Having received the new puzzles from Jakub and Jaroslav, they promptly went on
holiday and I thought I might have had plenty of time to solve and write about
all these wonderful new designs. Oh boy, I was very wrong. Even whilst on
holiday (vacation to the yanks) they still think about all their devoted puzzle
friends and sent me a message asking if I could have a review to them before
Friday 15th. OMG! The pressure is on! I really went for it. This was not made
particularly easy by the fact that there are several difficult packing puzzles
this time and I am terrible at packing puzzles. Many of you will have read my
reviews when they went up on the Pelikan store describing the puzzles - if you
have then no need to read on. I just didn't have time to publish the reviews
with decent photos here until now.
I have not managed to solve them all but I certainly have a review on them all
for you and hope that this helps when you are choosing what you should buy.
Without further ado, on to the puzzles:
Typhoon S1
I absolutely love this particular subgroup of the interlocking/caged burr
puzzle. A lot of the high piece number caged burrs can be extremely difficult
and quite a few have completely beaten me. There are a small group consisting of
a frame with just 4 burrsticks sitting inside that I really enjoy the process of
exploration and disassembly. The reassembly is a challenge but definitely
possible with such a low number of pieces.
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| Galaxy |
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| Galaxy Z |
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Mysterious Galaxy
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The master of this type is Osanori Yamamoto who
began my love of these
with the incredible Galaxy, Galaxy Z and Mysterious Galaxy puzzles. This kind
of puzzle can be expanded to make them more difficult and maybe slightly more
interesting (as Dan Fast did with the Stir the Coffee puzzle in the last
release. Osanori has designed a lovely little challenge here which Jakub and
Jaroslav have brought into the world beautifully using Jatoba and Wenge. The
fit is perfect and the exploration is great fun. There are quite a few short
blind ends and it's possible to go in a loop. I got stuck at one point and
could not find the critical move - everything is visible as you progress but
due to the ends being at 90º to each other I found my moves were easily
blocked. After a couple of evenings of play I suddenly found my hidden move
and I was able to take out the first piece.
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It's a fun reassembly too
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Having disassembled it, I scrambled the pieces and attempted reassembly and
really struggled. I did manage to work out what went where and in what order
but the hidden move that I had found fro the disassembly was also hidden on
the way back to the beginning. Brilliant puzzle which is just the right level
of difficulty and beautifully made.
Insider
This absolutely stunning puzzle designed by Alexander Magyarics was sent out to
me fully assembled. I suspect this was done to prevent the captive piece
rattling around in the post and getting damaged. If Pelikan does decide to send
it out assembled then I would very much suggest that you get your significant
other puzzler in your life to take it apart for you and then you treat it as an
assembly puzzle. It is truly gorgeous having been made from Zebrano and Jatoba -
the grain is just stunning! It is also a substantial puzzle in your hands being
an 8cm cube. This size is very welcome so that you can easily get your fingers
inside to manipulate the pieces. There are 3 pieces and the box which has some
pretty big holes in it. Only 2 of those pieces can be removed and the other has
to remain inside.
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Insider pieces (the third is captive inside)
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The disassembly is a nice little exploration and after that the captive piece
can rattle around into any orientation. This means that as a packing puzzle you
cannot create your shapes outside before working out how to put the pieces back
inside. Mrs S never agrees to play with my puzzles and I dismantled it and
scrambled all 2 of the pieces and left them for several days. As expected
(Alexander had suggested that I do this), the reassembly is a significant
challenge - I am critically dependent on creating my shapes first and working
backwards. This is not possible and I had to try and do it in my feeble mind. It
took me a couple of days before I succeeded and that was only because I
understood the disassembly. If I stared from scratch then I might still be doing
it! Beautiful
AND brilliant.
Golden Pot
When Yavuz designs something, I always pay attention. He is an amazing designer
as well as a superb craftsman. The belief that there is a pot of gold at the end
of a rainbow is a wonderful piece of old Irish folklore and it is quite
surprising that a Turkish man living in Germany can get a pair of Czech
craftsmen to make it but even without a hint of Ireland in the manufacture, this
is a simply wonderful puzzle. It is made with an American Walnut pot, a Merbau,
Purpleheart, Garapa and Maple rainbow and Grape pieces. Yavuz has used a subset
of the Soma cube pieces (including 3 that are doubled up). The aim is to pack
all of them into the pot so that the gold forms a level surface with the rainbow
buried in it. This is made really challenging by the fact that there is only a 1
voxel clearance around and underneath the rainbow's end making the insertion of
several pieces quite challenging. I still struggle to assemble a soma cube and
anything like this with a restricted entry is a huge challenge for me. Random
trial and error didn't work for the first couple of days and eventually I had to
think©. It is actually the restricted entry that is the most important part.
