Girish's Wooden Entanglement Puzzles

Twisted Rabbit by Girsh Sharma made by Brian Menold

Last week I reviewed a fabulous assembly puzzle designed by Girish Sharma (Shiba Inu) from Pelikan (2 still in stock) and marvelled at the amazing way he is able to create burrs as assembly puzzles that are accessible to the average puzzler (although still very difficult) and very interesting in their challenge and design. Shortly before the Pelikan puzzles arrived, I received a lovely little batch of beauties from Brian Menold's Wood Wonders store. When they were announced, I had to force myself to decide on just a few to add to the collection because I can no longer see even a hint of my desk and the piles of puzzles to be solved are starting to get embarrassingly large in several other rooms of the house much to the disgust and anger of "someone else" who lives here. She has just said that I remind her of those hoarders that we see on TV occasionally living in filth. I did have to protest that they are all very clean which earned me a stare and an implied threat.

Not only does Girish design burrs but he also designs Turning Interlocking Cubes (TICs) which have gotten more and more complex over the last few years. Some of them are quite fearsome in their complexity. There were 3 in Brian's recent release and I got them all.

First up was Snake Eyes - I had thought that having only 2 pieces, it might be a nice starter, slightly easier puzzle to begin with having not done any TICs for a while. The copy I received was made from Cerejeira and Movingui which made a beautiful contrast. The international postal service had broken a joint on mine and I was delayed in my play by having to glue it back together again. Interestingly, there is only one way the 2 pieces can be interlocked into each other which is always helpful at first and then I  realised that there were lots of possible rotations that can be done. I started moving them about and getting increasingly worried that I will never get them apart again when I found that I had gone in a full circle and they fell apart on me. That was unexpected! Try again and yet again they rotated around each other in a full circle before finding myself at the beginning. I was obviously missing a move (or 2 or 3 or ...). In fact, this reminded me very much of quite a few of the wire disentanglement puzzles I have played with over the years. Lots of moves that I struggle to remember before ending up at the start. Frustrating but fun. Having done Einstein proud by repeating the same thing over and over again, I finally had enough memory of my moves to be able to recognise my path and also explore ways to get off that path. Several of them ended up nowhere but finally after about 2 days of fiddling, I got my Aha! moment. It is lovely - just 2 pieces and yet so very clever:

Two Twisted rabbits intertwined...at last

Next up was the 3 piece TIC released at the same time (also by Girish) - Snake Eyes

Snake Eyes by Girish and Brian

This version is made using Cerejeira, Wenge and Sipo. I expected this to be a significant step up in challenge and was not disappointed. Brian wrote this:

"Lots of moves and rotations. I think I lost track of the rotations at 9 and the moves at 30! A really fun challenge always has lots of rotations. This puzzle holds up its end in that regard."

3 pieces means that you need to make a choice where to start and I chose wrongly at first because I'm an eejit. I should have picked the 2 pieces that had a restricted way of being introduced. Luckily I realised my error quickly. The two critical pieces can be entangled in 2 ways but just thinking about the end position (of which there are 2 possibilities) narrows it down. Yes, I used thought© not random trial and error to choose my starting positions and then started rotating. Oh boy! There are a LOT of rotations! I lost count well before the 9 that Brian did. Thinking that I might have gone too far, I backtracked to the beginning a few times until, at one point, I found that I couldn't get back to the start. I was fully committed to this puzzle now. It needed another 2 days to find my way through - and that was just those two starting pieces! Yet again, Girish has designed a wooden entanglement puzzle here with more constraints than a wire one has. It is marvellous! Once I had the first two pieces correctly placed, it was obvious where the final one went and only a bit of work to back track to make space and then sequentially lock them all together:

3 pieces make my cube - the Snake eyes are visible

I have some serious concerns about being able to take it apart again. I have absolutely no idea how I did it! Yay! Brilliant fun - always looking for more from this great pairing of craftsman and designer.

