The Marriage of a Great Design with Great Craftsmanship ‒ Bouquet

When I saw Bouquet, my heart beat a little faster and said “buy, Buy, BUY”.  My wallet said “Whoa Cowboy, puzzles don’t grow on trees you know.  Do you really need another Christoph Lohe puzzle or another puzzle made by Brian Menold?”  What a stupid question!  Of course I do!  And puzzles do come from trees, so there.

I first saw Bouquet at this year’s Rochester Puzzle Picnic (A Decade of Puzzling - RPP 2019).  I only spent a few minutes with it as the event was wrapping up and failed to purchase a copy from Brian before he left.  I’m fairly certain that there aren’t many puzzlers out there that have not regretted passing on an opportunity to acquire a puzzle.  After returning home, I realized what a horrible mistake I made and immediately contacted Brian to acquire a copy.  Luckily, there was one still available.

I really enjoy Christoph Lohe’s designs and have twice in the past selected one of his designs for my top 3 puzzle acquisitions of the year.  Tulip made by Cubicdissection in 2015 and Mimicry made by Pelikan in 2016.  This year it looks like it will include Bouquet made by Brian Menold at Wood Wonders.

Not only is Bouquet a beautiful puzzle, it’s an excellent puzzle.  Brian made several different versions of wood combinations and the one that I chose was made with a Wenge frame and Maple and Paduak pieces.  I thought that this color combination enhanced the image of a flower.  I know that the name is Bouquet but it reminds me more of a corsage with the 2 colors used for the pieces.

This puzzle has a 23.3.5.3.3 level of difficulty.  Taking it apart is not difficult and was a lot of fun figuring out how to manipulate the pieces and remove them from the frame.  It’s amazing how such an open frame can hold the pieces for so many moves.  There is a lot of empty space in the center of the puzzle allowing for a lot of movement of the pieces.  As a general rule, I try not to pay too much attention when taking a burr apart so that I can enjoy it more when putting it back together.

To thoroughly enjoy the assembly process, I left the pieces sitting around for a couple of months before attacking the reassembly.  When I pulled them off the shelf, my initial reaction was that maybe I made a mistake.  I wasn’t sure how the pieces sat in the frame and I had to resist the urge to look at an online picture of the puzzle.  As daunting as it initially looked, it didn’t take long to figure out.  Now all that was left was to figure out which piece go where, what order to add them, and how to move them.  Oh, and its going to take about 23 moves to add that last piece in.

The first thing to realize is that 3 of the pieces are right-handed and the other 3 are left-handed.  This is easy to track in the 2-color version since all the right-handed pieces are one color and all the left-handed pieces are the other color.  For versions that use 6 different types of woods, you have to work a little harder to keep track of them.

For some puzzles with a frame, it is easiest to determine how the pieces are oriented with each other before inserting them within the frame.  This is not one of those.  For me, the best way to tackle this puzzle was to add pieces to the frame one at a time using the frame to hold them in place.  As each new piece gets added, you have to figure out how to manipulate the other pieces to get the new piece in.  Along the way, you may have to reorient a piece or switch the locations of some pieces.  This process is not as bad as you may think since 2 of the Maple pieces are identical and the 3 Paduak pieces are similar to each other. 

I was able to get 5 pieces in fairly quickly, but the last one eluded me.  I had already discovered how the pieces could be manipulated to that last one through the heart of the puzzle if I could only get it started.  I was even able to pull another piece out and test that process.  I just couldn’t figure out how to get both those pieces in at the same time.  Obviously, neither of these pieces were the last to go in and it took some more experimenting to determine which piece that was.  It turned out that the last piece to be added was the one that I put in third and the second to last one was the one I put in first.

This puzzle is another masterful design from Christoph Lohe and I thoroughly enjoyed the solving process.  It generated a great feeling of satisfaction and confirmed that some of the pistons in my old clunker of a brain are still firing.  I’m really glad to add this masterpiece from Wood Wonders to my collection.

Half A Dozen Rhombic Dodecahedrons - Cluster Buster

For puzzlers used to working with cubic dissections, it may be a bit daunting to be presented with a puzzle based on rhombic dodecahedrons.  Rhombic what?  To keep it simple, a rhombus is a diamond (all 4 sides of equal length), dodeca means 12, and hedron means a shape bounded by some number of planes.  So, a rhombic dodecahedron is basically a 12-sided object with diamond shaped sides.  The rhombic dodecahedron also has the nice property that if you have a lot of them (at least a cluster), they will pack together with no empty space between them.

