another.

During the solve, I was surprised at the number of times I was left with a tetracube void that didn’t match the last tetracube in hand.  Sometimes they were the mirror of each other.  I also ended up in situations where the core was completely covered with no external magnets to capture remaining satellites.

Sadly, I eventually ended up with a celestial body in equilibrium.  But wait, looking back at the description on Wood Wonders’ site, there are 5 symmetrical solutions in addition to non-symmetrical ones and mine lacked celestial harmony.  Yay!  More fiddling time on the event horizon.

Celestial Tetracube Being

 

One Person – Three Body Problem

At this year’s International Puzzle Party (IPP), I overheard Girish Sharma say that people smiled when he told them the name of his puzzle, Three Body Problem, during the IPP Puzzle Exchange.  I know it didn’t make me smile – maybe cringe-worthy.  All I could think about was complex coordinated movements in physics with no general closed-form solution.  Turns out I’m just socially stunted and not tuned in.  3 Body Problem is the name of a series on Netflix based on a novel by Liu Cixin.  However, I may have been on to something since the puzzle does indeed require complex rotational movements.

Three Body Problem was designed by Girish Sharma and used as his exchange puzzle at IPP41.  The puzzle is nicely made with Maple, Cherry, and Mahogany by Brian Menold at Wood Wonders.  And dowels were used to reinforce end grain glue joints.

The stated goal is to interlock the 3 pieces within a 4x4x4 space.  It also promises some rotational moves in the solve.  Removing the 3 pieces from the box, it’s obvious that they are not going to fill the 4x4x4 space and won’t even cover the exterior surface like the many amazing turning interlocking cube (TIC) puzzles created by Andrew Crowell.  I used to see this as a sign of an unfinished design but to be honest, this puzzle is awesome.

Although this puzzle calls for 3 bodies, I thought I would tackle it solo.  However, it took me 3 times longer to solve than I expected.  I sat down with it several times before I finally had all 3 pieces packed together.

The final assembly was never really much in doubt, although I was required to doubt it a little since it took so long to find the solution.  However, the rotation supported by the half corner cube pretty much forces you to believe in the assembly.  It’s that crazy dance of the third piece that eluded me several times.  The problem is that you need to envision it from the end back to the beginning and there are so many steps, it’s not easy to run through.  Along the way, I found some interesting moves that I thought would be required but didn’t lead anywhere.  Eventually, I found my way to the final assembly.

I also enjoyed coming back to it a couple of days later and found that it took me several minutes to get it back apart.  To say that rotations are required is an understatement.  Being a fan of rotations, I really found this to be a great puzzle.  I’m sure the Netflix series plot has many twists and turns if it is anything like the puzzle.

 

Entwining Pieces – Collator

Where other people say, please make it easier to put things in the box, puzzlers dare to say, please make the box opening smaller with malcontent contents that don’t like to work together.  Entwining pieces within a box with odd little openings is alluring.  Divining the correct sequence to bit-by-bit, slowly transfer objects that coalesce totally intertwined within the box - puzzle nirvana.

Collator was designed by Alexander Magyarics and made by Brian Menold at Wood Wonders.  It was made with a Flame Birch Box and the 3 pieces that need to be crammed in the box are made from Bolivian Rosewood (one of my favorites) with some very nice heartwood accents.

Putting the pieces in the box is as easy as 1, 2, 3 – or I should say 1.2.3.  However, that is not the true solution.  There are 10 possible ways to assemble the 3 pieces into a 3x3x3 cubic space.  Of those 10, 3 of them can be packed in the box.  However, only 1 of the 3 looks like a solid cube when it is inside the box.  It is this apparent cube configuration that is the objective and it has a difficulty level of 10.4.2.  The other non-apparent cube solution has a difficulty of 5.1.3.

I really don’t need to tell you that this is a good puzzle.  Designed by Alexander, made by Brian, 10.4.2 restricted opening apparent cube packing puzzle – you know it’s going to be good without even seeing it.  And it’s even better when you get your hands on it.  With a box at 3 cubic inches and pieces with a voxel size of 3/4 inches, it’s bigger than most apparent cube packing puzzles making it a pleasure to handle.  The beautiful Bolivian Rosewood pieces also have a nice heft to them.  And no, I wasn’t disappointed and thoroughly enjoyed the sequence of moves required to solve the puzzle.