Yesterday was the last MPP of the year and for once I wasn't working. I headed down to Birmingham and joined the boys for a day of fun, puzzling and a kebab. I am sure that Allard will be writing a story about it soon. Mrs S immediately commented on my arrival home that I had left with 1 box of puzzles and arrived home with 2! Whack! Ouch!

Here is what I got:

Not a bad puzzle haul - it includes what Ali brought back from IPP for me
The cardboard box is a new one from Kyle Chester Marsden with a Xmas theme (I'm saving it for then)

When I took the photo, I actually missed the extra gift from Stefan - he has perfected Micro 3D printing and made a Soma cube with box that are so small that you need tweezers. The one I got was the big one because age made me fearful of not being able to focus on the even smaller one!

Each Voxel is 1mm!

Seven Puzzles From Pelikan Not To Miss In November

Pelikan release for end of 2024

Today I am reviewing the upcoming release of gorgeous delights from Jakub, Jaroslav and the Pelikan team. You may have seen the video already by Ivan - he also does all the photography for the Pelikan site and he is brilliant at it.

Twister Box

Twister Box - a new Pelikan design

This beautiful little creation is a Pelikan design and it is really REALLY clever with a wonderful laugh out loud moment when the secret is discovered. The team has made it using Mahogany, Walnut and magnets…LOTS of magnets and really REALLY strong ones too. Don’t put this near your pacemaker! They have made some lovely slipfeathers and an engraved spiral on top to make it even more pretty. The aim, obviously, is to open the box. Bear in mind that I am really bad at boxes (I have several sequential discovery boxes sitting in my kitchen annoying Mrs S because I have failed to find any moves at all). Reading this paragraph there are a whole lot of "really's" in it but this puzzle needs all of them! 

I discovered the first step of this puzzle quite quickly which is how I knew there were magnets. Once this discovery is past you then it’s time to play with what you have found. You do this by feel and intuition and have to try and understand why things inside seem to be flipping over and back at times. The odd thing is it just all feels rather random. You need to keep at it for a while and all of a sudden there is a change and you’ve opened it. I would guess that most people will open it mostly by chance and then laugh and then play with the open box mechanism for a while to understand what you did and work out a cleaner quicker way to do it. I can now open and re-lock it in a matter of a minute now that I understand the clever mechanism. I must say that I have never seen anything like it before.

It took me a whole week to open it and I’ve been playing with it for a few hours now and it still makes me smile when I look at the mechanism. This is stunning.

Little Tetra Flop

Little Tetra Flop by Dr Volker Latussek

This fabulous new challenge from Dr Volker Latussek continues the wonderful Flop series but showing that he can now see the benefits of the side holes over the loss of purity from an incomplete box.

Pelikan has created this beauty out of Wenge and American Cherry, keeping the 4x1 piece outside of the box (which is 4x3x2 voxels with a 1½ voxel deep entry postbox on top).

The first challenge is to work out how to remove the pieces from the box. As we all know Volker designs both the puzzle and the delivery conformation to be a challenge and this one really takes it to the max - it took me a good 30 minutes to get all the pieces free. I love this aspect of these puzzles. Having taken them out, you now have 6 of the usual set of tetrominoes to put back in using the trademark flop moves.

First thing to do is find the possible assemblies of which there are 14. Obviously the restricted entry helps limit the numbers and you also need to decide whether Volker would stoop so low as to use the side hole of the box to place the last piece. So how should you go about narrowing down the assemblies? I got slightly lucky and managed it after a few hours of trying random positions before realising that the most important thing to do was to leave enough space for the insertion of the pieces that can only be rotated into the box.

The Aha! moment is wonderful with this puzzle. It’s yet another example of Volker’s genius mind. It’s not too horrendous and very very clever. Having solved it, I then had to try and find the delivery assembly all over again. Brilliant fun!

