Don’t Give Up - COP OUT 1, 2, 3

Some people go to great lengths to protect their pennies and Alan Lunsford has made it his mission to help these people.  Through his Etsy shop, layerbylayerpuzzles, Alan offers fiendish devices that you can use to safely store your pennies.  Alan is so confident in his product that he actually sends them out with an entrapped penny and dares you to remove it.  These devices are called COP OUT 1, COP OUT 2, and maybe you can guess it, COP OUT 3.  All 3 are 3D printed with a dark green box with light grey sliders and sold together as a single set.  I like how Alan priced the puzzles with a nice round dollar figure and then added 3 cents to cover the pennies used.

I don’t normally like blind mazes but the COP OUT puzzles don’t leave you in the dark for too long.  Alan has done an excellent job of engineering each of them so that you don’t have to keep flailing in the dark. 

COP OUT 1

On quick inspection, the case appears pretty solid, there is window with Abe Lincoln peering out, and 2 tabs that look like they can be pulled.  As you’re looking at the penny, it’s obvious that it won’t come out through the window.   However, on the side you can see a slot that is big enough for a penny to escape.  Now all you have to figure out is how to move the penny from the window to the exit.

Given the size of the COP OUT box and the size of the penny, you quickly realize that there is a lot of space that can be exploited to confound the puzzler.  Add to that some moving parts and you have a recipe for a good time.

I don’t think that it’s much of a spoiler to mention that you will need to pull on the tabs.  After all, they arrive with a rubber band on them to keep them from being pulled out and putting the penny in play.  Pulling that first piece sets the penny in motion and the second move makes it disappear like a magic trick!  Now it’s a blind maze and you have to rely on audible clues to determine how you are progressing through the maze.

Eventually, the penny will pop out of the exit.  Yes, even if you randomly pull, flip, shake, spin, and take a hammer to it, the penny will eventually escape.  I dare you not to drop the penny.

The real trick to this puzzle is to figure out how the internal mechanism works so that you can release and reset the penny as efficiently as possible.  If you are like me, the first time that the penny is released, you will be saying to yourself, “how did that happen”.  It took me almost a dozen attempts before I had a solid understanding of what was going on to reliably solve and reset the puzzle.

COP OUT 2

Unlike COP OUT 1 where it’s easy to get the penny to disappear, It seems impossible to get the penny to go away in COP OUT 2.  Peering into the window you can get half of an idea of what you need to do.  I tried to take a lockpicking approach to solve this one and wasn’t too successful.  It would occasionally start to jam, but I made sure not to force it and completely jam the penny.  It was then that I realized that a significant clue was provided and with that flash of insight, I solved it immediately.  It’s a brilliant Aha moment.  Once you know how to solve this one, it is very easy to repeat both the solve and the reset.  Unlike COP OUT 1, you know immediately what is going on and you don’t have to do it multiple times to figure out how it works.

COP OUT 3

COP OUT 3 adds a large helping of confusion, a dash of humor, and a pinch of trickery.  I started this one like the other 2 and immediately got stumped once the penny was out of sight.  To make things more difficult, there are other metallic components rattling within the box along with the penny.  I spent quite a while trying to figure out the internal mechanism as various attempted things appeared to change the movement of the internal components.  The Aha moment on this one is terrific.  Very sneaky.  Never saw it coming.  Like COP OUT 2, once you have it figured out, the solve and reset are easily repeatable.

I could have sat down and solved all 3 at once, but I like to spread them out and did 1 a day for 3 days in a row.  They’re quick solves, but they’re fun, and it’s nice to have a bit of fun for as many days as possible.  I’d recommend that you do the same.

A Whole New Level of Puzzle Abuse - Completely Broken Soma

The Soma cube has recently taken a lot of abuse as it’s pieces have been squashed, skewed, shrunk, amputated, and otherwise transmuted.  The latest tragedy is the Completely Broken Soma.  It is the most horriblest puzzle ever excreted from a severely deranged mind.  The scourge to be reviled in the anals of history, loathed by collectors and craftsmen alike.

Yup, if there were truth in puzzle advertising, this would surely accompany the Completely Broken Soma.  After some minor tweaking by Marketing, it will end up with something like:  An heirloom puzzle, surely to be treasured for generations.  It provides a fun challenge that will continue to amaze and amuse you. 

