A Fun Week Of Torturing

Ice Cream SandWitch

Having had a bad week last week, I was really motivated to get back into it for this post. I took the three TICs that Allard gave me to work and tortured a couple of lovely girls who surprised me with their tenacity.

Georgia - my ODP

Even the radiographer!

Caduceus pieces

I had worked on Caduceus first after writing my post last week. It looks the easiest of them having only 2 pieces to fit inside. The fun thing about it is that both pieces have circular rods in them which implies that they will both need to undergo rotations to get them placed.

The first thing to do is go through some thinking© to work out which direction each of them need to be placed across the cubic frame. I was gratified to see that both girls who tried this puzzle did exactly the same thing before attempting the insertion. It's nice to see that thought is universal with puzzles. 

Having established the direction of travel we experimented to see how the individual pieces could be moved into place and then see whether the second one could be manipulated around the first. Oh boy! They really get in the way of each other. There are a LOT of moves and they dance around each other a huge amount. There are so many rotational and sliding moves that for me it is impossible to keep track of them. I managed to assemble it last Sunday evening and then couldn't take it apart again for a very long time.

 

Damn! That was tough

Eventually I separated the pieces and watched in fascination as Georgia and one of the other theatre staff worked on it and was very gratified to see that they had the exact same experience. Both really enjoyed it and were keen to try the others. I love infecting others with the excitement of puzzling! Especially girls - we need more girl puzzlers.

The next 2 of the TICs from Alan Lunsford were Cobra and Hydra:

Cobra has only one rotational piece

Hydra has 2 rotating pieces

Cobra has the advantage that the two frame pieces are just like simple interlocking cube puzzles and relatively easy to work out where they go together but then whilst it is simple to see where the rotating piece has to go, it is actually a huge challenge to insert it into position. With everything you try the piece almost arrives but not quite. Many possible moves leads to the thing falling apart. None of the girls managed to get past this point and it was with some trepidation that I attempted it myself. It is damned tough. There is a very very nice sequence to get the thing assembled. Luckily with this one, once you have done it then the disassembly is not going to be hard to manage. It is really clever and perfect to get someone hooked - the ability to get so close and yet so far away is wonderful for the experienced as well as the newbie puzzler.

Hydra has 2 rotational pieces and it doesn't take long to work out where they have to go. Like the Caduceus, there is a whole lot of dancing with some rather extreme moves before it eventually slides together. Disassembly is also a challenge. It took me a good hour before I could say that I really understood the puzzle. I will be taking it to work to torture people for a few weeks.

Cobra assembled

Hydra assembled

If you have a 3D printer (Sob! Never me!) then I suggest you go to Alan's Printables page and download the files for these and make yourself some TICs - they are simply fabulous!

Next up, I tortured myself with George Bell and Nan Ma's Dodecahedron assembly kit. I spent quite a lot of time in the IPP design competition room in Italy attempting several of the challenges set out with these and completely failed. I came to the conclusion that my hands are too small or the pieces were too perfectly made with not enough gaps to help me. But, I am a sucker for a puzzle kit and the five challenges sung to me. I started with the easiest of them (rated medium) and after nearly an hour yesterday, I finally managed an assembly. Hooray!

Dear Lord! That was tough and it was the easiest!

I spent another couple of hours trying various of the other challenges and got absolutely nowhere apart from to teach the cats some swear words and to piss off Mrs S with all the muttering under my breath. The pieces can be assembled gradually by gently pulling apart and adding extras. This continues until there's no space for any more and then as long as the assembly is correct there's a space for the final piece but no way to insert it. Time to take a few out and place them in a different order. Finally you have to pull it apart to the almost falling to bits position and try and manoeuvre the last piece or pieces and let it collapse together into shape. Unfortunately, I have been completely unable to manage it - I pull it apart to the almost falling to bits and then as I wiggle, it just "falls to bit" - Aargh! I'll keep at it for a while longer but I'm losing hope. I saw a friend at the MPP manage them all but I have no idea how.