Cluster Buster and Truncated Cluster Buster were designed by Stewart Coffin in 1973 and described in his book, Puzzle Craft, 1985.  Both consist of a cluster of 6 rhombic dodecahedrons that has been dissected into 6 identical pieces.  The truncated version has the 6 outer tips cut off to provide a square face on the outward facing side of each rhombic dodecahedron.  The difference between the two is cosmetic and both operate the same way.  The two objectives are to take it apart and to put it back together.  You might be thinking, Duh!, but these challenges are quite a bit different.

Cluster Buster has 1 sliding axis and you need to position your fingers in very precise positions to pull it apart.  This is more difficult than you would imagine with a well-made version of this puzzle.  There is an alternate method of disassembly, but I wouldn’t recommend it for a nice version of this puzzle.

Getting it back together is an entirely different matter.  It isn’t difficult to determine how the pieces should be oriented for reassembly but trying to hold 6 pieces with two hands makes this an interesting dexterity challenge.  In addition, the pieces have to be perfectly aligned to get them reassembled.  A lot of Coffin designs seem to have this theme.

My version of Truncated Cluster Buster is a 3D printed version from Pacific Puzzleworks that was a gift from John Rausch of Puzzle World.  For a 3D printed puzzle, this one is well made.  However, it is quite a bit easier in both the disassembly and assembly compared to a well-made version in wood.  The rounded edges of the pieces provide the ability to get a hold of the edges instead of having to only used the faces when puzzling it apart.  That combined with the frictionless surfaces of the PLA plastic allow the puzzle to be quickly disassembled.  Similarly, the rounded edges make assembly a bit easier since you don’t have to be as exact in aligning the pieces before putting them together. 

The 3D printed version is a very nice puzzle, but if you want the full experience, I recommend finding one of high quality made in wood to play with.  However, if you’re planning on buying one, a nice one made in wood is going to cost you a lot more than a 3D printed one.  The one from Pacific Puzzleworks is available on Etsy here.

How I Learned to Hate Myself - Licorice +-x

If you’re designing puzzles and your name is not being cursed, you’re doing something wrong. At least this is how I justify all those choice nicknames conferred upon me by my puzzle acquaintances.  Of course, as a puzzle collector myself, I completely understand the love/hate relationship with puzzle designers.  This is the story of how I closed that loop and learned to hate myself.

When I posted about Yukari’s Cube (A Puzzle with No Name – Yukari’s Cube), my good friend Tyler provided some information on research that he performed on the L tromino pieces used to pack a 3x3x3 cubic space.  A polyomino is a shape comprised of cubes (or squares in 2D) attached by their sides and a tromino is simply a polyomino comprised of 3 cubes.  There are 2 possible trominos: one with all the cubes in a row (the I piece) and one creating a corner (the L piece).

Tyler’s analysis was prompted by Roland Koch’s Trilogic puzzle designed in 2003.  Trilogic is comprised of 9 L trominos that make a cube with a checkered pattern on each side of the puzzle.  Roland’s website indicates that this puzzle is easy to moderate in difficulty.  Tyler indicated that the pieces reminded him of licorice.

Since the Trilogic cubes were made from layers of contrasting wood, there are multiple ways that the L trominos could be constructed to make different patterns.  Tyler discovered that due to the checkered pattern of Trilogic, there were only 3 possible constructions of the L trominos that would be valid for constructing the puzzle.

After reading Tyler’s comment, I was immediately inspired to devise the world’s most awesome 9-piece L tromino cube packing puzzle.  My objective was to find a pattern that would expand the number of tromino constructions that could be used.  Instead of starting with the design process, in my excitement, I started making the licorice cubes that would be glued together to make the trominos. 

It turned out that the dimensions that I used for the cube layers look very similar to those used for Trilogic.  This was completely unintentional.  I was originally going to make all the layers the same width, but since I was working with 3/4" stock in a non-metric country, each layer would have been 3/20”, which oddly enough, my 5-piece gauge block set can’t accomplish.  I ended up using 1/8”, 3/16”, 1/8”, 3/16”, 1/8” layers, which my gauge block set could handle. 

