Hamstersaurus

Over a year ago, I reviewed an amazing 6-piece burr dissection designed by Steve Nicholls called Smelling Of Roses (New Puzzle Comes Out – Smelling Of Roses).  It appears that Steve has been at it again with another 6-piece burr dissection called Hamstersaurus, which was his International Puzzle Party (IPP) exchange puzzle at IPP42.  Steve has now graciously made it available for anyone to download the Hamstersaurus model files from MakerWorld to print their own copy.

Hamstersaurus is as fun as Smelling Of Roses.  This time around, Steve upped the ante and made the destination shape 2 intersecting pyramids instead of a single one.  Initially, it takes some effort to get oriented with how the pieces are used to form the final shape.  And once you get that down, there seems to be many ways that the pieces can be joined.  But eventually, all the pieces come together.  It’s not difficult but it is a fun challenge.  I’m looking forward to seeing the 6-piece burr dissection based on 3 intersecting pyramids.

Oh! – Fudge

Were you are expecting a quick solve?  Fudge get about it.  Which brings us to the latest puzzle confection – Fudge.

Fudge is a 3D packing puzzle designed by Takuro Kawasaki.  It was entered in the Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition at the 42nd International Puzzle Party (IPP) where it won a Top 10 Vote Getter award.

How difficult could it be?  4 simple identical pieces that have to be packed in a box with one side completely open except for 2 voxels on opposite sides of the box. Not only are the pieces identical but they are symmetric, reducing the number of orientations that you have to check.  You will eventually stop yourself from rotating the pieces completely around to see if it fits in better the other way.  Or grabbing another piece to see if it fits better.

The pieces work in pairs and tangle each other to lock them in place.  You’ll eventually convince yourself that they only go together in 2 configurations that I call the cuboid and the corner.  And you would be right.  Unless you were wrong.

Any combination of cuboids and corners can fit within the box but not all them can be removed.  Once under the 2 covered corners, nothing wants to let go.

You may try to solve it with nice simple crisp rectilinear movements but at some point you’re just going to have to fudge it, maybe even double fudge it so do it on a Sunday.  It’s not difficult but makes for a nice treat on the weekend. 

Magical Slant On Puzzling – Diagonal Twins

Diagonal Twins was designed byYasuhiro Hashimoto and entered in the Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition at the 42nd International Puzzle Party (IPP) in Japan.  It won the Puzzlers’ Award (top puzzle selected by the attendees) as well as a Jury Honorable Mention Award (even the judges liked it).

Diagonal twins consists of 4 dicubes that need to be packed within a cubic box.  The box opening is just about a quarter of the box.  Normally it would be easy to put 4 dicubes in such a box in several ways but the dicubes have been altered to make 2 identical male (rails) and 2 identical female (alleys) dicubes.  All you have to do is match them to get a nice cube and then figure out how to get that cube within the box.  There is no more room for requirements. 

Except that the angle of the rails and alleys forces the pieces to be at 90 degrees to each other, which appears impossible to place within the box.  Somehow, each diagonal rail has to be magically transported within a diagonal alley.  However, with the box impeding your progress, you’re left wondering how to get through the walls.

You need to experiment and discover how to levitate a piece without touching it (wingardium leviosa – pronunciation counts apparently).  It’s even more challenging without the benefit of a wand.  With some practice, you can learn to do this when you’re in a tight spot – like a box – like a box with a constrained opening.

Although not difficult, the movements to solve the puzzle are magical indeed.  And if it takes you a while, don’t be a muggle and give up.  Keep going and discover the magic for yourself.

And once the puzzle is solved, removing the pieces from the box is as easy as spilling butterbeer from a leaky cauldron.  

Life, The Universe, And Everything – 42

So what is the answer to life, the universe, and everything?  By now, everyone knows that the answer is 42.  This answer to the ultimate question was generated by Deep Thought well before we had all that fancy-schmancy AI crap.  And it only took 7.5 million years to compute.

Riffing on the 42nd International Puzzle Party (IPP), Joe Turner created the shapely puzzle 42 to use as his exchange puzzle at this year’s IPP.  The puzzle consists of various 2D shapes that form the digits 4 and 2.  The 6 Mahogany pieces are used to make the 4 and the 6 maple pieces are used to form a 2.  Each digit is also required to have 180 degree rotational symmetry.  The shape of each digit is provided on the cover of the box.  And to put a different slant on things, the digits are italicized.

The Maple pieces looked the easiest of the 2 so I thought that I would start there.  I spent quit a bit of time going around in circles, zig-zagging back and forth.  However, my zigs and my zags were not matching.  One would be slightly longer than another, a space would be too big, the slant was going in the wrong direction...  But after a long protracted battle ... I finally switched to the Mahogany pieces.

The Mahogany pieces reminded me of the classic T puzzle and I was hoping to have better success than with the Maple pieces.  But this one turned out to be Tough 2.  But I kept at it, basically because there were no other digits to work on.  Using my acute sense of geometry, I determined that the Mahogany pieces were pointier than the Maple.  And all these oddly angled pointy bits weren’t playing nice.  I eventually got the point and was rewarded with a nice 4.

With the first half of the challenge complete, I transitioned back to the Maple pieces.  I zig-zagged along my merry way before the epiphany that was stuck in the back of my mind finally made it’s way to the forefront.  With this new approach, I left a vast collection of malformed 2’s behind and had a nicely formed 2 to go along with the 4.

42 was certainly more challenging than I had anticipated.  I’m certainly looking forward to seeing what comes after life, the universe, and everything.