Minima Tower

Toweringly Clever...Definitely Not Minima-lly Challenging

Minima Tower by Frederic Boucher - still available from Pelikan

Last week I reviewed the latest puzzles from Jakub and Jaroslav's Pelikan puzzles site. They went on sale on Thursday and a few very quickly sold out. What really surprised me was that the Minima Tower did not sell at all well and I sort of blame myself a little. I had 7 puzzles to review in just under 2 weeks and all I could do in my review was describe it and tell how great Frederic is. I should have done better and I apologise for that. My only excuse is that I seem to have been working 6 days a week for over a month.

Minima Tower is a packing puzzle from an amazing designer with an incredible track record of fabulous designs. I missed out on getting hold of the complete Minima series from Tye Stahly's Nothing Yet Designs store and am still kicking myself about it ever since it sold out. I was so glad to receive one of the newer designs in the series and really think that you all owe it to yourselves to get a copy as well.

Visitor Q	Jammed Gem (remains unsolved)
Other incredible designs by Frederic

I have taken this one to work with me since Monday and played in evenings as well. Believe me, it is a huge challenge despite having only 4 triominoes to pack inside a 2x2x3 space within a 2x2x4 box. Ultimately, Frederic intended it that the packed pieces form a solid shape at the bottom of the tower almost like a lift in lift-shaft (elevator to the Americans). These would not be any fun if the assembly wasn't restricted by being forced to place the pieces through a 1x2 voxel hole in the top of the lift-shaft. This puzzle is a LOT of fun!

As usual, start outside the box and play with lots of random assembling of pieces. Of course, with such a simple set of pieces, there are a lot of ways to assemble a 2x2x3 shape. Many of the shapes are just very minor alterations of previous ones due to the ability to flip pieces and reassemble with 180º symmetry. Whilst making my shapes, I initially was a little disheartened at the sheer number of shapes to attempt to get inside the box. This was me being silly...Frederic would never leave a puzzle solution mostly down to random trial and error. There would always be a good amount of think©ing involved and this puzzle is no exception. Using this thing called thought© it is possible to completely discount a significant number of assemblies and then home in on what is possible. This finally requires to thinking inside the box and getting fiddly with it.

The box has 5 strategically placed square holes in the side which must be there for a reason. The reason may be either that a piece needs to be protruded through to allow others to move or that the hole facilitates a rotation of a triomino within the tower. The dimensions of the box are tight enough that the required rotations are completely impossible without utilising at least one hole in the cage wall. There are luckily a finger holes in every other position to allow you to manipulate the pieces inside. It is still a bit fiddly. Interestingly, some (in fact almost all) of the rotations that look inviting are impossible to achieve despite the holes. This means that the orientation of the cage when you begin the process is also critical and gives you 4 possible ways to try what you want to do. I had to take some notes to keep track of what I had done.

After 3 days, I had hit a brick wall and wondered whether I was ever going to solve it and then I noticed something very clever. The placement of the holes allows a very interesting move to be carried out and suddenly a whole new area of the assembly was available to me. Oh boy! That Mr Boucher is an evil genius! I can formally pronounce that he joins Derek in the hall of geniuses. I am rather ashamed to say that solving this puzzle took me a whole week of attempts and a fair bit of swearing under my breath. The solution is nothing short of beautiful. Even the great Dr Latussek has agreed that utilising holes in the side of the box for fun puzzle assembly adds an interesting dimension to solving a puzzle and if he says so then everyone should agree.

Finally I can show off the completed puzzle:

Solved at last. No real spoilers here.

This puzzle is absolutely fabulous! If you didn't buy it because I hadn't managed to review it properly then I apologise. Go back to the Pelikan site and add it to your collection. 

Now, I really must get hold of a few more of the Minima series - Frederic has said that he is designing a whole bunch more.