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This is one that I will put on display in the assembled form - just
gorgeous!
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It made me stop and work out how I could get the awkward pieces inside - there
is only one assembly but there are 2 ways the pieces can be put inside. A really
difficult puzzle for me and will be beautiful on display in the puzzle room.
Soma 6 Pack
Lucie Pauwels is well known for designing really clever and fun challenges which
are often variations on a familiar theme which she extends or alters to make
them more interesting. Jakub must have seen how good this was and decided that
we all needed to experience it. He has created a stunner using very vibrant
Padauk and Wenge. In essence this is "just" another Soma variant - take the
simple tri-ominoes and tetrominoes and create a 3x3x3 cube! But, and it's a
really big
BUT... Lucie has taken away one of the tetrominoes. Does this
make it easier? Yes, it makes it very easy to create a cube with a 4 voxel gap
in it but the she has made the puzzle MUCH more difficult by giving us a 3x3x3
box to assemble the cube in with a rather restricted opening and that 4th
tetromino is actually fixed into the roof of the box - yes, the roof of the box
is part of the shape. I find this also quite mind-boggling because I cannot
create my complete shape outside the box easily. Having taken the pieces out to
take my photo, I couldn't put any more than 4 of them in and actually needed a
rotation to do that! OMG! This was going to be really tough for a Soma idiot
like me.
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"Just" a soma cube? Not for me it wasn't!
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It took me several hours to solve this one and a huge sense of achievement. It
is perfect for anyone who really likes to collect all the Soma variants out
there (Haym Hirsh has created quite a few that
Brian Menold has made over the
years and they are massive challenges).
Scrooge
This gorgeous construction is another magnificent burr design from Alfons
Eyckmans. This one made from Bubinga and Wenge looks ferociously difficult.
Anything with this number of pieces frightens me but I still cannot resist
them. My fear is always getting badly lost in the disassembly and then being
unable to return to the beginning or make progress. This puzzle is complex but
not so complex as to worry anyone about being unable to make progress. The
reason that Pelikan decided to make this is because it is effectively a 6
piece burr (albeit with stick length of 8 voxels) held within a frame made
from relatively simple burrsticks. I absolutely loved the initial exploration
of the movements as there were not too many available and certainly no chance
of me getting stuck. The first piece takes 25 reasonably logical moves to
release and thereafter the rest of the solution progressed very enjoyably. The
puzzle remained remarkably stable (if a little squishy) even after 6 pieces
had been removed and I eventually managed to remove the entire frame (which
consists of 6 identical versions of two types of piece) and was left with the
5 piece burr intact and remaining to be dismantled.
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| The pieces look fearsome but it was a really fun disassembly |
The reassembly will
definitely require Burrtools but that is half of the fun.
Minas Tirith
This incredibly striking puzzle is yet another fabulous creation by Tamás
Vanyó. It has been made with Elm to match the pale city that was shown in
Peter Jackson's amazing Lord of the Rings films. Like the Caste builder set in
the previous release, the Minas Tirith is constructed using 2x2xN sized pieces
that fit in a frame which has restrictions in it. Unlike the castle builder
set, the frame actually forms part of the outer wall of the puzzle and greatly
restricts the ability to insert the pieces and means that the order of
insertion is crucial. I have to state that I have not had time to solve this
puzzle. The aim is to create a "city" so that none of the inner rooms are
visible externally and also there is an extra challenge which Pelikan have
added. Once the puzzle has been dismantled you will see a bunch of interior
channels cut within many of the pieces. The aim is to assemble your city so
that the supplied metal ball bearing can be inserted into the hole near the
top and then can navigate the carefully assembled maze so that it can exit the
exterior door after tilting it back and forth in the correct direction. This
will be a huge challenge for any puzzler and will leave you with a stunning
puzzle to put on display afterwards.
So which should you buy? Well all of them of course! I know that most of you cannot buy them all so will state that my favourites are Insider for the extra challenge of the captive piece, Golden Pot because it is just so beautiful and Scrooge because it is still a six piece burr but made more interesting!
Now I had better reassemble Scrooge before a certain cat runs off with a piece or Mrs S chucks them away for cluttering up her kitchen!
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