Finally I have to show off the Ice Cream SandWitch puzzle which I also solved this week.

Ice Cream SandWitch by Alexander Dangl
I never noticed the mis-spelling until now!

This puzzle was also an entry into the Design competition this year where it won a Jury Honourable Mention Award. I actually didn't play with it myself at the IPP because I had immediately decided that I wanted to buy a copy having seen p[eople enjoying it and with lots of shouts of delight as they solved it. The following day at the main puzzle party, I quickly found it for sale and got hold of a copy. Let me say straight up - it's a lovely thing and great fun to solve with plenty of Aha! moments.

It is available in 3 ice cream flavours (pistachio, vanilla and the strawberry that I have). The aim is to work your way through finding and using tools to get yourself the coin to allow you to buy more ice cream. At the moment it is available from PuzzleMaster and sold out at Tye and Amanda's Nothing Yet Designs (they may well get more n stock in time).

Initially, the only obvious tool is a bolt that slides part way out when you tilt the puzzle downwards. The first thing to do is work out how to release the bolt and then see where it can be used to make other things happen. The first couple of moves are quite easy to find and will lull you into a false sense of security. I managed those first couple of steps very fast and then got stuck for a while. I had a bolt, a magnet and that was it. There are lots of magnetic areas inside the puzzle but I was unable to manipulate them. I had to put it down for a while due to demands by the present wife that I do some stuff for her. Later on, I returned to the puzzle and noticed something really quite subtle. Aha! I now had...another magnet and nothing to do with it.

I'll not tell you what I did next as I don't want to spoil it for any of you but I have to say that you need to use physics to solve this one and after another few moves you have your coin to allow the purchase of more ice cream. It's wonderful and certainly a candidate for my top ten(ish) of 2026. I will be bringing this to work to torture people as well. My work bag is always shoulder bruisingly heavy because I bring so many great puzzles with me. Torturing people is fun!

A 3D Printer Is NOT Allowed

Thank Goodness I Have Puzzle Friends!

Dodecahedron Assembly Kit by George Bell
Printed by Allard (thanks mate)

I am absolutely amazed - my post views have passed the 7 million since I started writing in March of 2011. Thank you for reading my crap!

 

After the last 2 weeks of desperately trying to solve the upcoming Pelikan puzzles as quickly as I possibly can, I have been rather fatigued and not actually done any puzzling at all this week. So I don't have anything to really review today. I did attend the MPP number IIXIIXIIXIIXIIXII yesterday (yes that does seem to be a Roman numeral! Allard needs to remember the number L for simplicity.) and one of my favourite things when I go there is to pick up a bunch of plastic freebies that Allard and other friends have produced for visitors to take home.

I have a rather big birthday coming up soon and I had hoped that maybe a Prusa or Bamboo toy-maker with all the multi-colour trimmings might be a possible gift from she who frightens the Gods - I even suggested it to her (Whack! Ouch!) However, the present Mrs S is very frightening. She has said on numerous occasions when I mention a possible purchase, that the arrival of a 3D printer in her house (NOT mine) is definitely grounds for divorce and I really cannot afford a divorce! This means that it's absolutely NOT happening, no matter how nicely I ask. No, she is not worried about noise or electricity usage. Her primary reason for the absolute moratorium on this wonderful technology is that she is aware that the profusion of wood and metal "stuff" that keeps arriving and cluttering the house will rapidly be supplemented by a huge bunch of "ugly plastic crap". Modern 3D printers produce stuff that is much less ugly now but she does not want yet more puzzles arriving courtesy of the printer. Sob! Luckily, I have wonderful friends like Allard, Rich and Dan who can make 3D printed puzzles which I can smuggle in without risking life, limb and sanity. Oops! Sanity went a very long time ago.