Each piece was individually made by gluing the 5 square layers together, sanding the cubes, beveling the edges, and then gluing the cubes together to form the L trominos.  Since the sanding was done somewhat aggressively by hand, the blocks only approximate cubic shapes but won’t hold up to close scrutiny.  This is not the ideal way to make these cubes and is only sufficient to quickly make a prototype for testing.  If you were going to make a large quantity of these, you would probably want to make a nice sheet of 5-layer plywood and then cut it down into cubes.  Unfortunately, I don’t have the equipment for that so I end up using 3/4" x 3/4" red oak and poplar sticks from the local home improvement centers and then chopping them up using a miter saw.

After completing the required 27 cubes needed for the 3x3x3 packing puzzle, they sat around for months waiting for that brilliant design to burst forth from the void.  Try as I might, I couldn’t come up with an interesting pattern that was different from the Trilogic checkerboard pattern that would yield an interesting puzzle.  Interesting being defined as a pleasing pattern for the assembled cube and a unique solution.  Oh, and it would be nice if all the pieces were different.

After a short diversion to work on another puzzle design, the +-x pattern came to mind and I set about testing this pattern and designing the L tromino pieces to make it.  The resulting 9 puzzle pieces consist of 3 sets of duplicate pieces and 3 unique pieces.  The completed cube has a +, -, or x on 3 sides of the cube with the same symbols on the opposite sides.  The puzzle has 2 solutions. 

Now comes the most difficult part of this tale to tell.  I have not been able to solve it.  In fact, nobody in my family has been able to solve it.  Unfortunately, everyone in my home hates the designer of this puzzle including me.  Well, actually my grandson likes to make a cube of the 9 pieces (ignoring the objective pattern) and thinks that we are all crybabies.

Wrong Top Front Corner!

It’s sooooooooo frustrating!  I really can’t recommend it.  It sits on the dining room table and taunts us daily.  I was really close once, where everything was correct except the center of one of the x’s was turned the wrong way.  In fact, we have managed several times to get to the point where 1 cube (center, edge, or corner) is rotated the wrong way.  My wife even managed to build the cube with 2 x’s, 1 +, and 3 -‘s.  Everything, but the objective pattern.  And before you ask, yes, I did check the pieces to ensure that they were correct.  BurrTools has no problem solving it.

Although we are having a problem finding a solution, I know that Tyler will come up with a way to analyze the pieces and derive the solution without trial and error.

This Puzzle’s No Turkey - It’s Chicken

Sometimes when you’re looking for a brilliant puzzle, you end up with a Turkey.  The Chicken puzzle by Olexandre Kapkan, however, is no turkey.  It was made by Eric Fuller at Cubicdissection in 2015 and released in April, which I guess makes it a spring chicken.

Chicken is comprised of 2 legs, a neck, a tail, and the breast.  It also has 2 holes drilled for the eyes and Eric also stuck the drill bit up somewhere else that we’ll discuss later.  It’s obvious that special care went into selecting the woods to represent white meat and dark meat.  The white meat was made from Yellowheart and the dark meat was made from Cherry.  Eric also took extra measures in the joinery of the pieces to make very strong bonds.

Chicken is a level 10.2 puzzle with the objective to dismember it and then stuff everything back in.  The puzzle is not difficult but the movements required to get all the pieces intertwined within the body are interesting.  After a couple of moves you can start to see inside the body and work out how the pieces need to be manipulated.  Basically, after you move the tail you can get a good look up the chicken’s … uh, you get the point.  A lot of fun for a relaxing sitting.

Word went out late that the chicken was primed to dump a heap of trouble upon the recipients.  It looks like a normal puzzle butt it was designed so that when you pull the tail, you got an extra little surprise that falls out.  In my case, the “extra bonus” probably went in the trash with the packing peanuts since this was in the pre-orange box/sack days when puzzles were swimming au natural in Styrofoam peanuts when they arrived.  However, just the thought of Eric hunched over shaping individual artisanal turds still elicits a smile.

Making burr puzzles in the shapes of animals was obviously a hit with Eric since he hasn’t made one since.  Perhaps too many customers cried fowl.  For craftsman level puzzles, animal shapes seem to be more popular with puzzle boxes and sequential discovery puzzles.  It is also seen more with commercially produced puzzles where the shape is probably more of an enticement than the puzzle aspect.

Happy Thanksgiving and take some time to enjoy a puzzle!