Uniquely Sneaky Snakey Packer – Snake Pack

I recently wrote about Snake Pack 2, and now it’s time to talk about its Slytherin twin: Snake Pack.  They look similar but the snakes are the mirror image of each other.  Unfortunately, someone forgot to reverse the box and they are identical.  And therein lies the problem.  These new snakes just don’t feel like they belong with the same box.

Like Snake Pack 2, Snake Pack was designed by Haym Hirsh and made by Brian Menold at Wood Wonders.  The box that the snakes are packed into has an opening in the corner and 2 poke holes inviting your fingers to enter and manipulate the snakes.  Snake Pack 2 had 3 poke holes – I don’t know why one has 2 and the other 3.  It’s possible that one of the holes fell off during shipping since I did find a hole in the package.

The box is made from Moabi and the 5 identical “A” tetracube snakes that need to be coaxed into the box are made of Lacewood.  It’s still not Snakewood but it’s more snakey than the Snake Pack 2 pieces.  It also has a unique solution whereas Snake Pack 2 has 3.

For some reason, using the Snake Pack pieces feels more awkward than the Snake Pack 2 pieces.  Like Snake Pack 2, the Snake Pack pieces can enter the box in 2 different ways, which of course are different than the 2 orientations used by Snake Pack 2.  

The time required to solve Snake Pack was about the same as Snake Pack 2.  However, Snake Pack feels sneakier and the more difficult of the two.  Although the solution to each puzzle is completely different, I felt that the time spent solving Snake Pack 2 amped my snake packing factor to give me an additional boost.

As a last note, I’ve successfully packed all the snakes in the box but it didn’t make an apparent cube.  This was not stated as a requirement in the description and I assume that my solution is the goal, but if you know differently, please let me know.

Charming Snakes Into a Box – Snake Pack 2

I was fortunate to acquire Snake Pack and Snake Pack 2 from a generous soul on the Mechanical Puzzle Discord (thank you Mark).  To be honest, I approached these puzzles with a bit of trepidation.  I had heard that they were difficult and I was prepared to be assaulted by a variety of coordinate motion dexterity moves worthy of a modern dance performance.  There were even comments from frustrated puzzlers with pieces stuck in the box.  I decided to start with Snake Pack 2 since it was supposed to be the easier of the two (although Haym said that he found it more difficult).

Snake Pack 2 is a charming puzzle designed by Haym Hirsh and made by Brian Menold at Wood Wonders.  The box that the snakes are packed into has an opening in the corner and 3 poke holes inviting your fingers to enter and manipulate the snakes.  The box is made from Canarywood and is absolutely gorgeous!  The varying colors throughout the wood look fantastic!  The 5 identical “B” tetracube snakes that need to be charmed into the box are made of Moabi.  The Moabi looks great, but the poet in me cries for Snakewood – just because.

So what would I expect from a packing puzzle with 5 identical pieces.  The first couple of pieces have lots of room to rotate and could be put in any orientation needed.  The last piece will drop right in.  The next to last piece may require some shifting of the prior 3 to get in place and maybe even a rotation or two.  The third piece will be a pain – enough room to expect rotations and not enough room to accomplish them easily.

I worked with the snakes outside of the box to discover a workable assembly that could be inserted.  A little bit of experimentation shows that there are 2 ways that the snakes can be inserted through the box opening.  The major thought during this process was coming up with an assembly where the first snake could easily be removed from the box followed by a second.  To be honest, at one point I was stuck in a rut and turned the whole thing upside down so that the opening was on the bottom.  This helped me find what I was missing and led me to the solution.

In the end, I thought that the rotations were well behaved and I really enjoyed the puzzle.  And yes, determining what the third piece was and how to get it into place was the crux of the solution.  Once you figure it out, it’s not hard to do.

It turned out that this was an apparent cube puzzle as well.  However, there are supposedly other solutions and I don’t know whether this is the only apparent cube solution or one of many.

