Tubular Boxification – Tube It In 2

If you’ve been involved in the puzzle community for a long time, you have certainly heard of the puzzle Tube It In designed by Wil Strijbos.  The original version was made by Wil using square metal tubes.  It was later made by Cubicdissection using a variety of exotic woods for each of the 14 pieces.  It was so popular that Cubicdissection put out a release every few years for a total of 6 releases, starting with a small release made by John Devost in 2006.

Fast forward to today where William Hu has revisited and tweaked the design to make it more challenging.  William 2 extended the difficulty by trading compactness for complexity.  It also trades more expensive exotic woods for more affordable 3D printed plastic although I wouldn’t be surprised to see an exotic wood version show up in the near future.

It’s been a decade since I acquired a very nice exotic wood version of Tube It In from Cubicdissection (Totally Tubular Dude! - Tube It In).  My sketchy recollection is that the solve was straightforward and on the easy side.  However, recent feedback that I’ve seen on Tube It In 2 has indicated that the new version is more of a challenge.  And so I decided to 3D print a copy and give it a try.  The one change I made was to turn the 2 outer tubes into a box.  Less aesthetic but more practical.  It doesn’t change the solve.

The objective of Tube It In 2 is the same as the original – pack the tubes so that they are all nestled within the largest tube.  After an hour, I hardily agreed with the comments that this version was much tougher than the original.  It doesn’t take long to realize that there are many ways to pack all the pieces except 1.  In fact you can pack them all except for the smallest piece without too much effort.  Some of those almost-packings are trivial and others are more involved.  The thing that they have in common is the inability to add that last piece.

One of the things that makes this version so much harder is the large amount of unused empty space.  It’s a real challenge corralling those empty bits together to accept another piece.  Of course to get from the trivial packings to the more advanced ones, it seems that you have to waste more space.  But take heart in knowing that there is a lot of unused space when it’s solved.

Needless to say, I spent a lot of time revisiting the same potential configurations over and over again until I finally saw the light at the end of the tube.  This is a significant update to the original Tube It In and I would recommend getting a copy.  Especially if it becomes available in a variety of exotic woods.

And The After Dinner Mint – Peppermint Basket

After completing all those Picnic Baskets that Akaki Kuumeri made, what’s left.  The after dinner mint of course.  Akaki decided to top off the Picnic Basket series with what he called a Final Boss Puzzle.  For those of you who didn’t grow up playing video games like Mario Brothers, the boss character is usually the big bad character that you need to defeat at the end of a level.  The final boss is the toughest, meanest, and most difficult to defeat character at the end of the game.  And Akaki succeeded in developing his final boss picnic basket – Peppermint Basket.

Like the prior 13 picnic baskets (A Tisket A Tasket, Puzzles In – Akaki’s Picnic Baskets), the Peppermint pieces fit within the same picnic basket.  However, the first thing that you will notice is that the pieces have diagonally cut half cubes.  These cuts allow for some new types of movements/rotations needed to solve the puzzle.  The second thing that you will notice is that there are only 3 pieces and that there is a lot of empty space in the assembly.

This puzzle is reminiscent of Andrew Crowell’s Turning Interlocking Cube (TIC) puzzles where the difficulty is getting the first 2 pieces situated within a frame against their wishes.  I printed the standard version of Peppermint with the tighter tolerances and the rotation required to resolve the positioning of the first 2 pieces is very precise and not easy to discover.  There are also several almost possible rotations, but don’t be tempted to force it.  One of these almost possible rotations is associated with a false assembly.  I’m sure by now that you can tell that I spent a bit of time trying to solve this one.  Getting the last piece in is not difficult, but I liked how the movement worked.

If this is the end of the Picnic Basket series, this was a great final puzzle.  Akaki did an awesome job designing this final challenge and made good use of the diagonally cut cubes.  More final boss puzzles please!

So why did Akaki label Peppermint as Akaki Basket #16 if there were originally 13 picnic basket puzzles?  What happened to 14 and 15?  If I had to guess, one of those is a prior version of Peppermint that Akaki didn’t release because it had an unintended short cut in the solution.  I would guess that the other is:

Nachos Basket by William Hu.

Puzzle designer extraordinaire, William Hu, took up the challenge to create a picnic basket for the series.  Like Peppermint, Nachos uses diagonally cut half cubes.  With 4 pieces instead of 3, it was a bit more difficult to find the piece assembly, especially since there is a lot of void space in the final assembly.  The empty space and angled cuts also make the puzzle fiddly to play with outside the basket when figuring out the moves required to insert them.  The well thought out movements earn this puzzle its difficult rating although I found it quite a bit easier than Peppermint.  More please!

