Flattenry Will Get You Nowhere – Soma Tray

Over the last several years, the Soma Cube developed by Piet Hein has suffered a lot of abuse.  Since the 7 pieces forming a cube has 480 solutions, various tortuous methods have been employed to jettison 479 of them leaving the puzzle with a unique solution.  One of these time-honored methods is to squash it.  This involves picking one of the 480 (or maybe more appropriately 240 to avoid the mirror) solutions and scaling it down along one of it’s 3 dimensions.  To be quite honest, I do not know if every combination results in a unique solution but I’ve always assumed that squashing the Soma cube is a uniquifying process.

Soma Tray was designed by Rick Eason in 2016 and used as his exchange puzzle at the 41st International Puzzle Party in 2025, suggesting it sat on the shelf for 9 years.  In fact, it looks like it was buried on a shelf resulting in a somewhat flattened appearance.  OK, a very flatted appearance.  My guess is that it’s flattened shape under a heap of other puzzle prototypes had doomed it from seeing the world.  However, as we now know, it successfully escaped and made itself know. 

The puzzle consists of the 7 squashed Soma pieces with 1 dimension about a quarter of the size of the other 2.  All the pieces are flat with 5 of them having a single squashed cube added on top.  As the name of the puzzle would indicate, there is also a tray.  The tray is 5x3x2 with the 2-layer Z dimension representing the flattened dimension.  There is also a 1x3x1 shape affixed to the bottom of the tray, 1 unit from the end.  This provides a 2-layer 3x3 area on the left and 1x3 area on the right.  Both the pieces and the tray are made from laser-cut veneered wood.  The tray also has the name of the puzzle as well as additional information debossed along the rim of the tray.

Soma Tray comes with 2 challenges.  The first is to build a typical, albeit squashed, Soma in the 3x3 area of the tray.  I’m assuming that this is a uniquified Soma cube but I didn’t verify that.  The second challenge is to fill the tray with all 7 pieces.

The puzzle arrives nicely packed in the tray except for a single square sticking up from the tray.  Needless to say, filling the tray is not achieved by simply flipping that piece over.  Since the tray arrives with 1 piece sticking out, I obviously wanted to fix it and started with the second challenge.  I immediately dumped the pieces out to start with a clean state and embark on fixing the problem.  I know I said that you couldn’t just flip over that one piece in the original packing state to solve it but honestly, I just assumed that.  Maybe the joke is on me.

Since the right side of the tray limited that pieces that could be placed there, that’s where I started.  This definitely turned out the way to go as the spillover into the 3x3 side helped put the final pieces in place there.  I should also note that I solved it a second time and ended up with the a mirror image of the first solution.

Having completed the first, or technically, the second challenge, I proceeded to work on creating a squashed cube.  After some random attempts, I decided to think about the relationship between the pieces with and without the extra cube.  This gave the direction that I needed and soon after, I had a squashed cube nestled in the tray.  Since the other challenge had a mirror solution, I checked the cube as well and sure enough, the solution to this challenge had one as well.

Soma Tray is not a difficult puzzle but I did enjoy the challenges.  I also like how the pieces store in the tray.  And you can never have enough Soma variants.

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.

No Force Required – Gentle Interlock

It’s the season.  If you’re from Jersey, juno what I’m talkin bout.  And puzzlers will soon be reaping their own bountiful harvest of packages brimming with wonderful new acquisitions.  Last week was the momentous conjunction of events in the puzzleverse – Baxterweb, Cubicdissection Marketplace, Puzzle Paradise, and Mega Free Giveaways on the Mechanical Puzzle Discord (MPD).

The free giveaways on MPD have taken a life of their own and provide a means of repurposing homemade personal use copies of puzzles that would be impolite to sell.  Many are 3D printed and there has recently been a wave of some realized via LEGO.

Today’s puzzle is Gentle Interlock designed by Junichi Yananose from Pluredro.  Junichi has many more buyers than puzzles, resulting in his puzzles selling out in minutes or even seconds when they are released.  And he rarely has a second release of a puzzle since he is always working on the next design.  So he does his best at discouraging people from buying his puzzles.  In the case of Gentle Interlock, although there were prototypes of level 10 and 11, Junichi opted for the design with the lowest level - 6.  In his defense, he opted for this design stating that it had better playability.  As brilliant as all Junichi’s designs are, I took a gentle pass.

