The Case Of The Perplexing Orange Spaghetti – Orange Perplex

The Crime Scene

It was a day, a day like any other day as I went about my daily routine.  The coffee tasted like yesterday’s cigarettes and the newspaper regurgitated the same old political woes destined to repeat for eternity.  Just a normal day.  And then it, walked into my life looking like bad news needing a place to roost.  I could already tell it was not going to end well.  These things never have happy endings.  Investigating the scene of the crime, I could see the guts of the victim decorating everything in the vicinity.  From the state of the remains, it appears that the victim was knocked over, not once but several times as it tried to recover but it never had a chance. 

And thus begins the tale of The Case Of The Perplexing Orange Spaghetti.  How did the victim get knocked over?  Why wasn’t it able to hold on?  Why were there no witnesses?  What was the motive?  Where was the weapon?  Was the room locked?

The principle point of this pitiful plot is how the simple printing of a recently released No Problems Puzzle progressed into a perplexing Orange Perplex problem.  This is the very same Orange Perplex puzzle that was recently reviewed a couple of weeks ago (No Problem Puzzles, Update #3).

Take 2

Orange Perplex consists of 15 segments that are divided into 5 pieces with each having 3 segments.  The segments of each piece are connected at a different level within the orange from the other pieces.  It arrives as a print-in-place model.  That means that it is printed with all the pieces in the solved configuration.  It’s like magic.  But not the type of black magic that transforms an orange into spaghetti.  Squash maybe, but not an orange.

I decided to eschew the suggestion to print the puzzle with rafts and supports.  Normally, I get excellent adhesion when 3D printing and avoid rafts.  I always end up regretting using them and I hate having to deal with raft rash.  However, sometimes you just can’t avoid it.

The problem is not that the model is print-in-place, but that a major portion of the orange segments hang out over the base before they can be counterbalanced when connected with other segments.  For me, this resulted in segments falling out from the puzzle.  And what does the 3D printer do when what it’s printing on takes a walk?  It keeps right on going assuming that it’s there.  Unless of course your printer has that fancy shmancy automatic spaghetti detection feature.

When I checked in on my first printing attempt about halfway through, one of the segments had detached from the plate and rolled out.  I was very surprised that the adhesion failed.  Should I kill the print?  Nah, by this time, some spaghetti had filled the gap and the print was still proceeding nicely.  I would just have to reprint that one piece.

Singled Out and Flipped

When I came back at the end, I was greeted with a full plate of orange spaghetti.  What happened?  Well, it appears that another segment failed.  I’m guessing that it was filling that segment with spaghetti until it was able to continue.  However, the spaghetti filling might not have been very stable and that piece may have tilted.  Once that happens, you’re doomed.  Tilting means one side goes down but the other goes up.  The part sticking up will then catch the housing of the hot end or the hot end itself.  Best case scenario, that part gets pushed to the side or the entire print gets detached from the plate.  I don’t even want to think about the worst case scenario.

Having learned my lesson, I reprinted it with rafts and supports.  And guess what?  A segment still fell out.  Very disappointing but at least it failed near the end and spaghetti supports aided in it’s recovery.  Only 1 piece was affected and I reprinted that one upside-down so that the bridge connecting the 3 segments occurs early on.

In examining the segments, they all appear to have fallen out when the bridge was just being formed.  In all cases, the thin lip of the forming bridge appears to be curled up which may have led them to be knocked loose by the hot end.  I’ll have to keep an eye on this in the future.

And finally, was the room locked?  No.  But my printer is enclosed and the door was shut, so there should have been a consistent temperature within the enclosure and across the plate.  Of course, I’ve never tested the temperature gradient across the plate.  Does anyone really do that?

Orange Perplex

No Problem Puzzles, Update #3

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. 

This post continues the review of the No Problem Puzzles as the models are being released.  Since the last review (No Problem Puzzles, Update #2), the next 6 No Problem Puzzles have become available.  They consist of Boon, Sliding Doors, Pivot Window, Orange Perplex, Salmiak, and Vixen’s Antlers.  For this batch of puzzles, the specified level of difficulty varied between 1 and 3.5 on a scale of 5, with 4 of them being a level 3 or higher.

Boon

This months review celebrates the addition of 6 new No Problem Puzzles designs.  Boon times indeed.  And the first boon is Boon consisting of 3 pieces that need to make an apparent cuboid within a frame.  To make it interesting, the frame is not fixed but consists of 2 intersecting pieces.  No rotations are required, but I can attest to the fact that there are rotational shortcuts.  My recommendation would be to avoid them and find the more elegant non-rotational solution requiring 8 moves to remove the first piece.  It is rated at a level of 3/5.

Sliding Doors

When one door closes, another one opens.
    -   Alexander Graham Bell

Sliding doors is awesome and has a very nice solution.  It does suffer a little from potential shortcuts but if you studiously avoid rotations, i.e., tilting pieces, the Cartesian path is very good.  Unfortunately, some of the rotations are very easy to perform and you will be tempted even as you look at it and say to yourself, I really shouldn’t do this.

Sliding doors is an apparent cube 3D packing puzzle with the goal of packing the 3 pieces within a frame.  And like many of the No Problem Puzzles, the frame has moving parts (this is why we like the No Problem Puzzles so much).  In this case, 2 of the sides have a sliding door that gets in the way of inserting and moving pieces.

The solution involves shifting back a forth between the sliding doors.  Since the tops of the doors come to rest on the pieces within, sometimes only the thickness of the door will keep an invalid move from happening.  Don’t be tempted to cheat the moves by tilting the piece over the door edge.  This will make sense once you start playing with it.