Do we really need another Soma puzzle with broken pieces?  I decided that if I was going to break another Soma, I would do it right once and for all.  The Soma pieces would be so butchered and unrecognizable, that I decided to name this new masterpiece, the Completely Broken Soma.  Each piece would have half of ALL it’s cubies removed requiring the puzzle to have 2 skeletal versions of each piece.  And, of course, you won’t be able to simply join the 2 versions of each piece together.  

Since every piece is half of a Soma piece, there are now 14 pieces.  Ok, this is already a bad idea.  14 pieces is just too many to expect anyone to solve.  Now comes the marketing.  How can we recover from committing this most heinous crime?  How can we salvage this calamity to make it the most desirable puzzle acquisition for 2020?  Noticed how I slipped that proverbial “we” in there? 

Maybe we could glue intersecting pieces into pairs again to get back to 7 pieces.  As it turns out, the pieces of the Completely Broken Soma naturally mate in pairs, but please don’t expect more Completely Broken Somas.  Of course, these 7 pairs look like hybrids of 2 Soma pieces, which they are.  The pairs have anywhere between 1 and 4 half cubes sticking out of them.  In fact, once the cube is assembled, it naturally disassembles into these 7 pairs and you can just treat it as a 7-piece puzzle.

Maybe the half-cubes can be made with exotic woods that make a pattern that provides hints on where the pieces go.  For instance, with 2 types of wood, it could be made into a checkered cube.  Or it could be made with corners of one type of wood, face centers a second type, and edges a third type.  The center can reuse one of the wood types such as the one used for the edges or it can be its own fourth type.  Of course, there is always the possibility of making an even easier version with 27 different types of wood, where only each half-cube and it’s mate would be the same.  This would be a very lovely puzzle and probably within the grasp of most puzzlers.  Who wouldn’t want a copy of that?

It’s not easy to completely break something.  BurrTools choked on this travesty for 18 hours before it finally found a set of pieces that would make a cube and another hour after that to find a cube that could be disassembled.

At this point it was all conjecture on how difficult this puzzle really was, so I made the 2-color version.  10 minutes later, I marked the pieces where the third color would be.  Not long after, I identified and marked the 2 half-cubes that comprise the center cube.  With the, now 4-color version, I was able to solve it pretty quickly.  Yes, I was pretty lazy, and had I been playing with a nicely crafted puzzle, I would have stuck with it longer than my ugly version with post-its stuck all over it.  

It’s amazing how that fourth color makes all the difference. Since there is only one cube with that color, it’s an immediate win and something you can hang your hat on.  Without it, nothing is certain.  My current feeling, is that the 3-colored version probably has the right level of difficulty and the 2 half-cubes that make the center can be provided as a hint if needed.

If you were reading carefully, you noticed that I indicated that this puzzle would be despised by craftsmen as well.  I’m guessing that making the pieces of this puzzle would fall into the difficulty category with all those small gluing surfaces.  My biggest concern was that the pieces would be difficult to make and someone might break them.  As the name implies, the puzzle shouldn’t be broken any further, it’s completely broken as is. 

It may not be obvious, but I specifically designed the pieces so that each glue joint could be clamped.  When I made the pieces for my prototype, I used BurrTools to put it together.  This allowed me to look at a very lumpy looking cube.  Recalling a bit of advice from Stickman, I put the cube in the microwave for a bit to loosen the glue and them clamped it for a few hours.  After unclamping, I had a proper looking cube and a nice set of pieces.  Although my kitchen microwave is my go-to shop tool, this is probably not true for most craftsman.

So now that we finally have a nice design, will you see this puzzle available in the future?  I don’t have a definitive answer to that.  It may be a hard sell to get a craftsman to take this one on.  Of course, a lot of this is driven by demand.  If you would be interested in seeing the Completely Broken Soma made, let me know and I'll check if someone is willing to make it. 

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

PatheTIC is another wonderful Turning Interlocking Puzzle (TIC) developed by Andrew Crowell.  It consists of large cage piece and 6 smaller pieces that fit within the cage.  3 of the pieces are what I call filler pieces and can be taken out in a single move.  The other 3 perform the rotational dance that makes these TICs so appealing.  The version that I have was 3D printed by Andrew with a yellow cage and green pieces.  I didn’t find this puzzle difficult, but the rotations were very satisfying.