Fast forward to this year’s New York Puzzle Party (More PPing in the Big Apple – NYPP 2025)  where someone brought a copy of Gentle Interlock that gently tickled my brain and reminded me of this puzzle and how much I like burrs.  With that thought worming it’s way through my wormy mind, I eventually got around to pulling one from the replicator.

Gentle Interlock initially looks like a typical 6 piece burr but on closer inspection one end of each piece appears to be twice as large as expected.  This pushes the pieces away from the center thus providing more space to add bits where the sun don’t shine.  It also adds a nice bit of confusion since it orients what you may consider the center-facing side of the piece towards the side or even away from the center.

Since this puzzle was extracted from the replicator, it arrived unassembled.  Perfect!  The assembly is not trivial and it took me some time to work out where all the pieces needed to go and then how to assemble them.  Junichi certainly hit the playability goal he was aiming for.  However, I’m left wondering what the higher level designs would have been like.

Gentle Interlock was a fun puzzle and maybe one day, it will end up in a free bundle on MPD.

In Mint Condition – Dr. Bell's Curiously Warped Mints

Dr. Bell’s mind is jam packed with mind-blowing packings.  Why, sometimes he’s imagined as many as 6 impossible things before breakfast.  His warped sense of humor has now brought us a minty fresh take on edge beveled cube packing.

Dr. Bell's Curiously Warped Mints was developed by George Bell and used as his exchange puzzle for the 41st International Puzzle Part (IPP).  Each of the 6 pieces is 3d printed in a different color and comprised of 4 warped edge-beveled cubes.  The objective is to artfully cram all the pieces within an accompanying tin.  The type of tin that you would expect to find a nice assortment of mints to enjoy.  However, you are not expected to enjoy these mints.  The tin explicitly warns to not eat them.  So then why are they made with yummy colors like grape, blueberry, raspberry, lemon, lime, and licorice?

To get you started, some of the pieces are already in the tin and you only have to add the remaining 2.  Of course, I dutifully took all the pieces out and separated them before starting on my journey of 1000 missteps.

Being warped always seems like it should make things easier but it always feels like the opposite.  Examining the pieces, I noticed some interesting clues that I filed for possible later use and proceeded on without them.

The first step in these types of packing puzzles is to determine what type of packing structure is required, i.e., how the web cubes are oriented.  I struggled a while working on a packing orientation that would allow the cover to go on.  Then I unfortunately discovered something significant.  I was proud.  Or I should say the puzzle was proud of the lip of the tin.  I thought that this was a problem until I finally realized that when you placed the lid on, it did not rest on the top lip of the tin and providing a little additional space.  And after considerable effort I was able to pack all the pieces except 1.

It turns out that what I thought was a problem that wasn’t a problem was a problem.  Eventually I reread the goal and it said that the cover has to be screwed down, which screwed the packing approach that I was trying to accomplish.  I hadn’t even realized that the lid was resting on threads.  I now had nothing to be proud about.  Dejected,  I went back to the drawing board mumbling to myself, screw it ... screw it … screw it.

I eventually discovered another packing structure with a lower profile that would allow the cover to be screwed shut.  I also made heavy use of the clues that I had remarked on earlier.  At one point, I had a 3 subassemblies that looked like they would go together to solve the puzzle but would require coordinate motion to accomplish that.  Of course it would require coordinate motion coming from Dr. Bell.  However no matter how hard I tried, I was not dexterous enough to get everything lined up and moving like I wanted it to.  Curiouser and curiouser!  I eventually convinced myself that they would not go together using coordinate motion.  I was so close to victory, I could almost taste it.  Stepping back a bit, a minor tweak allowed me to assemble the pieces within the tin and screw it.

Once all the pieces are assembled, it truly resembles a tin of mints that are all stuck together and won’t come apart as if they were one giant enticing gobstopper.

It’s a clever puzzle and by the time I finally solved it I have to say that I ended up licking it.  Thanks Dr. Bell.

A Solid Challenge? – NotchedTIC

ARC TICs are extremely cool puzzles and most of the ones that I have solved have been 4x4x4 cubes.  One notable exception being MagellanTIC (Space, The Final Frontier - MagellanTIC), which is a 5x5x5 apparent cube and an awesome experience.  And now we have NotchedTIC, which is a non-apparent cube.