One puzzle set that arrived yesterday courtesy of Allard was George Bell's incredible entry into the Assisi IPP design competition. Whilst it didn't win an award, it was a fabulous challenge which I spent quite a lot of time on. Interestingly, I had almost no success. It is a series of coordinate motion challenges and I left Italy rather frustrated thinking that it was impossible for someone with relatively small hands. I do tend to pride myself on having fairly decent hand control and dexterity (on Wednesday I had to put a cannula in a vein on the front of a patient's shin under ultrasound guidance!) but I really struggled with it. At the MPP the puzzle was attempted by a few people and even the most difficult combination was assembled successfully. I now have the option to try them myself in the privacy of Puzzlemad HQ without anyone laughing at me with every failure.

Another advantage of a 3D printer is that all the wonderful new TICs that get designed can be quickly added to a collection without having to wait for a craftsman to make them in wood. I adore TICs and interlocking puzzles. Allard had 3 new TICs from Alan Lunsford sitting to be taken home. They were smuggled into the house with my MPP box and secreted quietly where she can't see.

Caduceus

Cobra

Hydra

I can't wait to work on these. 

So, in the absence of my own 3D printer I will be "forced" to attend MPPs so that I can endure being made fun of but still manage to pick up plastic toys without being told off. See you all at the next one.

Perplexing Packing from Pelikan

Minima Ronde

333 & 444 cubes

Apteek

The pressure is on! I managed to dismantle 4 burrs by Alfons coming up soon from Pelikan last week and had 3 left to solve for this week's blog post. I knew this was going to be a hell of a challenge as 2 of them were by the amazing Dr Volker Latussek and one by Lucie Pauwels. Packing puzzles are definitely not my strong point and these two designers are particularly skilled.

Minima Ronde

Minima Ronde by Volker Latussek

I had to start with the Minima - I adore this whole series and actually think I have almost every one made. Considering Volker had not been certain about designing Minima puzzles initially, he has taken the idea to new heights with some incredible designs and this one is definitely one of the most fun ones I have ever played with. Jakub and team have made this one with a wonderful set of accurately cut Wenge pieces and a beautifully grained Oak box.

The basic premise of the Minima series is to have a 2x2x3 box to be packed with relatively simple pieces in such a way that the holes in the walls always end up filled. The interior may not be and the need for interesting rotations is often part of the fun but not always. Volker has taken this simple idea here with packing pieces that are just 2 voxels in volume but spread over a 3 voxel space with the use of diagonal cuts across one of them. Here is what Volker said about this design:

"MINIMA FOR FREDERIC was actually meant to mark the end of my foray into the world of MINIMAs. Over the last few months, I’ve been playing once again with one of my favourite building blocks: this is the complete set of fourteen building blocks, each consisting of a cube and a second cube that is cut diagonally into two parts, with each half glued across its entire surface to the cube. Accordingly, the building blocks in this set each have the volume of a bicube. Twelve of these blocks uniquely fill a 3x4x2 box (TOUR), nine fill a 3x3x2 box (GIRO) and six fill a MINIMA box (3x2x2). Years ago, I designed a ‘put-together’ puzzle for Pelikan’s RONDE using five pieces. Naturally, I now wanted to find out which building blocks could be used to fill a MINIMA box and provide it with suitable openings."

Oh boy! He has really provided us with a puzzle where the openings are crucial and used in different ways. It arrives in a special configuration (as almost all of his puzzles do) which gives a tiny hint of what might be coming up for the intrepid puzzler. Most of the pieces come out through the large 2x1½ voxel hole in the top surface but one of them is blocked and needs a bit of rotational fiddling to be released.

As usual, the initial challenge is to make the cuboid shape that will fit (this time the cavity will be completely filled. The handedness of the pieces means that you have to be careful which position they are placed in. I quickly realised that the arrival position had the 4 pieces with bevels at 90º to each other would form a cube and then the straight-line pieces would have to be used as a sort of length extender. 