Centrifuge

Centifuge by Lucie Pauwels

This lovely little challenge from Lucie Pauwels has been made in a gorgeous red grained Merbau and a very white contrasting Ash. It consists of a square frame surrounding a 3x3x3 hole to be filled with the unusually shaped pieces. There are holes in each other the 4 walls of the frame which need to be filled once the pieces are packed.

I spent a good 15 minutes trying to construct a 3x3x3 cube which could fit inside before I sheepishly came to the realisation that a) this was impossible and b) would make the holes in the frame totally superfluous. Having had my eejit moment I then looked at constructing the shapes that would fit inside. This is a nice intuitive challenge because the pieces have ½ voxels sliced off in strategic places which really narrows down the possible arrangements. Obviously it is important that none of the ½ voxels are visible from above or below or in the holes and this adds to the challenge.

Very clever solution

This is not terribly tough but the sequence is clever and the aha! moment is very nice. It’s especially good if you don’t waste your time trying to do the impossible!

Shiba Inu

Shiba Inu (Limba version)

Garapa version - deliberately not showed off the shape of the dog

Here we have a couple of challenges in one from the amazing Girish Sharma. It’s a 6 piece burr with a single solution (no key piece) and then a 7 piece burr with the addition of the little dog inside the burr. Jakub and team have created two versions of this one. One made from a gorgeous Garapa and the other from a beautifully grained Limba. These are sent out as assembly challenges which will cause you some significant difficulty.

You would think that I, as a self confessed burr lover, would find this easy, but you’d be completely wrong. I may adore burrs (especially those that are part of the burr zoo) but I am awful at assembling them from scratch. I’m more of a puzzler who works to disassemble them and gain a muscle memory to help with reassembly (or I resort to Burrtools). I have multiple burrsets and yet still struggle to assemble a standard 6 piece burr - especially if the level is greater than 1 (hence the key piece comment). I started work on this one morning and it took me a whole 2 days to find even one assembly of the 6 piece burr. I was only able to do it because the solution that I found had a level 1.2 solution (i.e. it had a key piece that didn’t look like a solid key piece). Yes, I had found the simplest possible assembly of the 6 piece burr. Once I disassembled it and set the pieces out on a table in the correct orientation, I realised that there was no space inside for the doggie. There must be at least one more assembly that has a different interior cavity. It had taken me 2 days just to find one simple one - this was going to be a puzzle for Burrtools.

Not quite there!

Just the 6 piece burr assembled

Luckily I love making BT files and this was a nice easy one. The fabulous computer program showed me that there were 14 solutions to the 6 piece burr and only one of them was able to contain the dog. There was no way I would find the assembly myself so I used BT to tell me which burr sticks went where and after a good few hours managed to assemble the complete 7 piece burr. There is a nice little surprise for you when you do get it together (no spoiler here though).

Lisa and Lottie

Lisa and Lottie by Dr Volker Latussek

Remove the pieces this way

This incredible piece of puzzle analysis by Dr Latussek is definitely one for the collection of the hard-core puzzler. It is not for the faint-hearted - it is difficult…really REALLY difficult! The Pelikan team have made this exquisite puzzle from Bubinga with an Elm box.

Unusually for one of Volker’s creations it is sent out completely assembled in the box. The entry hole seems much much larger than the usual we have seen for the Flop series which gave me hope…until I tried to take them out of the box. I managed to take 4 of them out and then got stuck - are there rotations? No matter what I tried, I could not rotate any of the remaining pieces at all. This was very odd. Jakub never makes mistakes like this so I had a closer look and I then noticed that one of the sides of the boxes was removable. Once I had actually seen all the pieces, I had a bit of a panic! There were a lot of pieces and they were quite complex.