Not A Box For Tea, A – T-Box

About the same time that I gave my wife her 6T birthday puzzle, I acquired a copy of T-Box, which, pointed out by my wife, also has six T-shaped pieces in a box.  T-Box was designed by Jenga master, Haym Hirsh and made by Mom – no, wait, I had it upside-down - made by Brian Menold at Wood Wonders.  This is the latest of Haym’s designs inspired by Jenga pieces.  For some, Jenga is a multi-player stacking game with wooden pieces, for others it is a source of raw materials for puzzle making.  Hopefully, we won’t see a massive run on Jenga blocks resulting in the worldwide shortages that we saw with tongue depressors (Chico Strikes Again – TD345).

Brian Menold turned the T-Box design into a stunning showpiece.  The pieces were upgraded to Birdseye Maple and the box was made from Bloodwood with a Maple Top.  What really makes this box stunning is the detailed laser engraving on the sides of the box.  Brian is fortunate to have a gifted graphics artist in the family and the design created for the T-Box really makes it something special.

Of course the goal is to get all 6 pieces within the box so that the top lays flush with the sides.  To help, or perhaps to hinder, there are a few impediments attached to the interior of the box.  Solving the puzzle is not that difficult, but it is a nice challenge.  When I was done, I noticed a nice property of the pieces, which can be exploited to solve the puzzle.  I’d like to say that, of course I recognized this property and summarily conquered the challenge in one swift stroke, but as usual, I crossed the finish line with a half-lit bulb.  Perhaps you’ll come across it and immediately recognize it for what it is.  And no, I’m not going to say what it is.

 

Puzzle Purchasing Pandemonium – Cluster & Inelegant Box

Puzzle madness has gripped the world!  A once humble community of puzzle enthusiasts has morphed into an insatiable world-wide puzzle-gobbling beast.  Reports of shopping cart thefts and shop crashing are now commonplace on puzzle messaging sites.

Puzzle demand now far outweighs the supply generated by a few key craftspersons around the world.  The entire internet can be felt sagging as puzzlers around the world refresh their screens multiple times per second in the anticipation of newly released puzzles.  Mom & Pop puzzle shops are collapsing under these loads forcing a migration to more sophisticated ecommerce website providers.

For the holiday season, Brian Menold at Wood Wonders decided to embrace this madness and held a special 24 hour “Snatch the Puzzle” event on Black Friday, 27 November 2020.  During the event, puzzles were randomly made available at deeply discounted prices as a way of saying thank you and providing some holiday fun for the puzzling community.  It consisted of puzzles from recent and future releases as well as some other goodies like puzzle stands.

However, Brian took pity on everyone.  To avoid having everyone repeatedly hit the refresh key for 24 hours (please don’t take this to mean that I don’t think there aren’t people up to such a challenge), he periodically posted clues via Facebook on 25 and 26 November 2020, providing hints at the times that he would be releasing puzzles:

• Will you be looking for puzzles in prime time, or when you're having a piece of pumpkin pie?
• I wonder if a label might come in handy?
• Let's start early. Same time forward or backwards.
• Is it a time or an airplane?
• There may be an emergency or two tomorrow!
• Why are those guys all sitting cross-legged on the floor on such a windy day?
• Another time, same backwards and forwards, and upside down.
• Police - Location (US)
• And finally, should I repeat myself?

Who couldn’t pass up an opportunity like that!  Like everyone else around the globe, I continually mashed the refresh key at what I hoped were the release times in an attempt to grab a puzzle.  Most of the time, I managed to get a puzzle in the cart, only to have it disappear before checking out.  The event was almost over before I managed to successfully acquire a puzzle.  When my wife asked me what I bought, I sheepishly looked at her and said “I have no idea.  If you have to look at it before you buy it, it will be gone.”  Of course, all of Brian’s works are wonderful and you really can’t go wrong.  Shortly after the event, I received a box from Wood Wonders with 2 puzzles.

Cluster

I initially had the opportunity to solve a copy of Cluster prototype that Brian brought to RPP last year (A Decade of Puzzling - RPP 2019) and was glad to finally acquire a copy.  The version that I received was made from Cambodian Ormosia.  It has an awesome grain looking like black bolts of lightning running through the wood.  It also has an interesting distinctive scent that reminded my wife of Sandalwood.  Cluster was designed by Andrew Crowell and it should come as no surprise that rotations are required to solve this puzzle.  In fact, all the pieces require rotations.  One of the pieces makes a rotational circuit through the puzzle, which I consider the highlight of the puzzle.  The puzzle is not very difficult, but the crystal shape requires some out-of-the-box-shape thinking.