The straight-line pieces lengthen the sides

Having realised this I made a cuboid of the correct size and then discovered that I could make 2 of them with mirror configurations. Time to pick one and then work out which of the 8 possible positions it could possibly be paced inside. I started with a brute force trial and error approach and very quickly realised that, due to the needed rotation(s) I was going to have to be more systematic and actually apply logic and thought©. The 4 single voxel holes in the box were going to have to be there for a purpose - Volker NEVER places anything unnecessarily - everything has a use. Working backwards, I Started with a shape that would allow the last(first) piece to be removed(placed). I searched for orientations of the cuboid that then had the possibility of either a second piece removal straight away or would utilise the holes for movements. At this point I had a fabulous Aha! moment and found a wonderful sequence that made lots of space inside the box. Now, it was time to work out how to place the pieces sequentially to allow that wonderful sequence to occur. Here is the challenge - the pieces don't just fit inside easily, there are multiple rotations involved (one in particular is absolutely incredible - Ronde means a round dance and that is exactly what you will have to do with this one. I don't think I have seen a Minima do that before. It took me an hour or so to find the required moves but eventually I reversed all my earlier moves and packed the pieces inside.

Absolutely incredible!

This is one of the most fun and rewarding Minima puzzles that I have ever worked on. The solution is completely unique, totally logical and beautiful to perform. A little dexterity is needed to control all the moves but it is fun. 

BUY IT! IT'S AMAZING!

333 & 444 Cubes

333 & 444 Cubes by Lucie Pauwels

This lovely little challenge by Lucie arrives as an interlocked set of pieces that form a cube with a lump on the top - obviously this is not the final placement of the pieces. This has been made using Maple and a brilliantly vibrant Jatoba. The precision is perfect. I removed the pieces to examine them and realised that the name of the puzzle came from the fact that the pieces could all fit together to form a 4x4x4 cube or the Maple pieces alone would form a 3x3x3 cube. I made the simpler assembly first and enjoyed that - a nice little warmup for the main puzzling.

4x4x4 and a 3x3x3

Creating the fully packed 4x4x4 is a clever challenge which reminded me a little of the Swan Cube from an earlier Pelikan release - the holes in the faces of the larger cube would need to be filled and this would need careful planning as they got blocked off quite quickly if the wrong piece was placed first. It's not too difficult and is a lot of fun. It could probably be solved by brute force but is better solved by noticing what the shapes will allow you to do and then thinking© about how this should be used in sequence to fill the void in the frame. Assembled shape hidden behind a spoiler button.

444 shape complete

Apteek

Apteek by Volker Latussek

Apteek and Farmacia

This incredible creation has been made from a deep Purpleheart wood for the box and an incredibly dark and fabulously grained Acacia. It is simply gorgeous. It arrives in a special configuration that Volker deliberately designed - the pieces seem to fit inside the 3x3x3 cavity but the central row is protruding above the surface. Obviously, this needs to be remedied and the pieces rearranged so that the pieces fit flush with the top surface. It's not going to be an easy process as the pieces (five L-triominoes and three L-tetrominoes) each have either a dowel protruding from one of the voxels and a reciprocal hole for accepting them. The box has a single dowel protruding into the top row of the puzzle. This reminded me a lot of a puzzle that I still haven't managed to solve from last year, Farmacia - this is still sitting on my desk waiting for me to complete it.

Volker wrote this about it:

"As promised, here it is APTEEK. When working with the usual v’s and developing FARMACIA, I had to learn that some very nice moves are not possible. However, from my experience with FILLING V, I know how powerful L’s are. So what could be more obvious than turning four v’s into three L’s and filling the 3x3x3 box together with the remaining five v’s? And suddenly, the previously impossible moves become possible. I really hope that you too will see that the price of losing the simple and clean construction principle of the 9 v’s of FARMACIA is not too high and that the beauty of the APTEEK solution - just as in APOTHECA - justifies the mixture of eight v’s and L’s."