Volker said this about the puzzle:

“_Some of my puzzles start with a complete set of pieces, for each of which I have looked for a matching box to formulate a packing problem. Published examples of this are YIN YANG (6), TETRA-FLOP (8) and today LISA AND LOTTIE (10).
For LISA AND LOTTIE, Toshiaki Betsumiya had already proposed a complete set of ten pieces with GEMINI in 1987, each consisting of two half cubes (0.5x1x1) with a common contact area of at least one quarter (0.5x0.5). A few years ago, I initially asked myself which eight pieces could be packed into the cube-shaped box (2x2x2) of CASINO. At that time, I had to find the answer with the help of a self-written Fortran program in order to be able to present the BOX (2.5x2x2) for the ten pieces today.
There are 25 ways to build a corresponding cuboid (2.5x2x2), but only one way to put the pieces through the opening - which is the reason why I asked Pelikan to make a small batch of LISA AND LOTTIE. The uniqueness of the solution is very surprising to me, as I assumed there was no solution, even though the opening (1.5x2) is impressively large.
If you are willing to look at the ten pieces and how they interact, you will find the solution. Along the way, you can store the ten pieces in the box. _”

All ways to join 2 1x2x2 tetrominoes

This meant that if I could find one of the 25 possible cuboid assemblies then at least I could get it back inside. Off I went on my search. So far I have been totally unable to assemble even a cuboid to put back through side of the box, let alone find a way to put them all in through the hole in the top. I made a BT file for this one and found that the assembly in the box is not possible without some rotations so even if you do cheat a little bit then there is still going to be a huge challenge for you - there are 25 assemblies and 4 possible orientations of each to try. 100 possibilities even with the actual assembly shown is definitely a massive task. I am saving this for when I have a LOT of time on my hands. This is an incredible piece of puzzle analysis and something for the true puzzler.

Open Frame

Open Frame by Lucie Pauwels

This is a second of these amazing challenges by Lucie Pauwels to match the Minimal Frame from the last release. Like its' predecessor, it is a very colourful 2D packing puzzle with multiple different woods combined with an anti-slide puzzle using a very minimal frame but this time the edges of the frame are formed by single voxel pieces in the centre of each side (unlike the last one which had only 2 corner pieces). There are 9 pieces to be fit inside the 7x7 square. There is an overlap between the two puzzles with some shared pieces but the very simple ones are different.

Close but not there

I went to work and yet again, realised that tray packing puzzles are very difficult for me. I did manage after an hour or so to find a single assembly. It is oddly difficult to place these pieces into such an open tray. Like the Minimal frame, I was able to get many not quite there solutions but actually making the complete square shape proved very tough. The solution I found was satisfying but it did not fulfil the anti slide requirement. There are 2 pieces in the puzzle which must be oriented in a certain way to prevent them slipping out an edge or you must find a way to confine them to the interior of the assembly shape. 

A quick resort to Burrtools showed me that there are 15 possible assemblies of the square but only one of them is also anti-slide. I won’t show the final solution but once you look at it, it is a marvellous thing to behold! This is a huge challenge and very attractive! If you have the Minimal Frame then you owe it to yourself to get this one to go with it.

X-Ray

X-Ray byBenjamin Heidt

This beautiful creation made from Wenge, Purpleheart and Maple is the sixth of the puzzles from Jakub designed by Benjamin Heidt. Like most of his designs there is always something different and clever about them and this is no exception. It looks like a standard 6 piece burr made with tubular burr sticks, except there are 10 sticks in total, with 4 of them split into 2 halves. It is designed so that you can see right through it to work out what is going on inside, hence the name. Being based on a 12x12x12 grid it might give you an idea that there could be some rather involved movements and you wouldn't be wrong. My initial exploration managed to move the pieces a long way apart whilst still interlocked and nowhere to go.

Almost there? Not a chance!

Interestingly, there are very few blind ends in dismantling this one and those that there are, are relatively short. The challenge here is to find the pathway. The hollow nature of the sticks means that you can see almost everything but despite this I got blocked on numerous occasions. Part of the reason for this is the rather sharp internal edges which need very precise alignment but once you think that you can see a move, stick with it, make sure it's all aligned correctly and it goes very smoothly. Whilst the level is a pleasant 14.2.3.2.1.1.1.2, it is a really good challenge to effectively work your way through the maze. I find that for complex burrs the teens and twenties is just about right for an enjoyable experience.

