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.

No post this week

Sorry guys, I’m too sick to write anything today. Caught a nasty viral thing at work and am spending as much time in bed feeling sorry for myself as I can get away with.

Sniff, sniff, cough, sneeze! 

Back to Basics

And Still Not Good At It!

Eleventh Hour by Goh Pit Khiam

Once or twice a year, Tom Lensch emails out what he has been working on and lets interested puzzlers place orders. A few weeks ago the email came in just as I had purchased a few others and so my PayPal was tight and I also was aware that if post brought me too much then Mrs S would Whack! Ouch! me into oblivion.......again! I resisted the urge to buy it all and just picked a couple that I figured might just be possible for a man with my meagre bwain and which would not break the bank or Mrs S' patience. A week or so later I received the Eleventh Hour by Goh Pit Khiam (out of interest, I have seen the name as Goh Pit Khiam and Pit Khiam Goh - can anyone tell me how it should be written?).

It arrived in pieces made from what looks like Maple or Cherry and has Tom's fine stamp on one of the pieces. 4 pieces to construct into a 4x4x4 cube - surely, I must be able to manage this without too much difficulty after all these years? I set to work last weekend and very quickly managed to see the final position of all the pieces - yes, this might be an easy one! I was able to assemble any 3 of them quite quickly into their correct places but always was unable to get the 4th piece in. The way the pieces were interlocked always ensured that one was completely blocked from getting past. This was nice and fun - just the challenge I had been hoping for after desperately trying to solve the 3rd in the Hoffman suite from Pelikan. Whilst I have your attention, there are still a few left of the Sukiyaki, Steamboat and Fabrick puzzles on the Pelikan store - well worth a look.

I have had a lot of work to catch up on after my holiday and must  insist on using this as an excuse for my feeble bwain failing on this puzzle for several days. I was only able to play in the evenings but was getting nowhere fast. I even emailed Tom to ask whether this was a TIC but was reassured that it is "just" a simple interlocking puzzle. Damn! I'm rubbish at puzzles! Finally on Friday evening, I assembled my cube with a sigh of relief and a memory of the early days of my puzzling "career" - this simple interlocking cube takes me back to the fabulous creations from Rich Gain's Microcubology. Over that first couple of years of PuzzleMad, I must have bought 15-20 gorgeous interlocking creations (they sit in a tray on display in my second puzzle room - Whack! Ouch!). Only toward the end did I buy them in the disassembled state and solve them that way. I had kind of hoped that I might be better at them but Tom has proved me wrong!

5 days to assemble - that's rubbish!

Goh Pit Khiam also designs some interesting packing puzzles which I usually fail to manage but the Confound Space looked solvable by a mere human and I couldn't resist:

Confound space

6 blocks to place in a box with a limited opening - this is usually impossible for me.

Interestingly, I made a couple of discoveries very quickly and my "what if" sense made me try a few things and I was rewarded with my Aha! moment after just 20 minutes! Phew! I am not a complete eejit!

A Less Than Relaxing Holiday!

Latest Pelikan release

I get an inkling that trouble is in the air about 2 weeks ago when I see a beautiful puzzle on Jakub's Facebook page and I realise that it has been about 2 months since the last batch went on sale. I show it to "she who frightens the gods" and rather than admonish me about the catastrophe that isms study and the sheer number of puzzles lying around, she reminds me that we are on going on holiday quite soon and this might make deliveries a little awkward. Just to get at her, Jakub arranges for a delivery to arrive at PuzzleMad HQ literally 48 hours before we are due to head off to Sconny Botland (that's Bonny Scotland to the foreigners) for a little hard earned relaxation (and a visit to the outlaws 😱). OMG! What am I to do? I have 8 rather bulky puzzles and I cannot fit them all in my luggage. To make things even more fraught, Jakub tells me that he wants to release them on 20/09 and I will not even be back home then. He is happy for me to write my reviews after they have gone on sale - Phew! I pack as many as I can stuff into a little rucksack much to the disgust of "she who makes me quake in fear".

Whilst away, I attempt to plough through them with only limited success and manage a couple more when I got back home. In the meantime a couple of them sell out in record time even without my wise words extolling their virtues - I might even be superfluous.