Unlike the Farmacia there is no hole in the box to accept a dowel and with the dowel positioned in the top row, I had a funny feeling that this puzzle was going to require rotations to solve it. I spent a good few days trying to make at least a cube shape with the interlocking dowels and holes all fitting together. Interestingly, after many hours I had completely failed to find one. This didn't bode well for solving the puzzle in the box! 😱

Eventually, I resorted to Burrtools. Initially I looked for cube shapes and was slightly horrified to see that there were 7 cubic assemblies and 3 had a single hole that occurred in the correct place were it to be placed inside the box. I will need to assemble each of these cubes and then try the disassembly to see whether I can put one of them in the box. I did recreate the file with the box and found that there are 8 possible assemblies but no solutions. OMG! It will need rotational moves to assemble. Burrtools can only be used to give you a hint as to how it might possibly be assembled but not the actual solution.

I have spent several days on this and gotten nowhere so far and also to my horror, I cannot put it back into the transport position either.

This is an incredible challenge and best suited to the hardcore packing/interlocking puzzle solver amongst you.

Hopefully these will be going on sale within the next week or so.

An Epic Eyckmans Extravaganza

Dikkop	Cannonball
Hollow 15	Poolster

It doesn't seem that long since the last Pelikan release - I just don't know how they maintain such a punishing schedule and keep the quality so very high! Despite producing another huge batch of puzzles in just over a month, they are all absolutely stunningly made with a fit and finish that can only be described as perfection. There are 7 new puzzles to be released in this batch and the first four of them to be reviewed are a progressively more complex and very interesting set of 6 piece burrs.

Alfons Eyckmans designs some of the most amazing interlocking puzzles and burrs there are. I have a huge collection of his designs produced by Pelikan, Alfons himself, and also the late Eric Fuller. He designs puzzles that can be very very complex and difficult to solve but also creates easier designs that have something very interesting and fun. Most puzzlers enjoy a nice burr but don't enjoy extremely high level versions. Jakub, Simona and the team always choose puzzles that have something special and fun about them and are not just very difficult high level burrs. The Eyckmans puzzles in this release are perfect examples of this. They are all clever variants of the 6 piece burr which makes them especially interesting to many puzzlers.

Dikkop

I Started with Dikkop (translated from Dutch to mean Fathead (for obvious reasons). I initially thought that this one was a rather complex 3 piece burr. It is beautifully made from Wenge, Padauk and Acacia and I was very glad that I picked this one to start with. It's nice and chunky and easy to manipulate the pieces. As soon as I found the first move I realised that what looked like one giant burr piece in each direction was two sticks lying side by side. The "fat heads" prevent the pieces sliding out too easily and do restrict some of the moves. The disassembly takes 15 moves (9.2.2) and is actually a very pleasant exploration. It is a pleasure to work out which move comes next with very few blind ends. It remains stable right to the very last piece being removed which is very gratifying as it means that a beginner puzzler can keep an eye on where pieces are and understand how they lock together all the way through the disassembly.

It's really quite clever

I then scrambled the pieces and from a combination of my very poor memory and logic, I was able to put it completely back together from scratch. As a result, this is a really nice puzzle for beginners to burrs as well as experts. It will also look very impressive on display.

Cannonball

Made from a very dark and beautifully grained Acacia, this lovely clever 6 piece burr has a captive centre "cannonball" made from a vibrant Purpleheart. This is another puzzle where the sequence is fun to discover and not too difficult to achieve. I found the first move reasonably quickly but struggled for some reason to find the second move. I think it was because of the way that I was holding the puzzle. Once I had found that move the sequence sort of unfolded in front of me and I was able to remove the first piece after 7 moves. The rest came apart quite easily and again was very stable whilst each piece was removed. The cannonball proved to be unexpected shape which did explain why it was held in position so well.