Brilliant clever design

These wonderful puzzles should go on sale at Pelikan's website on Wednesday, 13th November at 10am CET (9am GMT, 4am EST & 1am PST). Whilst you are there, there are still a few copies of the wonderful Sukiyaki which I reviewed here and Benjamin's incredible Steam Boat which I reviewed here.

It Seems That Less Is Definitely More

Having Less pieces seems to make things more difficult!

 

J1GSAW by Haym Hirsh from Nothing Yet Designs

Recently I have been buying and playing with a whole bunch of very complex puzzles. This includes the Who Dares Wins from Shane and the Two Brass Monkeys, the Ant Hunt from Boaz Feldman, Chained Key from Luke Waier, Blinded from Dee Dixon, the Box of Celts from Numbskull puzzles and the Fibonacci Box from Jesse Born. I have been playing with these amazing puzzles and getting absolutely nowhere with any of them! I am beginning to think that I have lost my puzzling mojo yet again. Mrs S is starting to say that if I can't solve anything then I really shouldn't buy them. Whilst I protest that I don't know that I can't solve them until after I have actually received them, I am actually beginning to think that she might be right. 😱

Having failed so badly at these puzzles, I went back to something "simple". Except maybe they are not simple! Haym Hirsh, as well as being the head honcho in the Mechanical puzzle community FB group, is also a superb puzzle designer of apparently simple designs which have a hidden twist to them. Recently, he has been producing some lovely little Jigsaw puzzles along the lines of those we have come to love from Yuu Asaka. In this case, Haym has made a few with varying numbers of pieces. The 4 pieces challenge was sent back to Blighty in Ali's suitcase for me and I will be picking it up at the next MPP but I have been playing with the 5 and 10 piece Jigsaws for the last few weeks or so.

Jig5aw by Haym

I had tried and failed the Jig5aw a month or so ago and had spread it far and wide at work in the hope that someone else might manage to educate me in how to solve these apparently easy challenges. Having received it at the beginning of September, it had remained unsolved.

In desperation I picked up the 10 piece puzzle and had little hope for success. After all, if I can't pack 5 pieces then I stand no chance on 10! The frame is much bigger than expected when putting an array of pieces inside but it quickly becomes clear that a simple solve is not possible:

Lots of space but not quite enough

Unusually for me, I looked at this attempted solution and had a "what if I do this?" thought. As a man who is most unaccustomed to thoughts, this really caught me by surprise. I rearranged a few of the pieces and opened up some space and it didn't solve it but left me with space for another of those rogue thoughts. After 10 minutes, I had actually solved it - Yay! Has my mojo come back? Maybe just for Jigsaw packing puzzles?

Quick...get the Jig5aw challenges out: There are 3 colours to try, each with their own challenge. 5 pieces to fit in the tray. It is quite easy to get almost there:

Orange - almost there?

Yellow - not even nearly

Red - this is bloody impossible!

I have spent a few days doing the same things over and over again and if I wasn't insane beforehand then I am rapidly approaching it! How can a 5 piece jigsaw be so damned difficult?

I have managed to solve the orange version which is the only thing that has reclaimed the remnants of my sanity. I have had lots of really really good ideas for the red and yellow challenges. The only problem  being that my really good ideas have all been wrong. Despite "only" being a jigsaw and despite "only" having 5 pieces, this is a really good puzzle. It is perfect for experienced puzzlers but also a wonderful introduction to non-puzzlers to try and get them hooked on our addiction.

At the moment the 5 piece puzzle is solved out at Nothing Yet Designs but I am sure that if enough of you badger Tye, then he might deign to make some more copies.

Thank you Haym and Tye for making me mental. I do the ECT list in Sheffield on a Friday morning and may well volunteer for a zap or two myself after this! 🤪

Is This Curve Infinite?