Inelegant Box

Inelegant Box is my second acquisition from the Inelegant Puzzle series by Haym Hirsh made by Wood Wonders.  My first was Inelegant Fake (Not Your Elegant Hoffman Packing Puzzle - Inelegant Fake).  Like Fake, Box is made from 4x5x6 unit blocks that have been joined into 6 "L" shaped pieces consisting of 4 blocks each.  Since this consists of only 24 blocks, the completed cube is missing 3 blocks.  One of those blocks is the center of the cube making it hollow – aka a box.  This puzzle is not that difficult, but you do have to keep in mind that that there are missing blocks and you may have a difficult time solving this puzzle without that in mind.  The version I received from Brian was made with Canarywood and has a beautiful reddish grain to it.  It also came with a Curly Maple frame that shimmers as you tilt it.

Brian enjoyed providing this event to the puzzle community and is considering making this an annual event.  I’ve already started a finger training route in anticipation of next year’s event.  Thank you Brian for a fantastic time (12:21, 2:33,  3:14, 3:35, 4:06, 7:47,  9:11, 10:20, 11:11, AM/PM)!

A Fantastic Puzzle, Believe It or Not - RIPley

Andrew Crowell has been generating many hard-to-believe puzzle designs requiring elaborate rotations.  He started out with Turning Interlocking Cubes (TICs) and then migrated his rotational magic to Rotating Interlocking Boards (RIBs) and Rotating Interlocking Plates (RIPs).  RIPley is one of the first in the RIP series.

This particular copy of RIPley was made by Brian Menold at Wood Wonders and looks beautiful in Redheart with the double Maple splines.  Absolutely stunning and a great display piece!  Nothing is going to break those pieces apart.  I also didn’t realize until after I had the puzzle together that some of the pieces were pegged as well as splined.  Amazing!

For a board/plate burr, RIPley is not that difficult.  Please keep in mind that this is in reference to board/plate burrs.  If you haven’t done one before, it’s plenty difficult.  Having just worked on some others recently, I was able to put the unassembled pieces together in a single sitting.  In fact, I used this as a break from working on another one of Andrew’s RIPs.

RIPley consists of 6 plates that are comprised of 3 pairs of pieces.  Each pair is a different size, which greatly reduces the complexity.  In addition, one of the pairs has identical pieces, further reducing the complexity.  Two of the pairs have pieces that are parallel to each other but separated by a space, and the final pair has the pieces adjacent to each other.  It is trivial to determine the spacing between each pair from the pieces that they fit into.

The solution process was accompanied by the standard, well let’s try this - no that’s not right, recursive procedure.  It’s pretty easy to get 5 pieces together, whereupon you realize that getting the last piece in will take longer than getting the first 5 together - and that last piece you’re holding is almost certainly not the last piece that needs to go in (which it wasn’t).

Although BurrTools will not be able to solve this particular puzzle, there are not a lot of rotations required to solve it.  However, the required rotations come with a brilliant AHA moment sure to make you smile.  To get the full effect of the AHA moment, I recommend getting RIPley unassembled.

A 10,000 Foot View Of - Cockpit

What could possibly be better than a board burr?  How about a board burr in a cage?  Osinori Yamamoto’s Cockpit puzzle is such a challenge.  With only 3 simple pieces within the frame, it is more a flight of fancy than a long-haul expedition.

My version of Cockpit was made by Brian Menold at Wood Wonders with a Canarywood Frame with Wenge Pieces.  The cage is completely open on the top and bottom and has openings on the other 4 sides in the shape of a plus.  Two of the pieces are identical and the other has one additional cubie.  The puzzle came assembled and the objective is remove the pieces from the frame and then put them back in at some point in time.

As with many caged board burrs, the trick is to figure out the pass.  This is the sequence of moves that will eventually allow one of the pieces to get pulled passed the piece that is running through it.  Once you have accomplished the pass, the puzzle is pretty much solved.  With a level of 16.3.2, the pass was well designed and fun to execute.