There’s just something so satisfying about solving a Turning Interlocking Cube (TIC).  However, it’s been a while since I’ve tackled a TIC by Andrew Crowell, aka ARC Puzzles {https://arcpuzzles.com}.  In 2020, I reviewed a different TIC by Andrew each month, with December’s being CagedTIC 1 (Ending With a Beginning - CagedTIC 1).  That post also had the links to the other 11 TIC posts for that year.  Although there were more ARC TIC posts, they weren’t as frequent and eventually trailed off.  How did that happen?  Well sometimes I get easily distracted. SQUIRREL!!!  Squirrel? Squirrel squirrel squirrelsquirrelsquirrel…

NotchedTIC is a 3D printed 6-piece 5x5x5 TIC designed by Andrew Crowell.  It gets it’s name from each edge having a missing voxel in the center.  And the puzzle arrived disassembled, which is my preference for attacking most burr puzzles.

The pieces to this puzzle fell into place fairly quickly.  Piece placement was obvious and pieces were able to be added 1 at a time with backtracking where needed to add a new piece.  Assembling the puzzle takes 28 moves with about a dozen of them required to add the last piece.  Along the way, 2 rotations are required but you don’t need to worry as they are not complex and obvious when needed.  In fact when taking the puzzle apart, the rotations will execute by themselves as pieces scramble to evacuate the TIC infested region.

I would classify NotchedTIC as more fun than challenging for experienced puzzlers.

Although I bought my copy second hand, you can buy the 3D Printable STL files for NotchedTIC and 5 other 5x5x5 TICs as part of a 6-puzzle set from Andrew’s site, ARC Puzzles.

Mixolometragrobology – Get in the Spirit!

Mixolometagrobologist Steve Canfield decided to go all out for his exchange puzzle in last year’s International Puzzle Party (IPP) and deliver a Sequential Discovery (SD) cocktail for us to savor.  After all, he was the host and wanted to make a big splash by leveraging his vast knowledege of puzzle Boxes and Booze to create an intoxicating journey with a bittersweet ending.  To aid him in this grand endeavor, he enticed puzzle genius and master craftsman Lee Krasnow to flesh out the intricate details that make this puzzle shine.

Get in the Spirit! consists of multiple layers of intrigue.  The outside is turned from aluminum with a Walnut and Hard Maple center ring to provide a classy classic look.  This shiny work of art may not look all that difficult but aluminum parts encapsulating various devious movements ring true.  After I solved it, I tested this in a manner that I’m sure will resonate with everyone.  I suspended both and struck them to verify the sonority of each.  Both produced a very nice tone with the top straining longer to sustain its note.

As for the goal, the shaker shaped tag simply said Get in the Spirit!  Preparing for just that, I happily embarked on my SD spiritual journey.  But where to start?  It’s a shaker!  You’re supposed to shake it, right?  Right?  Not so much.  Tilting and rotating will do.  As a matter of fact, I’d recommend not shaking it.

Through the holes in the top, you can just make out a red logo on a dark green background but don’t strain your eyes.  What could it be?

All three parts of the shaker seem to rotate freely and as you twist it and move it around you can hear things moving inside.  I was starting to fear that it might be one big marble maze and was particularly worried about the bottom portion.  I hear that people sometimes get lost in their cups.

With a little bit of exploration, the first move can be found, revealing the first glimpse of the interior.  I’m embarrassed to admit that this initial freebie move took me a full 10 minutes but I was going to savor this journey, by golly.  And with a little bit of additional work, the outer shell was peeled away to reveal … the next layer.

The interior is mostly 3D printed garnished with some metal hardware to facilitate making things more difficult.  Welcome to the inner circle, which sports 5 windows around it’s circumference.  And the inner circle has it’s own inner circle with it’s own set of windows.  It’s obvious that a lot of additional work went into making the design aesthetically pleasing instead of resulting in a strictly utilitarian design.  When the windows line up, you get a glimpse of what is waiting inside.  Through another opening, you can get a good look at a trapped coin although there doesn’t seem to be a way to easily remove it.  

Now you have a clear view of that red logo on top, which kind of looks like the top of a bottle.  With some effort you can get the top of the bottle to stick out.  It seems like it would make a great handle to rotate the bottle inside, which I did.  Rotating clockwise works great!  Rotating counter-clockwise not so much.  It really is a bottle and proceeded to dribble it’s contents in my lap.  I obviously don’t know how to hold my liquor.  At least I managed to limit the damage by quickly retightening it and vowing to never make such an obvious mistake again.