Hilbert from Abhishek Ruikar
This version in Oak

Out of the blue, a couple of months ago, I was contacted by Abhishek informing me of his latest creation and asking whether I wanted one. I had just mortgaged my soul to the devils (aka Dee Dixon and Tye Stahly) and asked whether he would wait a month for me to replenish my PayPal and also soothe over the disgruntled first wife (Whack! Ouch!)

He was very happy to wait for a bit and duly reminded me after a suitable period. Luckily, I had a little spare cash and it flew over the wires to India. This puzzle is available in Oak, Ash, Teak and Mahogany - I decided on the Oak version but they all look nice.

It drives in a nice green box (the corners of mine had taken a slight beating from the postal service) and inside is a little folded leaflet with the instructions (and if you need it, the solution).

Abhishek obviously has a penchant for knots and topology as his previous puzzle also involved wooden pieces with magnets that needed to be assembled into an intertwined shape. I needed to resort to Google to understand the name of the puzzle. I was aware of David Hilbert as a famous mathematician but did not know why this puzzle was named after him. Within a minute the reason sang out to me - the Hilbert curve is a fascinating concept describing fractal curves that can be both 2D and 3D space filling:

Hilbert curve courtesy of Tim Sauder

3D filling by Robert Dickau

When I removed the pieces, I realised that there were 8 of them and they all have similar but not identical shapes and now the reason for the name really became clear. This is a 3D filling puzzle:

8 very similar shapes with magnets!

I set to work making chains of pieces to try and form a cube. It didn't look too tough and was helped by the fact that the polarities of the magnets were the same on the equivalent ends of all the pieces. After about a ½ hour, I realised this was not quite as simple as expected. The pieces fit together making interesting shapes but after 5 or 6 of them the curve interested itself or blocked the insertion of the next piece. I made several dozen interesting shapes that didn't go anywhere:

Not getting anywhere!

Finally, I got fed up of random assembling of pieces and actually looked properly at the shapes that I had - there are 4 pairs of identical pieces which need to be arranged into the cube shape. It could not possibly be a random assembly - they had to work in a logical sequence which needed me to to some think©ing.

4 pairs of pieces

Once I understood this, then there was much less random trial and error. Thinking in terms of 6 faces and dividing up 8 pieces as 4 pairs was not helping me at all. It needed a few attempts at looking how the pairs could be arranged and thinking of edges (there are 8 in a cube) and I had a lovely little Aha! moment and managed to arrange my magnets in such a way that they all met end to end and formed a cube. Simply delightful - combining mathematics and mechanical puzzling cannot be beaten!

A Hilbert cube

Thank you, Abhishek, this was a delight. I have just realised that putting the pieces back in the box will be another challenge!

 I am sure that he would be delighted to sell you a copy if you contact him.

Two Half Voxels Make All The Difference

Sukiyaki by Frederic Boucher

I am catching up today with a puzzle from the Pelikan workshop that I did not manage to solve within the time frame that I had been given before they went on sale. Unbelievably, there are still 7 of these left available for sale. Stop reading now and go buy one - it is an amazing puzzle. 

This puzzle is one of three designed by Frederic Boucher named after Japanese foods (Frederic lives in Japan). Frederic wrote this about it:

“SUKIYAKI is the first in a series of 3 packing puzzles I created some years ago, named after famous Japanese foods (SUKIYAKI, TAKOYAKI and TAIYAKI). The box size is 2x3x4 units, with 3 openings on the sides plus the entrance on the top. At first glance the pieces seem identical, but there are actually 3 kinds of pieces. No rotation is required to solve this puzzle, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. To solve this puzzle you’ll have to think “outside the box” to find the right configuration and then how to make the pieces interact with each other. I hope you will have as much fun solving it as I had creating it!”

