Not a Little Challenge – Monster

What a cute little puzzle!  It only has 3 little pieces that you have to put in a frame.  Bwahahahaha!

So how do you define a Monster puzzle?  81 moves to put the last piece in?  A total of 105 moves to solve with 81 moves to put the last piece in?  Over 1000 moves to solve a 105 move puzzle with 81 moves to put the last piece in?  Over 6 hours to perform over 1000 moves to solve a 105 move puzzle with 81 moves to put the last piece in?

Monster was designed by Girish Sharma and made by Tom Lensch using Mahogany and Maple.  The pieces are constructed with doweled joints to strengthen them although you really shouldn’t need to test their durability.  The tolerances are perfect and if you’re using force, you’re doing something wrong.  I also appreciate that the puzzle arrived unassembled so that I could enjoy the full solving experience.

Although I really didn’t have any time to allocate for working on the puzzle when it arrived, I got sucked in and spent 1-2 hours fiddling with it after I took it out of the box.  2 days later, I had a couple of spare minutes and sat down work on it for a bit.  Once again I disappeared into the puzzle zone to finally reappear 5 hours later with a solved puzzle.  Yes, this is a real thing.  During a good solve, you slip out of normal space-time into the mind-bending puzzle continuum where all your senses are laser-focused on a single objective.  I once had someone apologize a couple of hours after putting a puzzle in my hand.  Too bad I couldn’t hear him.

This puzzle may only require 105 moves but I’m sure that it took me over 1000 moves to solve.  Maybe 2000.  I have to say that for a 3 piece framed puzzle, it was a challenge to solve.  However, I already knew that Girish's goal was to exceed the movement count of Climburr (50+ moves for the first piece).  It took me thousands of moves so I can't attest if the 81.19.5 level is accurate or not, but it looks about right.  As tough as it was, I enjoyed working on it.  It's not as hopelessly impossible as it first appears.  I pretty much knew what I had to accomplish at each step even though accomplishing each step was not easy.

I 4 1 thought Monster is a tough but fair puzzle.  The big unknown for me was the order of introducing the pieces to the cage.  I was fortunate in that my educated guess worked out.  However, I can't be sure that other orders wouldn't work just as well.  All the rotations that I made were well behaved, but there was one that was more than a simple rotate to add some spice in the solving process.

The first step in tackling this Monster is to determine the final configuration of the pieces within the frame.  This was not difficult and was greatly appreciated.  For each of the 3 pieces, you pretty much know where they go and how they are oriented within the frame.  You only need to determine how to move them around to get them in place.  During this process, I found that all 3 pieces are (mostly – hahaha) in 1 of 2 orientations, rotated and unrotated.  And you will be going back and forth between them, more than once, many times, so many times.

Having solved this Monster, the puzzle fibers that comprise my body were definitely sated.  I even thought my 6-7 hour solve time was quite respectable until I found out that someone else had solved it in a few hours while watching TV.  Sigh.

Gratitude For Those Who Work Up Through The – Eleventh Hour

Having just returned from this year’s International Puzzle Party (IPP41), I’m extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to reconnect with friends that I haven’t seen since before the pandemic.  After a long hiatus, being immersed back in the community has helped rekindle that puzzling spirit and revitalize the pursuit of designing and solving new puzzles.

Note that I didn’t start to talk about puzzles.  The puzzles are a means – the friendships are the ends.  It’s about meeting and spending time with like-minded people that share a common interest.  Of course, this is not to say that I didn’t come back home with a suitcase full of new puzzles.

To successfully pull off such a large undertaking as IPP requires a dedicated host, committee members, and a cadre of volunteers.  All these people work extremely hard to establish a welcoming environment for everyone to enjoy.  Many of these people have invested years of effort to provide a smoothly run event lasting only a few days.  They work so hard and make it look so effortless.

On the last day, it is customary to honor these people that created, managed, and upheld the support structure of IPP.  And what better way than to award each with a puzzle.  Apropos for the volunteers who worked so hard to the very end, this year’s puzzle was: Eleventh Hour.

Eleventh Hour was designed by Goh Pit Khiam and was materialized in Maple by Tom Lensch.  The puzzle is a classic 4x4x4 cube consisting of 4 pieces and as you would expect from a puzzle made by Tom, the fit is excellent.  My copy came unsolved, and I found the solve to be straight-forward without any twists (i.e. there are no rotations; this is not a Turning Interlocking Cube (TIC)).  Having designed a volunteer gift in the past, I know that one of the design goals is to avoid providing a puzzle with a difficult solution.  I won’t tell you how many moves it takes to remove the first piece when it’s assembled but if every move takes an hour, there is a clue on how long it will take.

I’m certain that the volunteers will cherish this token of the hard work that they dedicated to make this IPP a success and it will bring back fond memories of the good times that they had.

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.

Yanked My Chain - Chain Store

Sometimes a puzzle just yanks your chain, which is exactly what happened with Chain Store.

One of the joys of attending the International Puzzle Party is spending time playing with the entries in the Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition.  This is a puzzling wonderland full of all sorts of new designs for a wide variety of puzzle types.  There is something for everyone and I try to spend as much time as possible in the design competition room socializing with other puzzlers doing the same.

One entry in the IPP36 Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition was Chain store, designed by Goh Pit Khiam.  It was made by master craftsman Tom Lensch and won the Jury Honorable Mention award.

I looked at it and said to myself, how difficult could it be to put a 5-link chain in a box?  Apparently, 5 links are plenty sufficient to provide all sorts of awkward positioning to frustrate the packing process.  The links are 4x6 allowing the width of the link to just fit inside another link.  And then what about the box?  Do the links go in orthogonally or do they end up at an angle?  I spent a lot of time hypothesizing how the links would sit within the box and then trying to orient the links in the direction that I needed.  It turns out that turning links made from square material takes more forethought and planning than links made from cylindrical stock.  In the end, it took more of an effort than I could muster in the design competition room.

Now I have a question for you.  Would you rather buy a puzzle that you have already solved or that puzzle that you didn’t quit manage to solve?  Personally, I tend to buy puzzles that I haven’t solved.  Once I’ve solve a puzzle, I’ve basically scratched that itch.  Of course, some puzzles are so brilliant you need to acquire a copy even after solving them to occasionally wonder at and show others.  Case in point is Stumbling Blocks also by Goh Pit Khiam, and a top 10 vote getter in the IPP36 design competition.  I solved Stumbling Blocks very quickly but the movement is so spectacular, I needed to acquire a copy.

When I saw Tom Lensch at the following Rochester Puzzle Picnic, I made sure to acquire a copy of Chain Store as well as Stumbling Blocks.  After returning home, I played with Chain Store attempting to get all 5 of those links inside the box without peaking over the lip at the top.  I had heard that an earlier version of the box was slightly bigger and that it allowed an alternate solution.  While I was working on Chain Store, there were several times that I wished that I had the original box.

At some point, the chain was sufficiently yanked to turn the light bulb on and I managed to stuff those stubborn links into that wee little box.  Once I discovered the required orientation for the links, I found that there is an elegant way to crumple up the chain to pack in the box.

I really liked this puzzle and if you are interested in acquiring a copy, Cubicdissection is planning on releasing a run in the near future.