With a difficulty rating of 3.5/5, you know that you can expect a good time.

Pivot Window

OK, I’ll admit it.  I struggled on this one.  The prior puzzles did a good job of setting me up and leading me astray.  I thought I had learned some key movements that would guide me to a quick solve and in the end all I learned were things not to attempt with this one.

Pivot Window is a 3D packing, restricted opening puzzle.  The goal is to cram 5 tetracubes within a 2x3x4 box.  The box has a 2x3 lid that not only rotates about it’s midpoint lengthwise, but the pivot point is on a track allowing the window to move back and forth in the opening.  This window adds a paneful element to the solution.

I spent a lot of time trying many things outside the box before I actually tried putting something in the box.  Don’t be like Zen.  Do some experimenting with the pieces and the box.  It’s well worthwhile. 

There are supposed to be 2 solutions!  How can it be so difficult?

I got all excited when I finally got all the pieces in the box.  I had a good 5 minutes of exultation before I realized the that solution was not an apparent cuboid.  The instructions didn’t say it had to be an apparent cuboid but the picture in the original listing showed the box looking completely filled and that had been my original goal albeit temporarily forgotten.  Ugh!

I’ve also found a second way to pack the pieces in the box but unfortunately, I’ve yet to discover an apparent cuboid solution.  If the intended Pivot Window solution is not an apparent cuboid, I agree with the 3/5 difficulty rating.  If it is supposed to be an apparent cube, I think the rating should be higher.  At least that sounds better than degrading my puzzle solving prowess level.

Orange Perplex

Orange Perplex is a perplexing orange consisting of 15 segments that are divided into 5 pieces with each having 3 segments.  It was entered in the International Puzzle Party (IPP) Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition in 2019.  The goal is to pack all 5 pieces together to form a complete orange.

The segments of each piece are connected at a different level within the orange from the other pieces.  The 2 pieces with the connections near the outside can be used on the first or fifth level depending on how it’s oriented.  Similarly, the 2 pieces with the connections halfway to the center can occupy the second or fourth level.  The final piece always occupies the center level but can go in 2 different ways.

Picking the filament color for this one was a breeze but my NPSO made me use orange instead of perple.  And I did have some printing issues that I’ll address in a later post.  If you’re undecided, my recommendation would be to definitely use supports with a raft.

Unfortunately, I did not come up with a clever way to solve this puzzle and ended up just cranking through the permutations until it all went together.  For me, the 3/5 difficulty level was an indication of the time needed to solve it as opposed to figuring out an elegant solution.

Since it’s print in place, it’s easy to distinguish the top from the bottom, which reduces the complexity of the solution.  However, you can always print a second copy upside down and swap 2 of the pieces between the copies.  Or you could just take the 2 pieces with the uppermost connections and flip them upside down and print them alongside the original 3 pieces.  It’s up to you whether you want to be nasty when you share it with someone else by saying that it’s a print in place puzzle while failing to mention that you swapped some from a flipped print.

I didn’t realize until I was ready to publish this blog that I failed to print the Orange Peel.  Yes, there is a spherical shell that splits in half that you can use to store the puzzle.  Obviously, it’s not required to solve it.

Salmiak

Salmiak is a type of licorice (or liquorice if you’re from the other side of the pond) made with Salmiak salt that is popular in northern Europe.  This is the second salty licorice puzzle that has been featured on ZenPuzzler.  If you have a good memory, one of the Picnic Basket puzzles (A Tisket A Tasket, Puzzles In – Akaki’s Picnic Baskets) was named Salmiakki, which is the Finnish spelling.

Salmiak the puzzle is a 2D 5x5 packing puzzle with 6 pieces.  However, the puzzle has been skewed on all 3 axes.  Why?  Because it messes with your squary mind.  I always find it fascinating how even though the skewing reduces the possible orientation of each piece from 8 to 2, it still seems harder.

Although black would certainly be the most appropriate color for the pieces, I used the next closest thing, Orange!  It looks so nice!  It looks particularly nice as a diamond standing up on end and probably deserves a stand to display it that way.  There is also a lid that can be printed for the tray but I can’t comment on how well it functions since I decided not to print it.  The stl file for the pieces was especially well thought out.  And the stl file for the lid was especially not well thought out.  If you decide to print the top, don’t forget to turn it over before printing.

Salmiak has a difficulty rating of 2, which seems about right.  However, it’s really difficult to gauge because sometimes you get lucky and most of the time you don’t.  For me, it was a relatively quick solve but a fun little challenge.

Vixen’s Antlers

Vixen’s Antlers consists of 6 pieces that form a hexagonal box.  Or is that 3 pieces that form a hexagonal box.  It’s really up to you.  The intent is for you to print 6 pieces and then glue them together in pairs to form 3 pieces.  It is also recommended to use 2 different colors for a nice visual effect.

As a 3 piece puzzle, the solution requires coordination motion to solve and has a difficulty rating of 1/5.  And as a 6 piece puzzle, it’s even easier since it no longer requires coordinate motion.  It may not be difficult but it’s very appealing, displays nicely, and is a great example of a coordinate motion puzzle for non-puzzlers.

This is the third blog post continuing the review of No Problem Puzzles as they are released on the Printables site under the No Problem Puzzles collection.  The prior posts and the puzzles that they cover are:

Preserving a Legacy – No Problem Puzzles

• Sandbox
• Swinging Lid Tray
• 3U Frame

No Problem Puzzles, Update #2

• Turn Around
• Unmatch Box
• Quinta Cuboids
• Dizygotic

If you don’t have a 3D printer, you can obtain copies of these puzzles from Nothing Yet Designs based in the US or the PuzzleguyStore based in the EU.