Now, that's an odd cannonball

I am rubbish at burr assembly but was able to put this back together from memory whilst the pieces were arranged in the order that I took them out of the puzzle. Once I had arranged them for the above photo, I had lost track of what went where and how they went together. I was now unable to put it back together (at least there was no time for me to do it before having to write about them) so a BT file was used. I do actually think that anyone who is reasonable at burrs should be able to assemble this from pieces with a bit of thought. I plan to try and do it myself when I have finished working on the rest of the batch.

Hollow 15

Hollow 15 is a really interesting 6 piece board burr which is a huge step in difficulty from the Dikkop and Cannonball. This is probably less good for beginners but is great fun for the more experienced burrista. Entirely made from a really lovely Acacia, the whole point of this is that the centre of the puzzle is empty and after just a few moves, you can see inside at how everything is interlocked. The interesting thing here is that two of the boards are formed as complete rings with no gaps and the others have small gaps in one edge. The trick will be to move the pieces far enough apart from each other to  make space for the gaps to be aligned and unlock them form each other. I found the early moves with very little difficulty but after a few moves, a whole lot more are opened up as possibilities and the puzzle pieces get extended further and further away from each other. This makes it rather hard to keep control of them as some of the seem to want to rotate or sag depending on how you are holding it. I suspect there might be a rotational shortcut somewhere in this puzzle but I was very careful to avoid rotations.

After a few moves, I realised how complex this was going to be and I started using my usual to and fro technique to try and keep track of what I had done. Once I was about 6 or 7 moves in, a whole lot of movement suddenly became possible and after wandering up one pathway, I found I couldn't find my way back to the beginning - GULP! No option other than to continue my exploration. Luckily at this point the puzzler can see everything that is going on inside and can try to plan a move or two ahead. I did get stuck for a while when I couldn't find a needed move and realised that it was because the fit of the pieces was so exact that I needed to align them absolutely perfectly to achieve the required move. After I realised this progression was steady and fun until the first pair came out. It did sort of collapse at this point but still well entangled. The separation of the last four pieces was still fun but needed a bit of control.

The pieces look simple but they are not

This is a very impressive puzzle to disassemble and once you see all the pieces, it is very impressive that the Pelikan team have managed to create it with such perfect accuracy. With a construction like this even a tiny error in the angles will result in an impossible to move puzzle but this is simply perfect. The name Hollow 15 comes from the fact that it requires 15 moves to take out the first piece (level 15.2.4.3.3).

I definitely needed Burrtools to reassemble this one and I suspect that the vast majority of you will as well. Luckily making the BT file is great fun.

Poolster

Poolster is the final puzzle by Alfons in the release by Pelikan. Made using Merbau (aka Borneo Teak) and Movingui (aka Nigerian Satinwood), it really confused me when it first arrived. I could not tell what it was as on arrival the pieces with square holes had all slid outwards by one voxel making the puzzle look rather frightening. I then realised what had happened and squeezed them all together to achieve the correct shape that you can see above. I initially thought that the centra sticks were a captive 3 piece burr but quickly realised that each central cube protruding from one face is connected by a complex arrangement to the square on the opposite face.

There is a lot of movement possible from the beginning with this puzzle and it will require a systemic approach to ensure that you try each set of possibilities as far as they can go before backtracking to the beginning and trying another one. I found the reinforcing dowels quite useful in keeping track of which pieces I had moved and in which direction. The puzzle remains remarkably stable through the initial exploration and removal of the first couple of pieces (level 10.10.7.2). After that it becomes easier as you can see everything that is happening inside. Once in pieces the impressive nature of the design and the craftsmanship becomes very apparent.

Perfect alignment to make this one work

I think that very few puzzlers will be able to assemble this from scratch but I would be interested to hear if any of you manage this. I needed to resort to Burrtools again but it's a fun one to put together. Like Hollow 15, this is probably best for more experienced puzzles but if you like to collect variants of the 6 piece burr then this is a good one for you.

One...Three...Two...Solved!