With just one drink under my belt, I stopped making progress.  I hit THE WALL!  At this point I kept trying everything over and over and getting nowhere.  There seemed to be a lot of enticing round holes that were trying to tell me something, but all I was getting was a buzz.  Eventually, I packed it back up and put it to the side for a while, a long while, months, in fact it’s been about a year.  How embarrassing!

After taking it back out after all that time, I blocked out a weekend and quickly (or at least quicker than the first time) found myself back at the wall.  After spending another considerable amount of time looking for a way forward, I finally succumbed and asked permission to do something that I was reluctant to do.  And I received the rare go ahead.  Usually this is followed by lots of laughter as I try it.  However, this time I was lucky.  In hindsight, the puzzle does provide a hint on how to get over that wall but like all good puzzles, you don’t recognize it until it’s already too late.

After a few more moves, you eventually end up with a token that is a bottle of your accomplishment.  Or is it a bottle that is a token of your accomplishment.  In any event, you wind up with both a token and a bottle of spirits.  If you are adventurous, you can take everything completely apart into the dozens of components that make Get in the Spirit!.  

The reset takes much longer than the solve but that’s basically because you just freed up a nice little bottle of spirits.

And that red logo on the dark green background?  Turns out it’s HUA for the H. Underberg-Albrecht company that Herbert Underberg started the day he married Katharina Albrecht to produce natural herb bitters.  

In addition to Get in the Spirit!, the puzzle, Steve also produced Get in the Spirit, the book.  The book provides a collection of fine cocktail recipes and wisdom.  Of course each recipe has a photo of the cocktail with an amazing garnish. 

It is also possible that Lee will make a companion cocktail shaker stand to hold both puzzle and book versions of Get in the Spirit!  Of course it will be a puzzle box and will utilize pieces from Get in the Spirit! in the solving process.  The CAD drawings look amazing and can be seen on Lee’s website, Pacific Puzzleworks.  However the fate of this project is still in flux as insufficient preorders didn’t provide the volume required for the originally projected price point.  Maybe offering an all 3D printed version of Get in the Spirit! for folks that don’t own one but would like the cocktail shaker stand could salvage the original plan.

Monumental – Markus’ Tetrahedron

Only the passing of the great ones are marked by a pyramid.  And a pyramid it was to remind us of the loss of puzzle master Markus Götz to the puzzle community in 2018.  His puzzle legacy lives on through his many designs generated over the years and I’m always happy to run across a new one that I’ve yet to discover.

Markus’ Tetrahedron was designed by Markus Götz and used by Stan Isaacs as his exchange puzzle at last years International Puzzle Party (IPP).  The 4 identical bright shiny green 3D printed pieces can be used to construct a tetrahedron in 2 different ways.  And since these exchange puzzles were made by George Bell, the pieces are constructed from conjoined spheres.

Don’t let the small number of pieces lull you into a sense of complacency.  It took me some time to find the first of the two solutions.  Each piece consists of 5 spheres and the pieces don’t seem to want to go together.  And each piece consists of a string of 3 spheres and another of 2 spheres that are connected by a cube.  Keep track now – identical pieces of conjoined strings of spheres connected by cubes that form a tetrahedron.  I don’t usually give clues on how to solve puzzles but just this once I’ll let you know that the solution uses Face-Centered Cubic (FCC) Packing.  Your welcome!

It doesn’t take long to determine that each of the 4 tetrahedron edges will consist of 4 spheres with each corner sphere belonging to 3 of the edges.  4 edges, 4 corners, 4 pieces, maybe there’s some kind of correlation going on here.  And lo-and-behold, the first solution emerges.

When solving this puzzle, you can ignore the cubes that connects the strings of spheres like I did.  Or you can realize before you solve it that each cube has a sphere connected to 2 of its faces and maybe this is a clue to where the spheres of the other pieces have to go.

It took some effort to find the second solution.  I kept getting the first solution and couldn’t see past it.  I had to step back to give it a good think and I’m getting a bit long in the tooth for that.  Eventually, I thunk (I know, it’s less of a process and more of a sound that my aging brain makes, k-thunk, k-thunk, k-thunk) my way to the other solution, which unlike the first, snaps closed when you get all the pieces together.  Looking at the final assembly, I could easily see why the second solution is much more difficult to find than the first.  I basically needed to jettison all those great ideas that lead to the first solution. 