New Email Address is
bmenold@woodwondersonline.com

On the box that Cockpit came in, Brian added the caveat that the 16.3.2 level is with the unique piece placed through the top of the puzzle.  It turns out that there is a trivial solution with level 3.2 if one of the duplicate pieces is put through the top.  This may be good as an assembly challenge for a new puzzler.

This puzzle has been around awhile and you can read the Puzzling Times entry on Cockpit from 2013 here.  It’s about time I got this one off my to-do pile.

Inspiration from Grandchildren - Little Kenny and Wooden Puzzles

How would you like to take a journey through 20 different must-have classic puzzle designs by world-renowned puzzle designers?  Along the way, the secrets of how to make them yourself will be revealed.

Several years ago, my good friend and master craftsman, Brian Menold, informed me that he was writing the definitive book on how to make wooden puzzles and asked if I would like to contribute a design.  Even before I knew of the world-class puzzle designers that would be included, I readily agreed.  I later found out that the book included designs from Stewart Coffin, Jos Bergmans, Yavuz Demirhan, Stéphane Chomine, Primitivo Familiar Ramos, Tom Jolly, and of course Brian Menold.  The cognoscenti of puzzledom.  Fortunately, I didn’t have the pressure of knowing the other contributors beforehand.

Brian’s guidance to me was that the book, called Wooden Puzzles, was targeting entry level woodworkers and he was looking for a simple design.  I translated simple to mean a puzzle based on a cubic dissection with rectilinear moves and a fairly small form factor, i.e., no larger than a 4x4x4 cube.

At about the same time that Brian asked for my contribution, along came my first grandson, Kenny.  He is a continual source of puzzlement and wonder.  When my grandson was 4, I informed him on some random sunny afternoon that he would be starting school the following year.  He looked at me, and in no uncertain terms said, “My mom said I don’t have to go to school”.   Trying my best to realign his thinking, I told him that everyone had to go to school.  Unfazed, he peered over at me again and replied, “I don’t need to go to school.  My job is inspiration!”  Well, how do you argue with that?  Needless to say, this post is about the puzzle that was inspired by Little Kenny.

The initial version of Little Kenny that was included in Wooden Puzzles is comprised of 4 pieces in a 4x4x3 format.  Only rectilinear moves are required and the level of difficulty is 5.1.1.  I was very happy with this design and thought that it was an excellent fit for the book.  Since the book has been released, I’ve received feedback from a couple of woodworkers with Wooden Puzzles and they loved Little Kenny.

Brian did an amazing job writing Wooden Puzzles.  Not only is it informative, but it is crammed full of pictures of puzzles, tools, jigs, and various types of wood.  The book is comprised of 4 main sections.  The first section provides an overview of tools for puzzle making, selecting wood for puzzles, and jigs for making puzzles.  The second section is the majority of the book and describes in detail how to make the 20 puzzles covered.  By the time you get through all 20, you should have a good understanding of the woodworking basics required to make these types of puzzles.  The following section provides some recommendations for taking your puzzle making to the next level.  Alas, the last section shows the solution for solving each of the puzzles covered in the book, but I know that you won’t be tempted to look.

Although Brian indicated that his book was for beginning woodworkers, I believe that it is suitable for woodworkers at all levels.  There are great little nuggets of information for everyone.  I pulled out my copy of Wooden Puzzles as I was writing this post and as I was flipping through it, I realized that it was time to read it again in preparation for making this year’s puzzle prototypes.  The book may also be of interest to puzzle collectors interested in the process of creating the puzzles that they collect.  Just don’t read the solutions to the puzzles provided in the back of the book.

Shortly after providing the initial Little Kenny design to Brian, I decided to make a more difficult version for the upcoming IPP35.  I was able to split one of the blocks to require rotational moves in the solution, thus becoming the first puzzle in the half-cube series.  I brought my updated Little Kenny prototype to IPP35 and it was well received.  Just like my grandson, it’s small size with only 4 pieces makes it look fairly innocuous but it does have a little bite to it.  And no, the solution provided in Wooden Puzzles won’t help you with the updated version.