So here we go:

Minimal Frame

Minimal frame by Lucie Pauwels

Nope!

This gorgeous compact puzzle has already sold out I'm afraid (hopefully Jakub and Jaroslav will agree to make another batch). It is a very simple looking packing puzzle by the incredibly talented Lucie Pauwels. It consists of a number of pieces to be fitted into a frame...a vey minimal frame with only 2 cubies. It has all the lovely woods - Maple, Zebrano, Ash, Purpleheart, Wenge, American Walnut, Jatoba, Acacia & Padauk. It is obviously a packing puzzle where the 9 pieces need to be assembled into a square where they form a 7x7 square. This alone is quite a tough challenge. The complexity of the shapes does give a little help as certain pieces seem to scream to be together and the odd missing voxel in some assembled shapes scream to abut the single corners in the frame. Playing with this is very disconcerting as you race ahead with a nice promising shape and hopefully reach the final 2 or 3 pieces and realise that Lucie has led you astray - the last couple of pieces won't fit.

After a couple of days later I finally have it and all the pieces are fitting in. Except I haven't actually solved it - there are 39 solutions (why did it take me so long?) but the true aim is to construct the square in such a way that all the pieces are held captive and cannot just slide out sideways. Only one of the 39 assemblies fulfils this criterion - if you get a chance to try this it will need a lot of planning!

The Hoffman Suite

The Hoffman Suite by Dr Volker Latussek

I am afraid that this suite of 4 very complex packing puzzles has also already sold out. These are not for the fainthearted - if another batch are made then they are only for expert packing puzzlers. It's an odd name for puzzles if your name is not Hoffman and Volker explains himself as follows:

"I really wanted to realize the HOFFMAN SUITE according to Dean G. Hoffman’s 1978 problem using golden cuboids. However, the sum of the side lengths of the golden ratio 1.000 x 1.618 x 2.618 yields 4.236 which is greater than the 4.000 specified by Hoffman. Wanting to preserve the harmony of the golden ratio, I considered their square root: 1.000 x 1.272 x 1.618. At 3.890, their sum is less than 4.000 and they fulfil the Pythagorean theorem (as 1.000 x 1.000 + 1.272 x 1.272 = 1.618 x 1.618), which is indispensable for rotations in restricted boxes. The basic building block for the HOFFMAN SUITE is found and considering its inherent harmony, I’ve named the four packing problems after the four movements of Edvard Grieg’s 1888 Peer Gynt Suite."

This whole idea frightened me a lot! I bought the Hoffman packing puzzle from Tom Lensch several years ago and to this day have not solved it - I assembled it using the instructions and have had some correspondence giving me helpful hints but I am too dopey to be able to solve such a complex packing puzzle.

I include a pic of the original - as you can see, it is stunning and impossibly difficult!

Hoffman Suite I - Morning Mood

Here we have an unrestricted cubic box with 6 identical shapes, each consisting of the three basic blocks. I figured this one might actually be achievable by a packing eejit like me and took it with me on holiday. I hoped that it might be like a few other cubic packing puzzles where a sort of rotational symmetry was required and it would just be a matter of working out how to place pieces in a circle around the centre. Take my advice and ignore that - the solution is very clever and requires a good bit of thought based on the sizes of the blocks. I did manage to solve it after 3 days of trying!

Hoffman Suite II - The Death of Ase

Again an unrestricted cubic box but with 8 different shapes to pack in, each consisting of three basic blocks. 

Volker said: "This design came from my investigation of how many corner columns of three basic blocks are required for a unique filling. I had initially reckoned on 6, but haven’t been able to find them so far, and a filling with 7 corner columns has also eluded me. This packing problem is aptly named and should probably be avoided."

Probably be avoided? OMG!  With the clue of corner columns, I altered my approach and tried to pack the pieces into columns as tightly as they would go and actually found the solution entirely by chance. Let's just say this is difficult and leave it at that!

Hoffman Suite III - Anitra's Dance

I have not yet played with this one and suspect that it will be beyond a puzzle with my meagre abilities - I am sure that you geniuses out there will solve it easily!