Of course, once both solutions are discovered, the next challenge is to pack the 4 pieces back into the rather non-tetrahedralish box.  However, this was a much easier challenge than the other 2.

Receiving this monumental puzzle at IPP last year reminded me just how much I miss seeing that energetic, smart, and entertaining puzzle genius at IPP.  He always make everything seem a bit more special.

Markus Götz (1974-2018) attended 17 IPPs, participated in 16 exchanges and hosted IPP31 in Berlin.  He invented over 100 puzzles and authored six CFF articles.  He wrote about this puzzle in CFF 66 (2005).  He is greatly missed!
        - From the Markus’ Tetrahedron Puzzle Insert

RIP Markus!

No Problem Puzzles, Update #2

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. 

Since the last review (Preserving a Legacy – No Problem Puzzles {https://www.zenpuzzler.com/2025/06/preserving-legacy-no-problem-puzzles.html}), the next 4 No Problem Puzzles have become available.  They consist of Unmatch Box, Turn Around, Quinta Cuboids, and Dizygotic.  For this batch of puzzles, each had a different specified level of difficulty.  On a scale of 5, there was a 1.5, 2, 3, and 4.

Turn Around

Turn Around has the highest level of difficulty of the puzzles that have been provided on Printables so far.  It is a level 4 puzzle and provides a very nice challenge.

The objective of Turn Around is to pack 6 pieces within a box.  The bottom of the box has an internal 3x4x2 void and the top has a 3x4x1 void.  Unfortunately, the top needs to be screwed on with a 45 degree turn that is impeded by the pieces.  However, it works just great without the pieces.

You quickly realize that there is no trivial solution where some pieces fit exactly in the top space and some in the bottom space so that they don’t cross the boundary and interfere with the rotation.  Fortunately, the pieces don’t completely fill the interior of the box and you can utilize the voids to accomplish the rotation of the top.  Or maybe I should say, you can try to utilize the voids to do the rotation.

Needless to say, I fixated on an approach to accomplish the rotations that turned out to be wrong.  However, once I abandoned that approach, I quickly latched on to the proper solution.  

An alternate set of 6 pieces that can be packed within the box is also provided.  However, the alternate set of pieces is just that, an alternate set and not a second challenge.  Once you solve the puzzle, it’s solved regardless of which set of pieces you use.  I really can’t say if solving the puzzle is easier with one versus the other, but I found that the original pieces provided a good challenge.

I was a little surprised that the second set of pieces did not utilize my original approach.  Of course my original approach is the obvious first attack designed to sucker you in and keep you from discovering the much more elegant solution.

Unmatch Box

Oh so simple.  And Oh so difficult I found it.  I should have noted that this is an unmatch box and not a match box and shouldn’t have expected it to be easy to put things inside it.  Although this puzzle has a difficulty rating of 3, I spent more time solving it than Turn Around with a difficulty rating of 4.

Unmatch Box consists of 2 loops that can be arranged to make an enclosed box like shape and 3 pieces that need to be cached inside when closed.

In hindsight, it’s not difficult to solve but I struggled with it.  The pieces are very well chosen with lots of almost possibilities that kept me going around in circles, continuously, over several days, sans solution.

Packing any 2 of the pieces within the box is not an issue.  Trying to get that 3rd piece in is the challenge.  The problem is that the internal space starts to collapse when you open the box.  Trying to figure out how the pieces need to be arranged to support that collapse is the issue.  It teases you by allowing pieces to poke through gaps in the partially rotated box sides but never opens enough to allow them to completely pass through.

After a few days, I finally decided I was overcomplexerizing things and tried to dumb it down a bit.  Eventually, I stopped trying the same things and had everything packed within Unmatch Box.  As with many good puzzles, it took a long time to finally discover how simple it was.

Quinta Cuboids

The difficulty rating for Quinta Cuboids is 2 and I found this one a very quick solve.  It consists of 5 identical rectangular parallelapipeds (fancy speak for cuboids) that need to be packed within a restricted-opening box.  And the box only accepts the cuboids in one orientation.  And the solution obviously requires the cuboids to be in other orientations.  Which makes this a great 3D packing learning experience for someone just starting out with restricted-opening 3D packing puzzles.

