Earth Day Celebrates 50 Years - Globe Ball

Thousands of casualties in the animal world resulted from the 1969 oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara.  Earth day was established the following year on April 22nd to raise awareness for environmental reform.  Today marks the 50th anniversary of Earth day, which is now celebrated around the world.

In honor of the 50th anniversary, I searched for a puzzle that would have a global appeal.  The obvious choice was Hanayama’s Globe Ball puzzle.  Unlike most Hanayama puzzles, this one is plastic and twice the normal size.  However, similar to several of the Hanayama puzzles, this one was designed by Vesa Timonen. 

Vesa’s original design was called Tangerine and entered in the 2008 Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition, where it won a First Prize award.  Like a tangerine, the internal pieces consisted of wedges that make a complete sphere and there are 4 of them.  The peel of the tangerine wraps around the wedges and is divided into 2 pieces, reminiscent of the outer skin of a baseball.  The skin covers all the segments except for a small hole where you can use the tips of your fingers to rotate the segments within the tangerine.  Once the segments are in the proper position, the tangerine can be opened to free the segments.  However, this is not as easy as it sounds since you can’t see through the peel to see if the pieces are in the correct position.  All you can see are the edges of the segments as they rotate past the access hole.  This requires you to look at the edges and then rotate them while mentally trying to track where they are after they leave the opening.  Of course, all this assumes that you have determined how the segments need to be oriented to open the tangerine.

The original version of Tangerine was 3D printed using orange for the peel pieces and white for the segments.  For the Hanayama version, an additional layer was added to the puzzle and renamed Globe Ball using the Earth as the new theme.  The molten core has 4 red segments surrounded by 2 blue oceanic pieces.  The 2 new outer shell pieces are a transparent light blue with opaque white regions depicting the continents.  Now instead of having a single outer shell, there are 2, and the inner shell needs to be manipulated into position with respect to the outer shell.  This has to be accomplished while still manipulating the internal core segments through the hole that is now in both shells.  Another nice feature is the addition of a 3rd outer shell piece that screws into the hole making the globe a complete sphere.

The packaging for Globe Ball deserves some recognition.  The box is a simple transparent box showcasing the puzzle and all the inserts.  Everything is very neatly packaged and the Ball is cradled between 2 clear plastic inserts.  The plastic insert on the bottom covers the official base to display the puzzle.  Another nice feature is that the box not only provides the puzzle designer’s name but has his photo as well.

After solving Globe Ball or the original Tangerine, you can see where the inspiration for Vesa’s newer puzzle, Cast UFO (Uns@lv*bl# F!&#ing O$j@ct - Cast UFO), came from.  You can almost hear him say, I want to do something similar but totally different.  And he did.

Globe Ball is difficult to come by and I’m glad I was able to acquire a copy.  It is not a very difficult puzzle but it is very clever and displays well.

Uns@lv*bl# F!&#ing O$j@ct - Cast UFO

Every once in a while, something shows up out of nowhere and descends upon the unsuspecting world.  This was the case with Cast UFO, and when it landed, it made a big impact.

Cast UFO was designed by Vesa Timonen.  I know this because Vesa’s name is the only thing that I can read on the back of the Hanayama Huzzle box.  UFO is a sphere trapped within a frame, somewhat reminiscent of Cast Marble ().  The frame looks like it needs to slide apart to be separated, but the internal sphere, which can be seen through the hole in the top and bottom, is in the way.  The sphere can be rotated within the frame and it appears that the sphere is divided into quarters.  The orientation of the quarters can also be changed by rotating any half of the sphere along either cutting plane.  Although each of the quarters looks the same, peering into the cracks reveals that the quarters are not simple wedges and that there is some fancy geometry going on that allows the rotations but doesn’t seem to allow it to come apart.  Maybe it’s a puzzle.

I played with this one on and off for quite a while.  After a month, I was having serious doubts about being able to solve it.  For the longest time, it was like the fidget spinner on my kitchen table – something to twirl every once in a while without getting anywhere.  Along the way, I was comforted by the thought that the sphere has an infinite number of possible orientations within the cube and that there was no way to identify them since the quarters all look the same.  At one point, I almost decided to use a marker to be able to identify the pieces, but decided not to in the end.  Warning – using stickers would be a realllllly bad idea.

I started out with what I thought was a reasonable approach to solving it but I wasn’t getting anywhere.  Thinking about it some more, I came up with 2 other approaches to disassembling the puzzle.  Alternating between the 3 approaches, I finally managed to get it apart.  Once I had it all apart my first reaction was relief for finally getting apart.  This was quickly followed by the horrifying experience of noticing identifying numbers on the inside of the sphere pieces, which I failed to notice when taking it apart.  I now had 6 pieces staring back at me with no indication of how they were originally oriented.  The good news is that once you take UFO apart, it is rather easy to determine how the pieces should be oriented and put back together.  However, even knowing the solution, it’s still an effort to take apart.

