Put It To The - Side Lock

It had been awhile since I’ve played with an Andrew Crowell puzzle, so I headed over to the arcWoodPuzzles shop on Etsy to see what’s new.  Andrew is a prolific puzzle designer and there’s always something new.  Amongst the fine selection of puzzles, I discovered several intriguing burr lock puzzles and decided to give them a try.  The first of the two that I selected was Side Lock.

The first thing that surprised me when the puzzles arrived was how big they were.  They were twice as big as I was expecting, providing a nice heft for 3D printed puzzles.  The puzzle consists of the frame and 6 other pieces: 4 short burr pieces, the longer burr side piece, and the shackle.  As expected from puzzles 3D printed by Andrew, the fit and movement of pieces is excellent.  The puzzle is also quite attractive, made using a marble-like filament for the frame and shiny blue, green, and purple filament for the pieces.

Since Side Lock arrived assembled and my preference is to attack these types of puzzles as assembly challenges, I quickly disassembled it and planned to leave the pieces untouched for a couple days while any vestiges of piece movement memory quickly decayed.  Quite honestly, at this point in my life, anything over 5 minutes is overkill.  A couple of months later, I found the pieces and attempted the reassembly.

With an empty frame and 6 pieces, I began tackling the reconstruction of Side Lock.  There is a feature within the frame that matches one of the pieces thus revealing the location of the first piece.  With the location of the first piece known, the location of the next piece becomes obvious.  At this point, I’m thinking, “This is easy, only four more pieces to go!”.  However, this was the end of Easy Street forcing me to kickstart that old clunker of gray matter.  Where once the old brain could breeze through these problems, I can now feel it wheeze through the process.  Eventually, the pieces found themselves in the shape of a lock once again.

I really like these lock shaped burrs and at 19 moves to remove the first piece, it’s a nice little challenge.  The one thing that I would like to see changed with the puzzle is to have the name debossed on the outside instead of on the shackle hidden in the frame.  I like to be able to reference the name without having to disassemble the puzzle.  However, I realize that this is my personal opinion and that there are people that don’t care to have the outside of their puzzles defaced with any type of lettering.

Ending With a Beginning - CagedTIC 1

This is the 12th and final post of the monthly Andrew Crowell Rotations and Obstructions Series - Turning Interlocking Cubes (ACROSTIC).  A year ago, I decided to do a post every month during 2020 of one of Andrew’s TIC puzzles after buying a large batch of them.  Of course, I acquired many more of them during the year and the later posts are of more recent acquisitions.  You can tell from the newer acquisitions that Andrew has the 3D printing process figured out and the quality of his puzzles has become excellent.  

CagedTIC 1 is a perfect puzzle to end this series on.  It looks great, it’s difficult, and the “1” seems to indicate that there will be more to follow!  Did I mention that it’s difficult?  Even though I almost always recommend that you receive these puzzles disassembled, you can get this one assembled if you want.  It’s a challenge to even get all the pieces out of the frame.

So let’s get into it.  The puzzle fits within a 5x5x5 cubic area.  The simple frame comprises all of the cubes edges and is made from a marble PLA with the name of the puzzle debossed on one edge.  The 7 pieces that get packed into the frame are made from a light blue PLA and Andrew’s name is debossed on one of them.  The packed pieces leave the center of each of the 6 cubic faces unoccupied to make a pleasant design.  The pieces fall into 3 categories.  

Pieces 1-3

The first 3 are filler pieces that serve as spackle to construct that attractive final shape and each can simply be pulled from the puzzle in a single move.  However, the filler pieces do serve an important function for the puzzler.  They help identify how the other pieces need to be oriented within the frame.

Piece 4

The fourth piece is not difficult to remove but can’t be pulled out in a single move.  It also requires a rotation to extract it from the cage.  

Pieces 5-7

The final 3 pieces are the real challenge.  With only 3 pieces left to remove, you would think that it would be easy to just shake them out.  However it is far from easy and, needless to say, requires several rotations to accomplish.  It’s not even easy to determine which of those pieces need to come out first.  I wasn’t certain which one it was until I managed to free it.  Removing the remaining 2 pieces is not that difficult.

I had originally taken the puzzle apart when I first received it and didn’t tackle the reassembly until months later, leaving me with a good challenge.  Of course, I easily got 6 pieces in without one of the difficult trio and them spent quite a bit of time trying to get the trio established within the frame.  Of course, I had to take it apart again for the blog photos and struggled again to get the trio back out.  I know how those 3 pieces have to go within the frame but it’s a struggle every time.  Brilliant puzzle!