Dizygotic

Dzygotic, at difficulty level 1.5, is another puzzle designed for packing puzzle beginners and I found this one a very quick solve.  It consists of 2 pieces that have to have to be packed within a restricted-opening box.  Unlike Quinta Cuboids, the pieces aren’t simple cuboids and the box sports 2 openings that occupy 3 sides.  The interior of the box is 3x3x2 and the pieces can fit within that space in several different ways and orientations.  The trick is to determine which one can be formed by introducing and manipulating the pieces using the restricted openings.  And yes, this is an apparent cuboid puzzle where all the openings are blocked by the pieces.



This is the second blog that continues reviewing the No Problem Puzzles as they are released on the Printables site under the No Problem Puzzles collection.  The first blog is Preserving a Legacy – No Problem Puzzles {https://www.zenpuzzler.com/2025/06/preserving-legacy-no-problem-puzzles.html}.

Engage! – Clutch 4

Not long after Wood Wonders’ latest release, I happily had a new puzzle in my clutches.  It is the final member of a clutch of TICs that extremize rotations.  Thus, I was engaged on a new mission within the puzzle zone.

Clutch 4 is the fourth and (hopefully not) final entry of the clutch series designed by Girish Sharma and made by Wood Wonders.  I have to admit that I had high expectations after the last collaboration between Wood Wonders and Girish that I played with (One Person – Three Body Problem).  But with a Level 31 Turning Interlocking Cube (TIC) requiring 14 rotations, I knew I wouldn’t be disappointed!

As always, Wood Wonders did an awesome job bringing to life another one of Girish’s fantastic designs.  The puzzle is made from Poplar, Indian Laurel and Yellow Rosa with reinforcing dowels where needed.  The pieces are spot on and move like agile dancers.

The puzzle consists of 3 pieces: the chassis, the drive plate that happily rotates endlessly within the chassis, and the clutch that dictates when and how the drive plate can rotate.  It’s easy to determine where the pieces go and trivial to add the drive plate or clutch to the chassis individually.  The difficulty comes in adding both pieces without grinding them together – NO FORCE ALLOWED!

Ironically, when solved, the pieces aren’t really wrapped around each other.  They are just in each other’s way from being pulled apart.  However, the process of getting them together or apart requires a lot of entwining rotational movements.

To solve this one, I spent quit a bit of time determining how the drive plate and clutch work with the chassis individually.  All that was left was to determine how they intersected.  Easier said than done.

It’s all about finding that clutch move where you can add the third piece.  And what an awesome move it is!  Of course, once you’ve made that clutch move, there’s a whole lot of rotat’n left to solve this one.

Unfortunately, but not surprising, Clutch 4 was sold out.  However, I would not be surprised to see additional copies made available in the future.  If you like TICs, this one is a must-have.

F In L – Eleven L’s Puzzle

I recently had the opportunity to acquire a copy of the Eleven L’s Puzzle on an auction site.  What caught my attention was that the Eleven L’s puzzle consists of 11 F pentominoes.  Although I couldn’t track down the designer of this puzzle, perhaps there is a language translation issue here regarding the use of F and L.  In any event, there are a bunch of F’s invading the Eleven L’s Puzzle, Dagnabbit!

The puzzle consists of 11 L’s (aka F pentominoes) and a box that is divided into 2 sections.  One side comes with 2 of the L’s and the other is the what in 9 L’s? side.  The goal is to pack all 11 L’s on one side of the box.  Being lazy, I picked the slightly larger side leaving the other side for someone else to solve.

To solve this puzzle, I was immediately struck with 2 ideas.  The first was that since the packing space was larger than the space required by the pieces, I was suspecting a Coffinesque packing solution.  The second was the odd number of pieces, 11.  This made me consider how 11 pieces could be packed together and I simplified the approach by looking at it as a circle packing problem.  This gave me an initial concept of location and piece orientation to work with.  And I have to confess that this was done before the puzzle arrived as part of an anticipatory solving approach.  Doesn’t everybody do this?

After it arrived and I spent a couple of minutes with it, I finally came to the conclusion that I was overthinking it and that perhaps it was a straight-forward cubic-dissection packing problem.  Or it could be a combination of multiple packing schemes.  Working between several potential packing arrangements, I finally managed to pack all the F’n L’s into one side of the box.  I won’t reveal the final packing configuration but the process involved the typical attempt to pack pieces as densely as possible without leaving major gaps and of course there was plenty of backtracking. 

If you want a go at it yourself, it is currently available at Creative Crafthouse if you’re interested in acquiring your own copy.  They have both this version and a fancier laser-cut version as well.