Monkey Business - HepTIC

It’s time to put the monkey back in his cage.  We manage to get him inside but his head is sticking out of the side.  After pushing his head in, we notice that he is not comfortable, so we turn him around.  But now his head is sticking out of the front of the cage.  We rock him back into a seated position and make him sit down.  Good monkey!  We place a banana in his lap, and while he is calming down, start to close the cage.  The door ends up right against the banana so we move it to the side.  The now, not so happy monkey, throws the banana, which proceeds to roll on the floor.  As we were closing the door, we pick up the banana and give it back to the monkey as the door clicks shut.

Spoiler Alert!  The prior paragraph is my wife’s solution to HepTIC designed by Andrew Crowell.  As I mentioned in a prior post (5 Is the Magic Number - PenTIC), my wife likes to create stories to remember the solutions to puzzles.  Each piece becomes a character in a thrilling plot with many twists and turns.  Monkey Business is now the official HepTIC solution.  So if anyone asks you how to solve it, you can send them a copy.

My version of HepTIC was beautifully made with exotic woods by Andrew himself.  It is definitely more fun than a barrel of monkeys.  It consists of 4 pieces: cage, monkey, banana, and door.  However, I’m not quite sure why Andrew didn’t use the Yellowheart for the banana.

HepTIC is part of Andrew’s Turning Interlocking Cube (TIC) series with a rating of 7.1.5 and requiring 3 rotations.  According to my wife, the monkey is a wiggler, which accounts for most of the rotations required to get that monkey off your back and into the cage.  Andrew rates this puzzle as having a medium level of difficulty for assembling.  You should definitely attack this zoologist conundrum as an assembly task and not as a disassembly effort.  Letting the monkey out is a lot easier than getting him back in the cage.

A New Spin on Puzzling - Tetra Spinner

“That’s a novel take on packing tetrominoes”.  That was my initial thought when I saw Tetra Spinner while perusing the IPP39 Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition entries.  I was intrigued and looking forward to trying it.

Tetra Spinner was designed by Yasuhiro Hashimoto and Mineyuki Uyematsu and was one of the top ten vote getters in the competition.  I got my chance to try it at the Rochester Puzzle Picnic (A Decade of Puzzling - RPP 2019).

It’s made from plexiglass and consists of a frame and all 5 tetrominoes (i.e., the free ones and not the extra 2 one-sided ones).  Tetrominoe is just a fancy name for a connected shape made from 4 squares in a plane.  Each of the tetrominoes in Tetra Spinner is a different color making it an eye catcher.  However, it’s the frame that gives this puzzle it’s unique appeal.  The frame is comprised of 3 layers of plexiglass.  The outer 2 layers are clear and bolted together through the center.  There is a spacer in the middle around the bolt to keep the two outer layers apart.  The middle layer has the same dimensions as the outer layer but most of the interior has been removed to make room for the tetrominoes.  The center layer can be moved and rotated around the middle but is restricted by the spacer holding the outer pieces.

The objective is to place the five tetrominoe pieces in the middle layer so that the middle layer is centered within the puzzle.  This requires that you move the white plexiglass frame as far as it will go so that you can add pieces to the empty areas that now hang outside the outer layers.  However, the more pieces that you add, the more difficult it is to move the frame of the middle layer.  This requires determining where the pieces need to go within the frame and the order that they need to be added.  Oh, and while you’re doing that, you need to determine how the pieces and frame need to be moved around to accomplish all that.

I didn’t find this puzzle difficult but it was fun to solve.  I didn’t include the photo of the puzzle in the solved state, since it would give away part of the solving process.  It would certainly give away the first piece that would be removed although this should become obvious rather quickly in the solving process.  Yes, that was a hint, but I’m sure you were already thinking about it.  It’s only cheating if you go back 2 sentences and reread it to understand it.

S,Z,J,and L Tetrominoes

Before concluding, I feel compelled to explain the reference to free tetrominoes to save readers the embarrassment of getting caught leaving the puzzle store without paying for tetrominoe related puzzles.  There are 5 tetrominoes if you regard the pieces irrespective of orientation.  These are referred to as free tetrominoes.  There are 7 tetrominoe shapes if you are not allowed to turn them over.  These are referred to as one-sided tetrominoes.  The difference between the free tetrominoes and the one-sided tetrominoes is due to the 2 pieces that can be flipped over to provide a different shape; the S piece becomes the Z piece and the J piece becomes the L piece.

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.