Nickel Box

Nickel Box

In honour of the recently concluded 32nd International Puzzle Party in Washington DC I thought I should review a puzzle that is significantly more than just ordinary. One day I hope that I might be invited to join the great and the good in the puzzling world at an IPP and to show that I am a serious collector of "beautiful and tough puzzles", I introduce the Nickel Box!

Quite a few blind ends!

I have been playing with this on and off for a couple of weeks and have solved it today (at least half solved it). I bought this from the Arteludes webstore. This is a french-based site run by Jean-Baptiste Jacquin which I was able to browse easily courtesy of the built in translation from the Chrome browser (my French is pretty poor)!! For international customers you need to contact Jean-Baptiste himself and he is very helpful. The puzzles on this site are beautiful and most (if not all) have been crafted by the superb Maurice Vigouroux (my copy of the incredibly tough 150 move 18 piece burr, the Tiros, was made by him and is available on the site too - Allard reviewed Tiros here). I couldn't resist it and bought it and another puzzle at the same time!

This puzzle was initially designed by Donald Osselaer and Stephane Chomine added the ornamentation to make it harder. Limited to only 20 copies, it is a caged burr measuring 7.5cm on each axis and is surprisingly heavy (400g) due to the use of Ebony as its main component. The burr pieces are made of Purpleheart in my copy but it is also available as Padauk. The burrs are carved from a single piece of wood with no gluing used at all. The embellishments to the burr pieces and box are made from Beech. Even the present Mrs S (doing ok for a first wife!) immediately said that it was stunning and actually allowed it to sit on the coffee table in the living room for a few days before returning it to my study - this is a major feat for her!!

Without the colouring provided by the Beech dowels there 19,344 possible assemblies of these pieces of which 1914 can actually be achieved. The toughest achievable assembly is enforced by the use of the extra colours/Beech dowels. This limits the possibilities to 3 assemblies and only one actually achieveable! It does not arrive with a solution and before you go looking at Ishino's Puzzle will be Played for it, I have to tell you that it is incorrect!!! If you look at the top picture in the solution then you will see that the frame is drawn incorrectly. This means that YOU HAVE TO SOLVE IT YOURSELF!!! I understand that you can request a burrtools file from Arteludes - if you can stand the humiliation!!

This puzzle has a solution level of 68 - so it must be easy right? Oh no! It requires 28 moves for the first piece extraction, then 18 for the second and an amazing further 17 for the third! The final pieces come out easily after that. Whilst 28 moves should not be tremendously difficult, there are dozens of false starts and blind alleys to go down making this a really really tough puzzle. It took me 2 weeks of attention to get the first piece out and then several more days before I finally managed to extract the rest.  Even after 2 pieces had been removed, I was staggered at how difficult it was to get the third out!

Finally 7 beautiful pieces!

What about reassembly? OMG!! You have got to be joking. Even on the Arteludes site it gives the reassembly a staggeringly high 10/10 difficulty level! The disassembly was a paltry 8/10! By now you all realise that I just love using Burrtools (from our great puzzle friend Andreas Röver) and consider this an integral part of my enjoyment of any new burr puzzle. I have created a couple of files (with and without the colouring) and confirmed the number of solutions/assemblies. Whilst the colouring and a memory of the order of extraction allowed me to remember which pieces go where but there was no way I was going to manage it alone. I have reassembled it with my Burrtools solution and plan to take it apart a few more times before I attempt a non-assisted reconstruction!

If anyone would like the burrtools file then just drop me a note.

If you have some (quite a lot really!) spare cash for a puzzle and a work of art then definitely get this puzzle! It is beautiful, difficult (but not horrific) and well worth the outlay. It is limited edition and may not be available for long.

I love it!!!