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.

An Acute Case of Soma Mangling - Halfcut Soma

After seeing all the abused, mangled, and broken Soma variants that came out, László Molnár came to the conclusion that 90/90 is so 2020.  Using his acute sense of puzzle design mastery, he determined that something was wrong with the angles of these variants and decided that they couldn’t be right all the time.  Utilizing the rombic tetrahedra grid of BurrTools, he found a cut that was above the rest and created Halfcut Soma - once again proving the adage that you can still appear sharp even if you’re not right.

Like so many unfortunate Soma cube victims before, the design process commenced with picking on the smallest piece of the group.  The tri-cube was once again targeted and dissected into 6 pieces.  This time however, László cut the 3 cubes at 45 degrees before gluing each triangular half-cube to one of the other 6 pieces.  This could have been the end of it, but László obviously decided that this puzzle would be too easily solved by discriminating Soma puzzle enthusiasts who have been crunching through many variants over recent years.

Continuing on his 45 degree tangent, László decided to cut all of the pieces’ cubes at 45 degrees and throw half away.  Now each piece was made with only 5 triangular half-cubes.  Of course, now you can’t immediately identify which half-cube was the one that was added.  Each piece looks like it could have been derived from more than one of the original Soma pieces.

The objective of the puzzle remains to fit the pieces into a 3x3x3 space.  Of course, with all those half-cubes thrown out, there are a lot of holes in the resultant cubic space.  László also ensured that there was a single solution to maximize your enjoyment.

Solving the Halfcut Soma is a nice challenge!  Enough information is provided for you to solve it with a logical approach and a little experimentation.  Even so, it takes a while to warp your mind for working with pieces made with triangular segments instead of cubes.  Taking a logical approach is not mandatory and you’re welcome to disregard it and enjoy the puzzle for a longer time.