After IPP35, Little Kenny was produced by the world-class craftsman, Tom Lensch.  The pictures in this post are of Tom’s version made with Jatoba.  With the successful release at IPP35, I decided to enter it in the Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition the following year at IPP36 where it received the award for …. nothing!  Oh well.  It was up against some pretty stiff competition like Chain Store (Yanked My Chain - Chain Store) and Bitten Biscuits (Food For Thought - Bitten Biscuits).

You should get a copy of Wooden Puzzles.  It is available on Amazon here.  Then you can make your own copy of the original Little Kenny design.  If you want a copy of the updated half-cube version of Little Kenny, they will be available soon from Brian Menold at Wood Wonders.

Foreign Fame - 4 In Frame

One of my favorite puzzle designers from the other side of the pond is Stéphane Chomine.  I own quite a few puzzles designed by Stéphane but nothing close to the 648 designs (as I write this, but it increases every few days) that he has on Puzzle Will Be Played.  This particular post is about Stéphane’s puzzle, 4 In Frame.  It is #40 on Stéphane’s Puzzle Will Be Played page and was added on 3 January 2011.

I bought this puzzle from Wood Wonders in August 2017.  It was beautifully made by Brian Menold with an Ash frame and Kingwood pieces.  I really like the look of Kingwood and the end grain is spectacular.  It also contrasts nicely with the Ash.  The first thing that I did when I received it was to take it apart and then summarily forget about it.  Over the past couple of years, I’ve pulled it out for a few sessions but never managed to solve it.  Recently noticing that the puzzle was blocking the dust from settling on the china cabinet shelf, I decided that it was finally time to do something about it. 

There’s only 4 pieces that have to go in the frame, so how difficult can it be.  Like most puzzles of this type, there are those pesky blocks that are glued to the inside of the frame to frustrate the movement of the pieces.  With a difficulty level of 20.14.9.3, that’s a total of 46 moves to get the pieces in or out of the frame.  That’s a sizeable number of moves considering that there are only 4 pieces.  This puzzle doesn’t give up easily.  When taking it apart, even when it is half empty with only 2 pieces left, it still takes 9 moves to take the next one out.

According to Puzzle Will Be Played, there are 8350 assemblies and only 1 solution.  What this means is that the there are 8350 ways that the 4 pieces can be situated in the puzzle looking like the final solution, BUT only 1 of those ways can actually be realized.  I’m glad that I didn’t look up these statistics before solving the puzzle but it was obvious that those meddling blocks within the frame weren’t prohibiting any potential final resting places for the pieces - another way of saying this is that there were no easy hints as to where pieces couldn’t go.  Oh, and with 8350 assemblies, a brute force attack is not the way to go!

Having failed to solve this puzzle a couple of times in the past, I didn’t have much hope of knocking this one out quickly.  However, I was surprised to find that I was able to assemble it within a couple of hours.  For this attempt, I felt like I had, “the knack”, an innate sense of ethereal metagrobology channeling through my corporeal body.  It’s also possible that I had a bit of a head cold but it’s sometimes difficult to distinguish between these things.

I was able to look at the frame and identify where one of the pieces had to go.  From there I was able to identify where the next piece had to go and how it interacted with the first piece.  Once It was completely assembled, I marveled at the moves required to get there and aside from a couple of backtracking steps, I was amazed at how accurate I was in my assumptions.  Of course, it’s always possible that my brain was leveraging those prior failed attempts under all those cobwebs throughout the dusty gray matter.

4 In Frame is a great puzzle and I recommend it for burr puzzle collectors.  If you’re new to these types of puzzles, you may want to try a less difficult puzzle first.

An Impediment to Rolling Along - Wheel Lock

A lot of times, OK, most of the time, I don’t pay a lot of attention to the name of a puzzle while solving it.  It can result in merrily rolling along until it bites you in the lug nuts.  This was one of those times.

Wheel Lock was designed by Tzy Hun Chein and made by Brian Menold at Wood Wonders.  It consists of a frame with 4 pieces and has a level of difficulty of 15.18.14.4.