Model files for printing your own copies of Peppermint and Nachos are freely available with the other Picnic Baskets on Akaki's Picnic (basket packing puzzle series) Thingiverse page.

A Tisket A Tasket, Puzzles In – Akaki’s Picnic Baskets

Basket puzzles are all the rage now.  As one Mechanical Puzzles Discord (MPD) member put it, These baskets are like the current beanie babies of the puzzling world.  We had Two Burrs in a Basket by Logan Kleinwaks, 4L Basket and 5L Basket designed by Koichi Miura, 3 Mushroom Basket puzzles designed by Andrey Ustjuzhanin, and now an entire series of Picnic Basket puzzles by Akaki Kuumeri.

There were originally 10 puzzles in the Picnic Basket series and Akaki offered them for sale on his AkakiKuumeri Etsy Shop.  At the same time, he also kindly made the model files freely available on Thingiverse (Akaki's Picnic (basket packing puzzle series)).  Since then he has added 3 more designs and at least 1 more is currently under development.

The picnic basket puzzle descriptions below are in the order that I printed and solved them.  With almost 3 hours required to print each, there is plenty of time to solve each before the next one is ready.  I printed them directly from the Thingiverse STL files and the fit is perfect.  If you turn the basket upside-down the pieces won’t drop until you lightly tap the basket.  Each model also has a looser fitting option if you find that the pieces are coming out too tight on your 3D printer.  The difficulty levels indicated are those provided by Akaki on Thingiverse or Etsy.

Egg Basket – Akaki Basket #6, Medium.  

Of course, before printing the first set of pieces, I needed to print the basket.  I have to say that the fancier basket model is very well done and imparts a huge cuteness factor to the series.  Many members of the MPD proudly display pictures of their printed baskets.  Egg Basket consists of 4 pieces that have to be placed in the basket.  I found it to be easy, but it is a good introduction of how the pieces can be manipulated and inserted into the basket.  The 3 rotational moves are staples for the entire series.

Wine Basket – Akaki Basket #2, Difficult.  

Wine Basket seems to be a favorite on the MDP and for good reason.  It’s a bit more of a challenge than Egg and makes great use of the handle to trap pieces.  I particularly liked the piece that consisted to 2 connected 2x2 blocks.  It interacts nicely with the basket and other pieces. This puzzle itself is worth printing out the basket along with the Wine pieces even if for some reason there was something wrong with you and you weren’t interested in the entire series.

Sandwich Basket – Akaki Basket #10, Difficult.  

Sandwich is a nice example of how pieces have to work with each other.  I didn’t find it that difficult, but it was a nice solve.  The reason I started with Egg, Wine, and Sandwich was the Cubicdissection announcement that these 3 puzzles will be made as a set and included in an upcoming release.  Eric Fuller also indicated on the MPD that the basket for the CD release would be compatible with the puzzle pieces from Akaki’s Etsy shop.  A very nice gesture for those who will want to acquire additional pieces to enlarge the set.  Of course, it would be even nicer to acquire the remaining sets of pieces in different exotic woods.  After having done the entire series, I agree that these 3 make a nice set although I may have been tempted to swap out Egg for one of the more difficult ones, but that’s just my preference.

Subway Basket – Akaki Basket #5, Difficult.  

Unfortunately, I chose to do Subway after Sandwich.  Please avoid doing that.  They are similar and use the same solving method.  The only real difference is that Subway combines 2 of the pieces to make it a 3 piece puzzle.  There is certainly nothing wrong with it, but it was a quick solve for me right after Sandwich.

Coffee Basket – Akaki Basket #9, Medium.  

As a medium puzzle, Coffee Basket is pretty straight-forward.  Nothing really difficult and I didn’t find it as interesting as Egg.  I should mention that I only printed one basket and have been swapping the pieces in and out so there is no real need to skip any of these puzzles when it takes less than 3 hours to print each.  Akaki also provides the option on his Etsy site to buy each puzzle with or without the basket.

Hamburger Basket – Akaki Basket #13, Medium.

Luckily, I had a number of filament colors so that I could print each puzzle in a different color.  Unfortunately, I ended up with some odd things like blue hamburgers.  Hamburger Basket is one of the 3 puzzles added after the first set of 10 on Thingiverse.  Personally, with only 3 pieces and some obvious piece positions, I thought this one was easy.   However, I should add that Hamburger Basket is a favorite on the MPD.
 

Fruit Basket – Akaki Basket #4, Easy.  