Volker said this: "A restricted cubic box with 5 equal parts, each consisting of three basic blocks. Here too you’ll find your mind and your eyes playing tricks on you. Oh, and there may be some interlocking rotations."

Not only is it a restricted complex packing but it requires rotations - aargh!

Hoffman Suite IV - In the Hall of the Mountain King

Also not attempted - in fact I am too frightened to remove all the blocks from the container!

Volker said: "A restricted cubic box with 27 basic blocks. Despite the seemingly infinite number of pieces(!), the solution can be derived. The impatient can use the 21 published solutions of the HOFFMAN PUZZLE as a guide (one of which is the initial filling) – so don’t just pour out the blocks because you can learn a lot and the folks at Pelikan have filled the 27 basic blocks into the box with a lot of love."

Fabrick

Fabrick by Lucie Pauwels

Lucie not only does wonderful packing puzzles with a complex twist...she also designs interlocking puzzles that have a certain "je ne said quoi". The Fabrick puzzle is available in two versions - the one above is Ovangkol and Limba and it is also available in vibrant Purpleheart and Maple. It consists of 8 distinctly different puzzle pieces constructed in two layers with a framed tray with the aim being to assemble the pieces to form a woven pattern with the two colours forming parallel lines in each direction. It looks absolutely horrific at first glance but the constraints of the shape required and the colouring of the pieces make this a nice logical puzzle. A little trial and error reveals a set of constraints that limit where the pieces can interact and after this the assembly is a nice progression ending with a very satisfying aha!

Aim for this - it's tough but solvable!

Steam Boat

Steam Boat by Benjamin Heidt

The Steamboat burr is stunningly gorgeous! It is made from vibrant Padauk with Wenge and Cherry. Obviously the aim is to disassemble it and then put it back together again. The first thing to notice is that there are 4 burr sticks vertically forming the ship's turrets and also 4 burr sticks across the hull of the ship. Initial thought is that these will all interact and eventually allow a sideways movement which will free one of the sticks from the assembly and then the rest will come out fairly easily after that. Of course, as happens so frequently to me, my initial thoughts are wrong! I found a few nice moves that seemed to make a good sequence and freed up a progressive ability to move the sticks. I was on a roll!

That is until after about 10 moves I could make no further progress. I went back and forth searching for a missed opportunity and could not for the life of me find it. It was time to think© and look very closely at what I had. Jakub and team have constructed this very very beautifully with something perfectly hidden. Only when you have made this discovery will you be able to search again for another critical move. Once you have found it then rapid progresses made and pieces come out quickly. The endgame is still not trivial and the final pieces need another set of steps to remove them.

If you concentrate and don't lose track of what goes where then an assembly might be possible from scratch. I, of course, bundled all the pieces together to take a photo and will need to resort to Burrtools to reassemble this one. It is a stunning design and will look fabulous on display.

Sukiyaki

Sukiyaki by Frederic Boucher

When I saw this in the bundle from Jakub, I wondered whether this was yet another Minima puzzle (Frederic has been very prolific with that series!) but this is MUCH more complex than those simple designs. It is a restricted entry packing puzzle but without the rotations required by the Minimas. It consists of a rather fun looking box (dimensions 2x3x4 voxels) with a rather large but complex opening in the top and a trio of holes in a couple of faces to allow movement of the pieces. These pieces are 4 identical S shaped tetrominoes and 2 extras with a half voxel missing (making them 2 mirror images). This half voxel is going to make the assembly and movements very interesting. It is an odd name for a puzzle and is the first in a series of 3 packing puzzles Frederic named after famous Japanese foods (SUKIYAKI, TAKOYAKI and TAIYAKI). I hope that the others in the series will also be made.

Jakub and team have created it beautifully from American Walnut and Maple. I have not had time to play with this one yet but if it is anything at all like the Minima puzzles that I have previously reviewed from both Pelikan and Tye Stahly then it is one that SHOULD be in your collection.

I still seem to have a fair bit of work to do to catch up - I have not even found the fist move with Shane's Who Dares Wins, I have not managed to solve any of the three 5-piece jigsaws and have received a couple of beauties from Tom Lensch recently which are sitting tantalising me!