So why does everyone hate this puzzle so much.  It’s rare that a puzzle receives negative reviews and this one seems to be attracting them.  It’s not that it’s a bad design.  It’s a brilliant design.  The problem with this puzzle is in the packaging.  That’s right, it’s not the puzzle but the box that it came in.  It was the presentation that did this puzzle in.  Right on the front of the box, it was declared that this puzzle was 4 stars out of 6 in difficulty.  So we all put on our 4 star hats and took our 4 star game out to solve this tough nut.  But we came unprepared to the game and we felt mislead and cheated.  Had the puzzle been given a 6-star rating, puzzlers would have enjoyed it more even though some would have declared that it was too easy to justify a level 6.  Folks that normally avoid the most difficult puzzles in the series would have been steered clear of this trap.  Even 5 stars might have appeased everyone.

Let’s get back to the design.  I’ve already mentioned that it’s brilliant and it is.  It was obviously designed to be difficult and it certainly succeeded.  Once you take it apart, you can appreciate Vesa’s genius for creating these types of puzzles.  This puzzle has very tight tolerances and you have to have everything lined up just right to start the disassembly.  I’ve seen at least one reference on the Internet that indicated that a pre-production version, was used for testing.  This version most likely had bigger tolerances, which would have made it easier to disassemble, resulting in the easier rating.

I will mention that there is a significant clue that I completely failed to notice that would have been a great help in the beginning.

I bought my version of Cast UFO from Puzzle Master and if the more difficult Hanayama puzzles appeal to you, you can get a copy here.

Providing Solutions, A Slippery Slope - Cast Slider (Redacted)

My regular Hanayama pusher inquired if I wanted a copy of Cast Slider and I declined.    I felt that a puzzle with 3 stars from Hanayama would not provide enough of a challenge to be that interesting.  I’ve made it a point to collect all the Hanayama puzzles that are 4 stars and higher.  It’s not that I don’t own any easier Hanayama cast puzzles.  I have a copy of Cast Loop, which is 1 star.  It may not be difficult, but I like the movement and it’s a good puzzle to hand to a new puzzler.

My first Hanayama puzzle was Cast Enigma (6 stars), which started me on this path.  As I get older, the numbers seem to be skewing to the left.  I’m thinking that maybe I should reevaluate my abilities and collect puzzles that are 3 stars and higher.  Anyone that has been beaten up by Cast UFO (4 stars) recently can certainly sympathize.

When recently purchasing some puzzles from Puzzle Master to support a puzzle challenge (Puzzle-A-Month Challenge), I decided to add Cast Slider to the cart and give it a try.  I took it with me to the barber and solved it while waiting to get my hair cut.

Cast Slider was designed by Vesa Timonen and consists of 3 pieces, the 2 sliders and a central hub piece that they slide on.  Each slider consists of two flat sides that are connected on each end by a large pin.  One side is extended with a grove that the hub’s pin runs along.  The hub’s pin extends out of both sides of the hub to interact with each slider.  The hub also has a slots cut in it to allow the slider’s pin’s to travel along it.

Here is a blow by blow description of the heart-pounding disassembly process, slightly redacted to preserve against spoilage.   Of course, the person responsible for the redaction is ██████████.

When handling this puzzle, it is apparent early on that the only available move is to █████████████ releasing █████████████████████████  and then Boom! Things start to  █████████████████████████████████ until the sliders flop around, hanging loose by one end on the hub.  Although it looks like they might be able to come off, they just can’t seem to get past the hub’s pin.

 

After some experimentation, it becomes obvious that █████████████████ are █████████████████████.  With a little further experimentation, it becomes apparent that you need to ██████████████████████ and ████████████████████████, ██████████████████████ is infinity squared bigger than infinity? ████████████████████. ████████████████████████ won’t get you anywhere but ██████████████████████████████████ will █████████████████████ allowing you to ████████████████████████ for the climactic ending where you can ████████████████████████ like magic.  Indeed, if you practiced this enough, you could make it look like a magic trick.

As you can see from the solution description, this puzzle is not that difficult but has some interesting moves.  Assembling the puzzle would be more of a challenge than disassembly if you haven’t gone through the disassembly process.  However, I consider Slider a disassembly puzzle and wouldn’t recommend starting with the assembly.  I was able to do this puzzle in a few minutes, but I have handed it to others who have found it more challenging than I did.

If you are interested in getting your own copy, you can get Cast Slider from Puzzle Master here.  If you get stuck, just follow the directions in the solution above.

P.S. I gave the puzzle to my wife to work on after she read the solution above and she's still not talking to me.  Great puzzle!