However, PatheTIC has a dark side.  I really couldn’t remember why this wonderful TIC was named PatheTIC.  After all, I received these puzzles last year and have been really good at restraining myself to solving only one a month.  I went back and looked at Andrew’s email and there it was: PatheTIC has 2 solutions, a pathetic non-TIC solution which only requires 11 moves... and the PatheTIC solution which requires 20+ moves and several rotations.

I don’t know about you, but when I find a solution, that puzzle is solved - Done!  If a puzzle can be assembled in thousands of different ways, I’m not the type of person who has to discover all of them.  In this case however, since there was only 1 TIC solution and only 1 non-TIC solution, I figured that someone was bound to call me out if I didn’t find both.

I now had to go back and find the non-TIC alternate solution.  Of course, the first question you ask yourself is how different are the 2 solutions.  Are all the pieces in different positions or just a subset.  Maybe only 2 pieces have to be swapped.  It probably took me as much time to find the non-TIC solution as the TIC solution.  You can just refer to this as the Muggle solution since it lacks the magic of the TIC solution.  Yes, I’m reading HP again.  Sorry for that.

If a person unfamiliar with TICs attempted this puzzle, they would most likely find the non-TIC version.  For someone like myself, who has done a lot of these TICs, a lot of rational moves are expected and not avoided.  Instead of thinking it looks impossible to get this piece at that location, we search for ways to rotate pieces to get them there.  It’s a different mindset.

So, is this puzzle a TIC or not?  And how many other non-TIC puzzles are out there that have an alternate TIC solution that BurrTools could not find a solution for?  For me, I was lucky and discovered the TIC solution first, so this was definitely a TIC for me.  For you, it may be different.

This is the 8th post of the monthly Andrew Crowell Rotations and Obstructions Series - Turning Interlocking Cubes (ACROSTIC).  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

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.

Starting With The Seed Of An Idea - Begonia

Back in 2012, when puzzlers were puzzlers and packing puzzles were packing puzzles and not those new-fangled hoity-toity 3-piece pack jobs where you have to rotate your piece where the sun don’t shine, a seed of an idea bloomed in the corner of Yavuz Demirhan’s mind.  This seed eventually grew into our 3 dimensional reality with 3 petals.  Each 4x4 petal occupied its own plane of existence except for where the planes met.  Yavuz divided the 3 petals into 8 pieces, 4 planer and 4 non-planer, and left only the seed in place within the frame of reference.  He named his creation, Begonia.  And it was good!

Cubicdissection released Begonia in 2013 and did an excellent job in making these puzzles from Walnut and Rosewood.  The Walnut frame is solidly built and has the same thickness as the Rosewood pieces.  It also has Rosewood splines that add a nice touch.  However, the splines are very subtle and tend to blend in with the rest of the frame depending on the lighting.  All the external edges of the frame are slightly beveled to give them a nice feel.  All the pieces are beveled as well and move nicely within the frame, which is very important if you end up moving them for hours like I did.

The objective of Begonia is to fill the 36 empty spaces within the open frame with the 8 pieces comprised of 36 cubies.  This is easier said than done.  I found myself doing the same things over and over while trying to avoid performing a completely boring brute force search.  I compromised and selected one of the planer pieces to always start with and checking all the ways that it could lie within the plane.  There are 2 main facts that I used to recognize futile attempts.  The 4 non-planer pieces have to be placed where the planes meet and the 3 empty spaces furthest from the inner corner have to be occupied by planer pieces.

I wish I could say that I used some brilliant deductive reasoning to discover the solution to this puzzle, but that’s just wishful thinking.  If the objective was to put 7 pieces in and have the remaining space match one of the already placed pieces instead of the 8th one I was holding, I think I found all of those solutions.

What makes Begonia so difficult is that there is a single solution and many ways to insert 7 pieces without getting the last one in.  Just for fun, I plugged it into BurrTools and found that there are 50,023 ways to put in 7 pieces without getting the last one in.  That made me feel a little better that it ONLY took me a couple of days to find the solution.

If you find yourself getting frustrated while trying to find the solution to Begonia, you could always back off and find one of the 2811 ways to build a 3x3x4 rectangular parallelepiped.  It’s much easier.  You may even be tempted to find all 2811 solutions before finding the sole solution to Begonia.

For the record, I do like those new-fangled hoity-toity 3-piece pack jobs and I’ve enjoyed solving many of them over the years.

The Bane of All Cubes - Cubane

As if the bane of all cubes wasn’t enough, Cubicdissection has announced that they are looking to release Cubane II in the near future pending the development of a successful prototype.  This got me thinking that maybe I should solve Cubane I, or just Cubane as it was called when released, before the second one comes out.