Having failed to solve it for the sale, I have carried it with me for several weeks and have been playing with it intermittently for 3 weeks. It looks like a fairly straightforward packing puzzle with 6 identical S-shaped tetrominoes (made from Maple) to place in the 2x3x4 unit box (made from a rather lovely American Walnut). The opening seems quite large and there are 3 holes in the box for manoeuvring pieces out of the way to allow more to be placed inside. I genuinely didn't think it would be too much of a challenge (one reason, I had saved it to last in that batch) but, oh boy, I was very wrong!

Looking closely, you can see that whilst there are 6 S-shaped pieces, 2 of them have a half voxel removed from it and, for each of those, it is the opposite side of the piece. The obvious question to ask is, why? My initial thought was that these two pieces would interlock inside the box to form a whole voxel. As advised by Frederic, I set to "thinking outside the box" and created some shapes with the 2 odd pieces interlocked. Much to the amusement of several orthopaedic colleagues, I began swearing at myself under my breath and had to deny their urge to do the orthopaedic thing and hit it with a hammer. Let's just say that particular surgical specialty is better known for their brawn and not their brains, unlike my Urologist friend who is better at solving things down a long tube and surrounded by rather smelly liquid - hence his preference for copious amounts of alcohol!

Needless to say, I resisted the urge to use force and decided to use thought©. I worked out quite quickly that the 2 half voxels are not interlocking with each other and they must be present to make space for internal moves to happen in the box. I struggle to think© in terms of whole voxels and so half ones are really going to confuse me! This is why it took me 3 weeks to solve this fabulous puzzle. It was useful to know ahead of time that there were no rotations involved as there was a huge temptation to start turning pieces about inside or in the entry hole. Despite the relatively large entry hole in the top of the box, the pieces are quite restricted in how they can be inserted if rotations are not allowed. Having thunk outside of the box, and using the position of those single holes, I had found what I thought was the likely assembly and none of the gaps formed by the half voxels would be visible through the holes in the box. Of course the 2 odd pieces could be placed in several possible positions and I just needed to decide where so they would be useful. 

Interestingly, this ended up being solved as an assembly puzzle outside the box followed by a disassembly puzzle before actually packing the pieces inside. It really took a whole lot of logic and thought before I had my sequence and packed the pieces away for this photo:

Sukiyaki solved at last

The assembly sequence for this is absolutely stunning! It really cannot be solved by random movements unless you are willing to be completely exhaustive. The proper way to solve it is by genuinely applying multiple steps of logic. There was a huge grin on my face when the last piece went inside and a complete look of disbelief on my orthopaedic friend's face when it was done. In retrospect, I actually think this might be the pick of the bunch from Jakub and Jaroslav's last release.

There are 7 of these left in stock as I type this. Go buy it now! You really will not be disappointed!

I have been in discussion with Frederic about the Minima puzzle series and he has written a wonderful article on the whole series including additions by other designers. It is a wonderful, large and comprehensive document which is downloadable here. If you have any comments on this series which you would like me to pass on to Frederic then please get in touch and I will pass on your thoughts.

Minima(lly) Effective - So Others Try It

Minima Fibonacci series

I apologise for last week...I appear to have had Covid for the second time and it's just as nasty as ever! The only difference for me this time is that I had to obey the government's instructions and continue working with it if I was physically able. So having been poleaxed on Sat/Sun, I continued to go to my usual Monday meetings via Teams and then back to the operating theatre after that. I was told on a few occasions by colleagues that I looked shocking (and even once by a patient) but I soldiered on wearing my mask to protect others - not really sure how effective that will have been but that's the instructions. I'm currently on day 8 and still feeling pretty hellish but am at least more functional. Mrs S, on the other hand is convinced that I am trying to murder her with the virus. Only another week to go before we feel a bit better. Stay safe out there guys, it's still not a trivial thing.

On to the puzzling...