Preserving a Legacy – No Problem Puzzles

Theo Geerinck and Symen Hovinga teamed up to become the prolific duo behind No Problem Puzzles.  They provided over 100 amazing puzzles designs for the community between November 2020 and April 2023.  Unfortunately, this came to a tragic end with the passing of Symen on 7 April 2023.

To keep the No Problem Puzzles legacy alive, Theo decided to graciously allow the puzzle designs to be made available to the puzzle community for anyone to print their own copy.  He enlisted the help of Mr BurrTools himself, Andreas Röver, to verify and publish the stl model files.  These are being available on the Printables site under the No Problem Puzzles collection. 

Andreas will be incrementally adding the puzzles to the library over the next several months.  The initial 3: Sandbox, Swinging Lid Tray, and 3U Frame are currently available (Update: 2 more were added before this post came out).

Since I had 3 puzzles at once to print, I printed all the frames together using gray filament and then a separate print of all the pieces using a light blue filament.  Both Sandbox and Swinging Lid Tray came out swinging right out of the gate.  U Frame took some extra work to get it ready.  Tight connectors had to be sanded and loose fittings had to be glued. 

All 3 of the initial puzzles released have a difficult rating of 3 out of 5 so none of them are difficult.  However they are all fun and I enjoyed solving each them.  I managed to keep myself from binging them all at the same time and did one a day.

Sandbox

The first puzzle that I wanted to dig into was Sandbox because it has such a cool looking box.  I still like it even after my NPSO asked Why can’t you make nice boxes like that?  Not only does this supreme box announce the name of the puzzle and designers on the front and sport a rock’n curved top featuring a negative handle, it also includes an image of someone shoveling a pile of sand.

In addition to the amazing box, the puzzle also consists of 4 pieces that need to be packed within said box.  Of course, you just know that the swinging lid is going to be a problem since the arc of the back of the lid sweeps through a portion of the interior.  And this is what makes the puzzle interesting and appealing.

All that is needed is to figure out how the pieces can go together, how they can be put together such that they can be inserted in the box, and finally how they can be put together such that they can be inserted in the box so that the lid can be closed.  You may be thinking why not just jump to the final stage and skip all those beginning steps?  Call me old fashioned (I prefer that to dim-witted) but I find that the initial baby steps help me get to the end.

Swinging Lid Tray

The second puzzle that I attacked also has a swinging lid.  In fact, it’s called Swinging Lid Tray and not because it parties with all the pieces although the lid does swing both ways.

Swinging Lid Tray is a 2D restricted-opening packing puzzle with the opening on the side guarded by a swinging door.  The pivoting axis of the door is neither on the end nor the middle so that the arc through the interior depends on which way your rotate it.  The top of the puzzle has a nice honeycomb pattern with sizable openings that allow you to manipulate the pieces within.  Of course my wife wanted to know why I didn’t print it in yellow and black and add pictures of bees on the pieces.  Sheesh!

I’m embarrassed to say the trying to add the first piece to the empty tray stumped me for a minute.  I made a careless assumption and was reminded once again to pay attention.  Once I got past that, it was clear sailing.

With these types of puzzles, it’s all about determining the last piece to insert and how it’s done.  For Swinging Lid Tray, the first part was not surprising but the second was unexpected.

3U Frame

I left 3U Frame for last because it looked more intimidating than the other 2.  However, it was no more difficult than the others.

3U Frame is an apparent cube packing puzzle with the objective to make a 3x3x3 cube from the 4 pieces within the center of the 5x5x5 frame.  The frame is made from the intersection of 3 U shapes.  The best part of this puzzle is that 3 of the pieces require rotations to add them to the frame.

Many thanks to Theo, Symen, Symen’s Family, Andreas, and to all the people that bought every one of the No Problem Puzzles as they came out to inspire No Problem Puzzles to keep making them!

RIP Symen!

Amazingly Non-Burrish – Gravitational Burr

Yes, yes, it looks like a burr but when you get into it you’ll start to realize the gravity of the situation – it’s amazingly non-burrish.  So if burrs aren’t your thing, don’t worry.  If you can pull the contents out of the belly of a crocodile, you can solve this one as well.

Gravitational Burr was designed by Junichi Yananose (Juno) from Pluredro and made using American Black Walnut.  It consists of 6 standard burr pieces that look like they have been made from wood infested by boring insects.  However, the boring traces were intentionally added to provide a path for a ball bearing to meander along a dynamically changing path.  