Galaxy III

Galaxy III by DDK

Yes, from the title of the post you can tell that I am neither a mathematician nor could I ever be a scrub nurse (who needs to count to 5 preferably in the right order). This puzzle, Galaxy III designed by the amazing DDK and made by Mr Gao which I got from Aaron's recent release has this very strange progression to solution.

I have had another bad week and failed to solve everything in sight. I have been moving from wire puzzle to wire puzzle in the hope that I will have another Aha! moment but everything has failed on me. I was then mortified when my facebook friend, Yang Qingliang, showed off that they had solved the Galaxy III and had revealed to the world that they felt it was pretty easy needing only 4 moves. OMG! I am so rubbish at puzzles.

Aaron had rated the Galaxy III as only a level 7 and I had picked it up first in the hope that I would have something solved easily to boost my confidence. I had completely failed over the next few hours and eventually put it down to try others. It does look relatively simple with a shuttle straddling one of the wires on the outer layer of the spiral. The shuttle can be threaded right through from that outer wire to the centre with no obstructions but at first glance there isn't an obvious exit point and what you might think is a possible exit is blocked by the pair of oval rings across several layers. Winding round and around in circles is satisfying for a minute or so but when you get nowhere it loses its entertainment value quickly. 

Having been shamed I went back to it last night and this morning and had one of my very rare thoughts. I remembered back to almost the very beginning of my puzzling journey when I spent what was then a rather large sum of money on the entire Livewire puzzle collection. One of my absolute favourites from them was the Pyramid scheme which had a nice clever trick to it to find a rather counter-intuitive but very clever solution.

Pyramid scheme from Livewire puzzles

You can see the similarities of the spiral and the blockage ring with the shuttle on one wire. Once I had recalled the interesting idea that solved this one, I tried that move on the Galaxy III and suddenly went from one wire in the shuttle to three. That is fun and hopefully a progression. Next I moved it around a bit and before I knew it, did the same sort of move again from a different position and had 2 wires trapped. WTF?

1...3...2 was an odd sort of progression but I could now see an exit in exactly the same way I found the exit for the Pyramid scheme. Suddenly I had my shout of success and I didn't feel like quite such an eejit and more - I am not thinking about the fact that it is only a simple level 7! I will take the win.

Hooray

Having taken the photo, it was time to reassemble. I knew the type of moves that were required. It wasn't plain sailing but after a bit of fiddling about I managed it. It is quite fun to watch the non-obvious moves achieve results that don't seem like they should be possible - it's lovely in the same way that the original Livewire puzzle caused so much delight. I will be torturing colleagues with this one this week. At level 7 it might be solvable by someone.

Thank you Aaron for the torture!

What Is The Right Level?

The latest  releases by Aaron Wang and friends

It's been a frustrating week. The surgeons I work with seem to be trying to kill me. They have lined up a whole bunch of absolutely gigantic operations on either enormously obese, incredibly frail and/or very elderly patients. It's not good for my nerves to do a bunch of revision hip replacements for infection followed by a 7 hour long total femur replacement on a 50kg anaemic 86 year old! Following a week like that it was time to write the on call rotas again yesterday. Needless to say I am knackered! As a result, my puzzle solving prowess has reached new lows. I'm rubbish at puzzles at the best of times but with a week like I have just had, I'm worse than usual!

So what do I do with a week like that? I attempt some of the most confusing puzzles I own. Not very bright! Every year at around IPP time, Aaron Wang and his friends in China, club together and release a new batch of disentanglement puzzles. Every year I buy a whole load of them and fail to solve most of them. This year I had hoped for a better result but I'm not entirely certain that will happen. The difference is that Aaron has listened to most of us and has produced a few puzzles that are lower than his usual level 10 difficulty. Also this year there were a bunch more that are made entirely of wire with less enormous lengths of string to get tangled up. I bought 10 - stupid boy.

Love Trick by Mr Wu

I started with a Level 7, Love Trick. It is designed by a new to me designer, Mr Wu and looks like a nice place to start.