When I mentioned to my Non-Puzzling Significant Other (NPSO), a full-fledged member of the Spouses of Addicted Puzzlers (SOAP) club, that I was only planning to make the difficult and medium puzzles, she said WAIT A MINUTE!.  Witness the power of the cuteness factor!  So I had to change my plan and not only make them all, but print one of the easy ones next.  Enter Fruit Basket.  Not expecting much, I set about putting the pieces in the basket and didn’t find it as easy as some of the more difficult puzzles.  It also added another movement in the basket solving arsenal.  I decided that this one was a bit underrated or at least no simpler than some of the medium level puzzles and decided not to offer it as a starting point for my innocent NPSO.

Chicken Basket  – Akaki Basket #12, Medium.  

Chicken is not that difficult and expands on the new move from Fruit Basket.  It also has one more trick up its sleeve to make it interesting.  Just when it looks like it would be trivial, the pieces conspire to get in each other’s way and require you to figure out some additional steps to stuff that chicken in the basket.

Chocolate Basket – Akaki Basket #1, Difficult.

Chocolate Basket is a great design.  The only problem that I had with it is that by this time I was familiar with all the moves required and it was a quick solve.

Salmiakki Basket – Akaki Basket #11, Medium.  

Before now, I’d never heard of Salmiakki.  I assumed that it was some sort of Japanese sushi dish but it turns out that it is a licorice made with salmiak salt.  Who knew?    I found Salmiakki Basket to be tricky and it had me going in circles for a bit.  Just when you think there couldn’t be something new.

Cake Basket – Akaki Basket #8, Easy.  

As the name implies, this one was cake and lived up to its rating.  You could easily skip this one.  However, if you are like me and only printed a single basket for all the puzzles, it’s not really a big deal to print out the pieces for a particular puzzle.  On the MPD there are puzzlers in both camps with some printing a basket for each puzzle or like me a single basket for all the puzzles.  There are some that have even printed out a scaled up copy of the basket to hold the pieces for all the puzzles when not in the official basket.

Ice Cream Basket – Akaki Basket #7, Easy.  

Ice Cream is definitely easy and a nice follow-on to cake.  It even introduces a new type of move, which is impressive considering that it was the twelfth one that I’ve done.  The variety of different types of movements is surprising.  Akaki mentioned that his design process consisted of developing a piece with interesting movements/rotations and then subtracting that piece from the cube space to then be further cut up into other interesting pieces.  Of course, given the interaction among the pieces, this description is a very simplistic summary of a more intricate process.

Vegetable Basket – Akaki Basket #3, Easy.  

And then there was Vegetable Basket.  I found this easy puzzle to be the most difficult of the bunch.  I’m embarrassed to say that I spent more than an hour trying to solve this one.  Although the move count is not high, there are multiple cube assemblies that can be made with the four pieces requiring you to find the correct one as well as put it in the basket.  I kept doing the same things over and over and ending up with the same assemblies that I couldn’t convince myself would go in the basket.  It was insane and I was becoming so myself.  I was pondering a new name like Basket Case for this puzzle.  Thanks to my NPSO for not letting me miss out on the frustration.  For an easy puzzle, I highly recommend this one.

In general, I found the easy puzzles to be a mixed bag with 2 easier than the medium puzzles and 2 harder than the medium puzzles.  The 2 harder ones were so under constrained that they were more difficult to solve.  Unlike some of the difficult ones that were so constrained that they were easy to solve.  I’d certainly be interested in hearing about other people’s experiences with these puzzles in the comments.

Akaki has mentioned on the MPD that he is working on an even more difficult “Boss” puzzle (codename: Peppermint Basket) to cap the series.  Of course, the MPD members have indicated that they don’t want to see the series capped, but continually expanded beyond the “Boss” puzzle.  Other well-known puzzle designers on the MPD, like William Hu, are also considering contributing to the series (codename: Nachos Basket).  I’m looking forward to seeing how this series evolves, especially after seeing some photos involving angled half-cubes.

Finally, a big thank you to Akaki for making the Picnic Basket models available to the puzzle community!

A Non-Conventional Puzzle - Geneva

This puzzle is different!  …  It includes some very unique rotations and coordinate motions!  …  I went back to bashing my head against the desk!

With comments like these (from puzzlers who shall remain blameless), who could resist taking this puzzle for a spin.  William Hu has been producing several new interesting designs lately and his puzzle Geneva is no exception.  In addition to the comments above, the Cubicdissection site also entices you with the warning that the level of difficulty is 9.3.4 and that rotations and coordinate motion are involved.

Geneva was released by Cubicdissection in May 2020.  It is made from Curly Ash and consists of 4 pieces that interlock to form a 4x4x4 cube.  This puzzle is larger than you would expect from recent Cubicdissection releases.  I’m guessing that this was done since there is no fancy joinery and the butt joints would benefit from the additional surface area. 