Since it arrives assembled, the first task is to take it apart.  Of course, all those boring paths are hidden and you have to blindly embark on this journey.  About halfway through, you can get a good look at the amazing interior and start to deduce what needs to occur to get to the finish line.  Unfortunately as I age, I find that my deducing is reducing.  But deducing I went as I tried to hold a dynamically rotating piston-driven image in my head.  Needless to say, there was a lot of backing up and restarting involved.  And lots of Oh, I’m back here again moments.

When I finally navigated the path to the end, I was super impressed that the ball bearing didn’t just come dropping out.  Juno designed it so that the ball bearing would be secure when it came to disassembling the pieces.  And this attention to detail is what makes Pluredro’s puzzles so special.

Once apart, you can get a good look at all the pieces to see exactly how they interact with each other.  You will also notice a compartment that could be used to store something inside. This internal space can be used to justify it as a puzzle box for those desperate collectors that only purchase puzzle boxes.  Or maybe as a poke to those that collect burrs and refuse to buy puzzle boxes.  I suspect that some people received it with a loaf of bread inside.  The puzzle description indicates that you can store the ball bearing in this cavity to inactivate the maze and reduce the number of moves from 56 to 2.  However, I wouldn’t recommend it since there is nothing to secure it and it will eventually fall out and roll into some dark and mysterious place where things go to never return.

Since this really isn’t a burr challenge, it’s not difficult to get the pieces back into the starting position for the return trip.  To get you started, 2 pieces have matching magnets to provide a nice tactile feel to the puzzle and the other pieces just seem to fall into place to provide the maze required for the ball bearing.  You just need to determine the order to add the pieces, which isn’t difficult.

Surprisingly, I found the reassembly more difficult than the disassembly.  Knowing and doing are really two different things.  Event though I had a mental image of the entire dynamic map, the blind traversal of the path took several tries before I had it back to the beginning.  Again, I was impressed with the design and how it avoided being reset at the mid-point.

Welcome To The Home Of Despair – DODECASOMA

What happens when you take a 3x3x3 matrix of cubes, attach identical pentahedrons to each side of the matrix so that each pentahedron completely covers one of the matrix sides, define a new cubic boundary to encompass the new shape, slice the space up into into 27 identical bits, and randomly glue up some of neighboring bits back together?  Well, you get a DODECASOMA obviously.  To save you the effort of doing that yourself, Rod Bogart has done it for you so that you can enjoy the formidable fiddly fun of constructing a dodecahedron from 7 dodecahedronized Soma pieces.

DODECASOMA was designed and made by Rod Bogart and used as his exchange puzzle for the 41st International Puzzle Party.  It consists of 7 green 3D printed Soma pieces that assemble into a dodecahedron instead of the normal cube.  The pieces are nicely scored with the outline of the 3x3x3 grid to provide some guidance on how the pieces are aligned.  The puzzle also comes with a stand for displaying the assembled puzzle.  The stand is also useful to hold partially assembled constructions.  And although it is providing a helping hand, don’t expect any useful advice from it.

It all appears innocuous enough but when someone hands you a puzzle that is an anagram for CASA DOOMED, you have to stop and consider the ramifications.  Are there 240 (or 480 – you’re welcome Nick) solutions?  No!  Which is good since you probably don’t need another regular Soma cube although you should have a least one.  Is the solution unique.  Don’t know!  But trying to solve it, it seemed like it could be.

Unlike a plain old boring Soma made from plain old cubes, the DODECASOMA ends up being made from 4 types of shapes which I’ve come to think of as corners, edges, middles, and the core.  They’re really misnomers, but I’m sure you’ll come up with better names when you start handling them.

I don’t know why I was surprised the first time I had 1 last piece to add and it didn’t fit.  Why would I think it would be any different from any other puzzle that I’ve solved?  A couple rounds of that wiped the smirk off my expectations.

It’s also a bit fiddly and you have to juggle the pieces in your hand as you try different piece combinations.  Unlike the typical Soma puzzle with cubic dissection pieces, not every piece will fit nicely anywhere.  However, there are enough places where they can go together making it non-trivial to solve.

Eventually I had it all together and with a bit more effort, I had it displayed on the stand.  At least I didn’t have to try all 10 sides to find one where it would stand without falling apart.