Over the years I have solved many puzzles that have the basic double loop and rod pieces in various combinations (for example the Lantern puzzles. There is a nice move sequence to them that can be fun but also confusing if you have to do a lot of them at once.

Doing that well remembered move effectively moves the piece from one section to another and eventually a release occurs. The trick is to work out where the piece needs to be moved to sequentially. This one looks nice and easy because there are only a couple of places the piece can be moved to. I duly moved it from one segment to the next and realised that it's now in an odd and awkward to manipulate position. Maybe I should go back and try a different order? Eventually I realised that the order doesn't matter and I just had to be careful how I hold the puzzle to achieve what I need.

Hooray! I can solve something

This filled me with confidence and I had 2 puzzles to choose from. Aaron himself had designed a fun looking puzzle that was supposed to be level 7 but involved string. I shied away from it and decided to move up a level.

Black Hole by DDK

DDK is a very prolific designer and most of his puzzles are incredibly difficult. I was very gratified to see the Black Hole was a "mere" level 8. It looks almost easy with what I thought was an obvious exit point.

Again, the lack of string really appealed to me. I set to fiddling with it whilst watching TV and found a very nice move almost straight away. That move did change things and made the puzzle look like I needed to aim at a different area than I had first thought. OK let's try something...two pieces in my hands and a little yelp of surprise annoyed Mrs S. 

Gulp! What had I just done? Lesson for you all - DON'T solve complex puzzles whilst watching TV. I had absolutely no idea how the puzzle came apart and then could not reassemble the damed thing. Doh!

Two lovely pieces and no idea how I got them

I have spent several hours (my excuse is that work left me very mentally fatigued) and could not put it back together. Luckily, there is an easy reset method to this due to the size of one of the rings. I have reassembled it using the reset and tried to solve it again. Level 8 seems to be beyond me now - I can no longer take it apart. Is level 8 too difficult for me?

Bronze Tripod by DDK

Whilst trying to think© about the Black Hole, I moved up a level to 9 with the Bronze Tripod also by DDK. This had intrigued me as soon as I had seen it, there looked to be an N-ary component to it (there actually isn't) and it looked to confusingly have two possible exit points.

My quick fiddle when I first took my photos, showed me that there are a few possible starting moves for that shuttle but they quickly get blocked inside a loop with nowhere to go. I was reassure that a friend on FB showed that it was solvable and claimed that it was logical. 

I failed for several days to find the solution to this before I had my first breakthrough. I am not sure why I hadn't tried that particular sequence before but suddenly I had the shuttle in a new and interesting position which would allow me to focus on the other side of the puzzle. Again I got stuck before realising that I could perform an odd reflection move of the shuttle which allowed progression. I started on a new path and before I knew what I was doing, I had two pieces and only the vaguest idea how I had done it.

Oh dear! How had I done this?

There is no simple way to reset this so I was going to have to find the true pathway. The first two moves were pretty easy to remember but after that I was stuck and kept finding the two pieces separated in my hands. I managed to backtrack without even realising how. For some reason, I was unable to find the route that would allow me to transition between sides of the puzzle. I had to put it down for a while to calm my frazzled nerves and then tried again later. This time I actually had a think© and realised that I needed to consider some of the pieces as a group and manipulate them together and then separately. Suddenly I could see the whole solution in front of me and I was able to reset and then dismantle the puzzle with ease.

For a level 9, it is surprisingly just perfect for me. The right amount of thought and discovery intermingled with a frisson of panic at times. Finally, I am able to solve something the correct way.

So what is the right level? Level 7 might be a touch easy. Level 8 might be too hard. Level 9 is just right. Something is not right there but my feeble tired brain can't work out what. Now I really need to work on Black Hole again and see if I can actually understand a level 8 puzzle.

You really should get some of these puzzles from Aaron or from PuzzleMaster - pick carefully because they are not for beginners.