Although this is the last of the monthly series of TICs from Andrew Crowell, never fear.  I’m a fan of Andrew’s puzzles and I’ll certainly be including more of them in next year’s posts.  I’d like to thank Andrew for his awesome and prolific output of TICs and other puzzles over the last couple of years and look forward to seeing what the future brings.  I hope these TIC posts have inspired some of you to try and enjoy Andrew’s puzzles.  He usually has some available on his Etsy shop, arcWoodPuzzles, if you are looking for them.

You can find the prior posts of the series here:

January: Puzzling DNA - GeneTIC

February: TIC, TIC, TIC - PackTIC II

March: Green Beer ‘ill Cure What Ails Ya - BioTIC

April: The Proper Way to Solve a Puzzle - PedanTIC

May: Will This One Really Be Better Than The Others? - SkepTIC

June: Space, The Final Frontier - MagellanTIC

July: Hanging in Suspense - PackTIC V

August: Fantastic 20+ Move TIC with an 11 Move Non-TIC Alternate Solution - PatheTIC

September: I Had This Feeling That I Was Going To Like This Puzzle - MystTIC

October: A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy - Fantastic

November: Puzzle Candy - ThreeTIC, TriadTIC, TripleTIC, NeuroTIC, TriumviraTIC

Mesmerized by - HypnoTIC

Every once in a while, someone declares that the 4x4x4 cubic dissection puzzle format has been exhausted and that there is nothing new to be discovered in that space.  However, Andrew Crowell has become the most recent champion of 4x4x4 cubic dissection puzzles with not just one or two new designs but many, and more to come.

HypnoTIC is my favorite of Andrew’s Turning Interlocking Cube (TIC) puzzle designs so far.  It consists of 5 pieces with each piece requiring rotational moves to be released, even though one piece comes out by rotating another. 

I ordered this puzzle directly from Andrew and had it sent unassembled to get the full enjoyment from the solving process.  All the rotations add to the fun in determining the relationships between the pieces and the order of assembly.

What really amazed me about this puzzle is one particular piece that needs an amazingly complex rotation to release it.  I was doubly amazed when Andrew told me that he developed a computer program to design these puzzles and that this rotation was indeed a product of that program.  This rotation is not easy to discover and I’ve even taken the piece out in front of others to then enjoy seeing them try to get it back in.

Nice alternate assembly
if you can't solve the rotations

Another thing that I liked about this puzzle is that at the beginning of the assembly there is a perfectly plausible looking piece orientation that could entice you in the wrong direction.  I know this, of course, since I had the joy of experiencing it myself.  I hope you get to enjoy the experience as well!  If you find yourself at your wit’s end, consider doubting the placement of pieces that you consider obvious.

In addition to coming up with fantastic designs, Andrew does a great job of crafting the puzzles from exotic woods.  My HypnoTIC puzzle was made by Andrew in Wenge and White Oak with dowels reinforcing key joints.  Andrew made an effort to have dark dowels for the Wenge pieces and light dowels for the Oak pieces but I think with the two-color scheme that it would have looked nicer with contrasting colors: light dowels for the dark pieces and dark dowels for the light pieces.

Andrew sells puzzles on his arcWoodPuzzles Etsy shop, but has been coming up with so many designs that he is now selling STL files for a nominal fee for puzzlers to 3D print their own copies.  If you don’t have a 3D printer, Andrew will print a copy for a reasonable fee.  The last time I checked the fee was between $15 and $20, which is solidly in the no-brainer category and a reminder that I need to go shopping again.  Andrew has also posted some of his designs for free on Thingiverse.

For those of you that crave exotic wood masterpieces and 3D printed puzzles just won’t do, in addition to getting them directly from Andrew, Brian Menold at Wood Wonders is doing an excellent job of offering puzzles of Andrew’s designs.  Wood Wonders provides finely crafted puzzles in exotic woods of many of the top puzzle designers and puzzles usually sell out very fast when they are released on his site.

A word of warning when ordering puzzles at Wood Wonders in the first few minutes that new puzzles are released – A puzzle is not reserved for you until you COMPLETE the purchase process.  Multiple people can have the same puzzle in their cart, but the first person that completes the sale, gets the puzzle.  The others will be informed that the puzzle is unavailable when they try to complete the purchase.  You need to enter this process treating it like a competition.  Speed is of the essence and if you need to take time reading all the descriptions, you are at a distinct disadvantage.  If there is a puzzle that you really need to have, complete the purchase as soon as you add it to your cart without further browsing.  If you need to take your time and browse through the selections, resolve yourself to potentially losing selections from your cart.  Recognizing the immense popularity of Andrew Crowell's puzzles, Brian has been making larger runs of his puzzles to accommodate demand and alleviate availability issues.  Good luck and may all your selections be available!

You can read Kevin's experience with HypnoTIC here.