The grain of the Tamboti frame is gorgeous.  It has a nice weight to it and a lovely smooth finish.  It also has a very interesting bevel on the outside edges.  The bevel on each edge is deepest in the center and becomes shallower as it approaches each end until there is only a little smoothing at the corners where 3 edges intersect.  I’ve never noticed this on a puzzle before and don’t recall Brian making any references to this technique on his site.  I don’t know how it’s done, but the result is fantastic.  My best guess would be to use a sanding mop to get this effect.

The frame has an open slot on 2 of the sides.  Decoration or functionally required?  They are just wide enough for the ends of the pieces to slide into.  I’m assuming that these slots will be used to accept the ends of the 4 pieces as they are moved out of the way of other pieces traveling on the solution path.

Wheel Lock was one of several puzzles that I bought from Wood Wonders in August 2017.  When they arrived, I immediately took them apart to make a nice selection of disassembled puzzles adorning the back of my china cabinet shelves in the dining room.  As much as I like the random look of puzzle pieces hanging out of boxes, now a couple of years later, I caved in and sacrificed the random disarray of Wheel Lock pieces to the puzzle gods by reassembling them into an orderly packed configuration.

It would have been easy to insert the 4 pieces within the frame if it weren’t for those little cubes that were sticking out from all sides within the frame.  Since all the pieces have the same simple shape, the complexity of this puzzle is in the pattern of those cubes.

When you look at the pieces put together, they can spiral clockwise or counterclockwise.  Of course, if you turn them over, the spiraling gets reversed.  For each possible spiraling direction, each piece can be oriented in one of 4 possible ways unless prohibited by the internal cubes.  If they were all possible, this would lead to 512 different combinations to try.

Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you need to cold start your brain and think about it.  This time I felt that I got lucky.  I started with the spiraling direction that had a corner where the piece could only be inserted 1 way.  Everything just rolled along from there until I had all the pieces back inside in a reasonable amount of time.  It didn’t seem like a 15.18.14.4 effort, but they never do.  Moves get eaten up pretty quickly as pieces are moved within the frame.

It was then that I looked at the box that it came in.  One nice thing about Wood Wonder puzzles is that the boxes have a sticker on them with information about the puzzle including name, designer, moves required, and a picture of the puzzle.  Brian also sometimes adds the type of wood used to make the puzzle as well.  It was at this point that I realized that the 2 toned pieces in the picture made a nice symmetrical pattern in stark contrast to my avant-garde solution.  Duh!  Does that look like a wheel?  Phooey!  Now I had to update the picture on the box.

Needless to say, I was happy for an excuse to spend some more time with this puzzle, and not having solved it seemed like a good enough excuse.  It turns out that there are 8 solutions if you ignore the color pattern, which contributed to my quick success.  Adhering to the color pattern, there is a unique solution.

To achieve that nice wheel pattern, the 4 pieces are made from 2 contrasting wood types: Plum and Mulberry.  Since the pattern on the ends of the pieces is important, this required additional work to avoid the ends of the connecting pieces from becoming visible.  Brian also took extra care with the joinery to avoid butt joints that would result in weaker pieces.  At first glance, they look the same, but if you pay attention to the coloring, one is indeed different. 

Wheel Pattern? - Not So Much!

At the beginning of Wheel Lock take 2, it was obvious that the pieces could only be oriented with each other in one way.  The only question is whether they went in right side up or upside down (i.e., spiraling clockwise or counterclockwise with respect to the frame orientation).  In either orientation, it is obvious where the unique piece goes.  For the frame orientation that I was using, I decided to try the clockwise piece orientation first, which turned out to be the correct choice.

Adding the pieces to the frame is a process of determining the order that the pieces need to be added and the movements required to get them in place.  To start this process, I looked for the best set of 2 pieces that was the most difficult to put in the frame together.  It took me some time to identify these 2 pieces and determine how to get them in the frame.  Once the interaction of those 2 pieces was understood, adding the third and fourth pieces was an effort, but since there were already 2 pieces in the frame, movement options were greatly limited.  It turns out that the third piece that I added needed to go in last and the last piece that I added needed to go in first.  Although one of the pieces had a tendency to rotate within the frame, the solution only requires rectilinear moves.