It has reached the point now that my friend Tye Stahly, knows what sort of puzzling I like and contacts me with news of things he is making that I will want to buy when they are released. He is a savage businessman as my PayPal keeps emptying into his bank account! Having fallen for the Minima challenge set by Allard and Frederic Boucher a few weeks ago, I couldn't resist it when Tye showed me that another renowned puzzle designer had jumped on the bandwagon with the Minima series and found some other wonderful challenges. One of the best designers in the world, Laszlo Molnar had decided that this was a good format. I have raved about many of Laszlo's puzzles over the years and been encouraged about them by my sadly missed friend, Felix, who saw the incredible talent and encouraged me to try them and even made me a whole load of them himself. 

The Fibonacci name could only mean one thing:

Fibonacci 1 pieces

Fibonacci 2 pieces

Yep! The Fibonacci series - polyomino sizes 1, 1, 2, 3, 5 all to be fitted into the 2x2x3 box to ensure that all the holes are covered (in fact the box is packed tight). Having said that the name makes sense, I am a little mystified about number 3:

Fibonacci 3 pieces
Still has 12 voxels but it just doesn't add up!

Tye has made them using his usual multicoloured wooden blocks and beautifully cut acrylic sheets - I am informed that it is actually Tye's own Mrs S who makes these and for that he is a very lucky man. I couldn't resist playing with them as soon as I was physically fit enough to concentrate on anything other than my chest. They are just as confusing as ever with the requirement to assemble shapes outside the box first being important and then gradually working out how to get the bigger pieces inside and what constraints they would have on fitting in the small ones. Just because there were single and dual voxel pieces does not necessarily make these easier - the 5 voxel shapes are very restricting and take up a lot of space inside. The requirement for rotations makes for a lovely challenge and interestingly, one of these is solved using linear movements only. I won't spoil it for you by saying which one.

Not to be outdone, the original Minima designer, Frederic Boucher, has extended his design prowess into flat (2D) versions - except the solution is most definitely not restricted to 2 dimensions. Not content with making me rotate blocks around in a box, Frederic has designed a tray packing puzzle - Flat Minima which is still available:

Flat Minima

In this wonderful little challenge the aim is to fit all the pieces inside the tray. Again, there is a limited entry way (in fact there are 2) and rotations are required. The end result is to achieve a 2D image of a 2x2x3 block inside the "box". 

How hard can it be? Well, I know that I am awful at tray packing puzzles and this has the added challenge of restricted entry and rotations as well as a viral infection - I figured I was buggered!

The first thing to do as usual is make your shape and that wasn't actually too hard. Next, work out a possible order of piece insertion. Finally, insert the bloody things. Erm! It's not quite that simple. The hole in the front and the side is not big enough to actually insert the pieces. This is why it's not really a 2D puzzle. The insertion of at least 2 requires rotational moves in the third dimension and can be quite confusing for am an of my limitations. Having achieved that, I worked on the remaining pieces and noticed that there is not a lot of room left after the first couple are in for the remainder to move about. The Aha! moment with this one is lovely. It probably only took me about a ½ hour but it was a delightful voyage. There's not much of a clue in the solved picture but look at your own risk.

Solved it. Looks like a 2x2x3

Finally, another of Laszlo's amazing designs was thrown in as a gift for me from Tye. The Hardcore puzzle is a sphere packing puzzle:

Hardcore
Pack these 3 shapes in the sphere with no force to close and a snug fit

This is one that Tye had asked me whether I had heard of it and might have the exact dimensions of the pieces. I searched my database and pictures for Hardcore and pronounced that I had no knowledge of it. When this duly arrived, I had a sneaky suspicion that I had seen it before but another search of my database did not reveal that name. I worked on this for a day and solved it with another lovely Aha! moment before realising that I had definitely seen it. In fact, Laszlo had used me as a guinea pig for it before he had come up with the name (hence I had come up blank) - I showed it off back in 2017.

Laszlo's prototype (he called it the Spherical packing puzzle)

I have to apologise to Tye for not realising and helping more - I had seen it before it was named. 

It is currently for sale here and is well worth your attention. It is not impossibly hard...it is just lovely and nice to show to non-puzzling friends as a gentle challenge.