With only 4 pieces, it’s easy to determine how the pieces would be positioned within a 4x4x4 cube.  Getting them together - therein lies the difficulty.  Interestingly enough, getting 2 of the pieces together, took me a few of minutes.  At first it doesn’t seem possible, and then it was.  Getting all 4 pieces together entails a very well designed rotational sequence.  It is this movement that everyone is thinking about when they comment on Geneva.  It reminded me of something that you would encounter in a Gregory Benedetti puzzle.

You may have noticed that the solved cube has some visible bits missing.  That’s the price you pay for getting that nice rotational sequence.  Some designers add pieces to fill those holes and some don’t.  Jeff Namkung is a good example of a designer who developed some 4x4x4 cubes with voids like this to achieve a higher degree of complexity.

Expect to see more great things from William Hu.  I have a feeling that he is just getting started.

Just Another 6-Piece Burr, Or Is It? - Welded Burr

Just when you think that nothing new can be done with a 6-piece burr, a new design comes out.  I have quite a few puzzles in this particular format.  I like to see how designers transform such an innocuous looking puzzle into a serious challenge that belies its appearance.  So, when Cubicdissection offered Welded Burr by William Hu, I made sure to acquire a copy.  After maturing in my puzzle pile for 6 years, I figured that it had reached its peak character and I pulled it out for a go.

In no time at all, I had separated the puzzle into 3 sets of 2 pieces.  Unfortunately, Eric Fuller apparently had some gluing snafus and the pairs were stuck together.  It was like they were welded together…

The pieces were made from Aformosa and the ends beveled for a nice finished appearance.  Each piece does look like it was made by gluing 2 standard burr pieces together as the name would suggest.

With a level of 4.2 and no rotations, you would assume that this puzzle is not difficult and you would be right.  Even as an assembly puzzle, the characteristics of the pieces hint at how they are paired together.

Joining the pieces together was an interesting take on the 6-piece burr, which makes me wonder if anyone has done an exhaustive search over all possible welded 6-piece burrs to see what new possibilities can be generated.  For all I know, William has already done that and Welded Burr is the result of that search.  If not, it may be worthwhile for someone to take on that challenge.

Welded Burr is a great puzzle to offer to a new puzzler.  With only 3 pieces, a low level of difficulty, and hints for assembly, it is very approachable for just about anyone.  It’s also a good stress reliever to play with if you are having issues solving more difficult puzzles, which is why I pulled this one out of the to-do pile this week.  And you thought that I only pushed the difficult puzzles into the pile.

Instrumental Techniques in Puzzle Design - Accordian

Digging through my treasure chest of unsolved puzzles, I came across Accordian by William Hu.  This puzzle was released by Cubicdissection back in 2014 and has been patiently waiting for some attention.

The puzzle looks like 4 rings surrounding a central bar and is aptly named.  You can grab the ends and pull them apart and then push them back together again.  The rings are made of White Oak and the bar is made of Chakte Viga.  The level 9 solution requires a rotation (did you expect something else with all those rings?) and the tolerances are spot on to accomplish the rotation without any slack in the movement. 

Accordian is all about the rotational sequence required to disassemble the puzzle.  Although the trapped rings move freely along the central bar, you quickly run out of things to do before you start looking for the rotation.  Accordian to the Cubicdissection description, the rotation is very tricky, but I did not find it to be very difficult.  The puzzle really wants to do it and will even start the process for you if you don’t keep a firm hold on the pieces.

Let’s take a moment and hypothesize about what was going through William’s head when he designed this puzzle.  What was his original concept?  Was it form or function?  Did he set out to create something that looks like a cubist’s hotdog or was the original idea based on the accordianesque expanding and collapsing movement? 

Most of the puzzles that I’ve created were designed around a central idea that popped into my head and the rest of the puzzle was built around it to support that idea.  Maybe William came up with the squeezebox movement and built the rest of the puzzle around that.  While we’re fabricating this genesis story, I’d also guess that William started with a 4x4x4 cube and found that he needed to extend the centers outward to support the movement.

From examining the pieces, it looks like one of the end rings attached to the bar could have actually been separated to have 3 freely moving rings.  All it needed was filling in one of the internal voids to keep it from slipping off the end.  This comment comes with 2 big caveats: 1) until you prototype it, it may look like it would work, but there may be some unforeseen issue that would keep it from working; 2) It may not improve the puzzle and could potentially devalue it.  For instance, in this case, you would lose the symmetry of the pieces if only one side had a piece of ring attached.  The decision to minimize the number of pieces that accomplished the desired rotational movement and keep the piece symmetry was probably the correct choice.

Although everything fits very nicely on my copy, the 2 pieces that form one of the ends don’t quite line up.  I’m assuming that this is part of the puzzle aging process and that the puzzle didn’t originally come this way. Luckily, it doesn’t affect the operation of the puzzle.