Cubane was designed by Masumi Ohno and released by Cubicdissection in 2015.  It was available in 3 different wood combinations and the one that I have is made with Shedua and Bloodwood.  A version made from Wenge and Padauk was entered in the 2015 Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition, although that version was not as well-made as the one from Cubicdissection.

The puzzle consists of two pieces: a frame and a shuttle.  The objective is the remove the shuttle from frame.  There is a well identified starting point that aligns a magnet on the shuttle with a magnet on the frame to keep it in place until you start.  The 2 sides of the shuttle are held together by a dowel on one side, while the other side has a larger dowel that sticks out but does not span the distance between the 2 sides of the shuttle.  The sides of the frame have cuts in them to let the smaller dowel pass through, notches that permit the larger dowel to pass through, and rounded edges that allow the shuttle to be rotated by 90 degrees.  Each edge of the frame supports up to 5 of these mechanisms.  The exit point is easy to identify since it is a combination of a cut and a notch that allows both ends of the shuttle to pass.

With the frame cut in 4 places, you may think that it might be flimsy.  However, Cubicdissection has taken great pains to make solid joints to avoid that from happening.  It would be possible to make a fifth cut, but that may be pushing it.

With 12 edges on the frame and 16 ways that the shuttle can reside on each edge, there are 96 possible states that Cubane can be in (+1 for when the shuttle is removed).  Of course, not all states can be reached, making the number of obtainable states smaller.  I didn’t make a state map, but none is really needed and it doesn’t take long to solve.

Is it really the bane of all cubes?  Nah!  But it's really clever and fun to fiddle with.  The first few minutes of the puzzle are the best.  This is where you explore the different ways the shuttle can move and pass between the edges.  I won’t include any spoilers here on the different ways that may occur, but it is very clever.

I’m looking forward to seeing what new features Cubane II will offer.  The fifth edge cut?  Octagonal edges?  45-degree rotations?  Cross-bars?  Oh my!

A Pox On You - Pox Box

What better time to pull out and play with the Pox Box than during a pandemic.  Why not open up a box with such a label?  How much worse can it get?  Pandora would be proud.

Maybe the word pox has some benign meaning that I’m not familiar with and to be fair, I decided to look it up.  I found 2 definitions for pox in the Mirriam-Webster dictionary: 1) A virus disease characterized by pustules or eruptions, and 2) A disastrous evil: plague, curse.  I’m not sure which of these 2 lovely definitions inspired the name of this puzzle, but it didn’t seem to be as bad as the name implied.

Pox Box Piece on
Top of Pox Box Box

Contrary to what you would think from the name, this beautiful puzzle is fairly innocuous.  It was designed by Yavuz Demirhan and made by Cubicdissection.  It consists of a box made from heavily pockmarked Birdseye Maple and 4 Sapele pieces that erupt like pustules from the face of the box (work with me here, I’m really trying to justify the name of this puzzle).  The Birdseye maple used for this puzzle is spectacular.  The splines that were added around the box are very nicely implemented using concave rounded bottoms.  The extra work done to add a veneered piece of wood to the tops of the pieces looks fantastic.  It hides the joinery that is normally visible on these types of pieces.

Yes, it’s a puzzle with a box and even has box in the name.  No, it’s not a puzzle box.  It’s a packing puzzle, so the objective is the remove the pieces and put them back in.  Although Pox Box has a level of 7.14.7, it is not difficult.  You’ll notice that as you take the pieces out, they all have the same shape.  That certainly makes things easier.  Not only that, but you will quickly realize that the pieces can only reside in the box in one orientation.  Wow!  The only thing that you have to do is find the order to put the pieces into place.

When the box is finally empty, you can see that there is a shape glued to each side of the box to frustrate the movement of the pieces.  I’ll refer to them as frustrations.  You will notice that they are securely glued to the inside of the box and you can’t take them with you.

In less than 2 minutes of fiddling, I had all 4 pieces in, except one of the pieces was slightly off and couldn’t be put in place.  It may look close to solved, but it’s not.  I took all the pieces out and then experimented with how each would be able to move given the frustrations and how the other pieces would block movements.  After a reasonably quick analysis, it was fairly simple to get them back into their proper locations.

If you are new to this type of puzzle and want to give one a try, this is a great one to start with.  Don’t let the name scare you off.