It Pains Me To Say It...

You Should Probably Trust Allard

I couldn't resist it - the first 12 Minima puzzles from Tye Stahly

Yes, I bought them! After Allard showed them off several months ago and waxed lyrical about them, I couldn't resist. Of course, the fact that these were designed by Frederic Boucher was of critical importance - he is brilliant! I was gutted to hear from Tye that they were out of stock and he had no plans to make any more due to the sheer amount of work that goes into them. I had to accept it but asked that I be kept on a list that if he ever does change his mind then I can be considered for them. It seems that Tye uses slave labour to make them - the present wife gets forced periodically to work at puzzle production! She does seem to have some say in the matter and maybe he is as frightened of his Mrs S as I am of mine. Luckily for me, she said that she would consider making another batch a few weeks ago and I immediately PayPalled herhim some dollars and they flew across the pond very quickly thereafter. Yay!

These are miniature puzzles - if you have very big fat fingers then they might not be for you but I am a delicate flower with fine fingers and they are perfect (if not a little fiddly). The diminutive size keeps the price down a bit, thank goodness! 

Minima 1

They don't look like much - they are all a 3x2x2 box with various shapes of pieces to be packed inside with all the holes in the box ending up filled (rotations are allowed). They really don't look like much - the pieces that you can see above on the M1 are pretty simple but don't be deceived, they can be a tremendous challenge. Some of the holes are not at one of the whole voxel position and this is deliberate. It should make you think© - why put a hole in such a place? The answer - to facilitate a particular rotational move. Brilliant fun! I have spent a week working on the first 4 and have really struggled at times. At the beginning of the week, during an on-line ½ day team meeting, I worked my way through the first 3 (much to the amusement of several colleagues). 

Usually with packing puzzles from Osanori-san or Alexander-san I start assembling the shape outside the box and work out how to assemble the shape through the limited opening but with these, the final shape is so simple that it didn't seem to help. The limited entry-hole also wasn't a help as the knowledge of complex rotations meant that the ability to insert only one way had no bearing on the final positions. With every single one of them I had to use a completely different approach - I needed to look at the box first and then insert a piece and see how the odd hole positions allowed me to rotate the piece. I did this with each of the pieces to find what was possible and then only after that use the knowledge to assemble the puzzle in the box.

Really fun challenge!

I carried on like this during my meeting working them out one at a time. 

Minima 2 was probably the easiest

The fun thing is that I have absolutely no recollection of how I had done them. During the meeting I managed the first 3 and took them apart again each time. Little fist pump of success each time and I put it away. Of course, a puzzle is not solved until it is repeatedly solved. 

Such fun!

To my shame, I found that I was completely unable to do them again with any speed despite having done them only 24 hours earlier. Wow! This means that they have longevity and will be great for a collection being able to bamboozle others and also yourself repeatedly.

It's odd how they never look difficult but really are

By the time I got to the Minima 3, I felt that I was on a roll and maybe learning some techniques. This one was a challenge but solved quicker that the previous two.

Another solved within my meeting
Maybe I should have been paying more attention?

The last I tried that day

The final one I worked on was the Minima 4 and I failed. It looks really simple with only planar pieces but it seems to be a significant challenge. The planar pieces do mean that there are more possible 2x2x3 assemblies but the tetromino is very restricted in the way it can be inserted and I quickly established that it was impossible to rotate it within the box. This leaves the rotations being for the other smaller pieces. The interesting thing here is the holes that facilitate the rotations. There are 2 special holes being just slots that are off centre. It took me several days to work out the various ways that the pieces could be rotated and surprisingly they were still quite restricted within the despite their simple shapes.

The solution to the Minima 4 took me an extra 3 days! Blush. 

3 days of work/play

These puzzles are just amazing! I cannot wait to start work on the rest but I now have to take a break and work my way through the latest of the Pelikan puzzles that I have received (keep your bank balances full for them because they look amazing!

If you get a chance to play with the Minima puzzles then you definitely should. I personally think that the puzzle community should harangue Tye and his Mrs S to make a whole bunch more. They are terrific value and really fun puzzles. Thank you Mrs S, Tye and Frederic for this fabulous opportunity.