In the past, I used to look at burr puzzles that required a color pattern to have a unique solution as flawed designs, a cheat added by designers to solve the problem of multiple solutions.  However, after thinking about it recently, if there is a color pattern, nobody in their right mind (I knew I would find a way to exclude myself) would spend time searching the non-pattern problem space.  I found Wheel Lock to be a superb design and thoroughly enjoyed the solving process - twice.  My only disappointment was the limited use of the slots in the fame.

The Marriage of a Great Design with Great Craftsmanship ‒ Bouquet

When I saw Bouquet, my heart beat a little faster and said “buy, Buy, BUY”.  My wallet said “Whoa Cowboy, puzzles don’t grow on trees you know.  Do you really need another Christoph Lohe puzzle or another puzzle made by Brian Menold?”  What a stupid question!  Of course I do!  And puzzles do come from trees, so there.

I first saw Bouquet at this year’s Rochester Puzzle Picnic (A Decade of Puzzling - RPP 2019).  I only spent a few minutes with it as the event was wrapping up and failed to purchase a copy from Brian before he left.  I’m fairly certain that there aren’t many puzzlers out there that have not regretted passing on an opportunity to acquire a puzzle.  After returning home, I realized what a horrible mistake I made and immediately contacted Brian to acquire a copy.  Luckily, there was one still available.

I really enjoy Christoph Lohe’s designs and have twice in the past selected one of his designs for my top 3 puzzle acquisitions of the year.  Tulip made by Cubicdissection in 2015 and Mimicry made by Pelikan in 2016.  This year it looks like it will include Bouquet made by Brian Menold at Wood Wonders.

Not only is Bouquet a beautiful puzzle, it’s an excellent puzzle.  Brian made several different versions of wood combinations and the one that I chose was made with a Wenge frame and Maple and Paduak pieces.  I thought that this color combination enhanced the image of a flower.  I know that the name is Bouquet but it reminds me more of a corsage with the 2 colors used for the pieces.

This puzzle has a 23.3.5.3.3 level of difficulty.  Taking it apart is not difficult and was a lot of fun figuring out how to manipulate the pieces and remove them from the frame.  It’s amazing how such an open frame can hold the pieces for so many moves.  There is a lot of empty space in the center of the puzzle allowing for a lot of movement of the pieces.  As a general rule, I try not to pay too much attention when taking a burr apart so that I can enjoy it more when putting it back together.

To thoroughly enjoy the assembly process, I left the pieces sitting around for a couple of months before attacking the reassembly.  When I pulled them off the shelf, my initial reaction was that maybe I made a mistake.  I wasn’t sure how the pieces sat in the frame and I had to resist the urge to look at an online picture of the puzzle.  As daunting as it initially looked, it didn’t take long to figure out.  Now all that was left was to figure out which piece go where, what order to add them, and how to move them.  Oh, and its going to take about 23 moves to add that last piece in.

The first thing to realize is that 3 of the pieces are right-handed and the other 3 are left-handed.  This is easy to track in the 2-color version since all the right-handed pieces are one color and all the left-handed pieces are the other color.  For versions that use 6 different types of woods, you have to work a little harder to keep track of them.

For some puzzles with a frame, it is easiest to determine how the pieces are oriented with each other before inserting them within the frame.  This is not one of those.  For me, the best way to tackle this puzzle was to add pieces to the frame one at a time using the frame to hold them in place.  As each new piece gets added, you have to figure out how to manipulate the other pieces to get the new piece in.  Along the way, you may have to reorient a piece or switch the locations of some pieces.  This process is not as bad as you may think since 2 of the Maple pieces are identical and the 3 Paduak pieces are similar to each other. 

I was able to get 5 pieces in fairly quickly, but the last one eluded me.  I had already discovered how the pieces could be manipulated to that last one through the heart of the puzzle if I could only get it started.  I was even able to pull another piece out and test that process.  I just couldn’t figure out how to get both those pieces in at the same time.  Obviously, neither of these pieces were the last to go in and it took some more experimenting to determine which piece that was.  It turned out that the last piece to be added was the one that I put in third and the second to last one was the one I put in first.

This puzzle is another masterful design from Christoph Lohe and I thoroughly enjoyed the solving process.  It generated a great feeling of satisfaction and confirmed that some of the pistons in my old clunker of a brain are still firing.  I’m really glad to add this masterpiece from Wood Wonders to my collection.