The GyroTwisty comprises an ABS plastic (the stuff for 3D printing) circular shell frame l which holds an inner ball. The object of the puzzle is to take apart the pieces and put them back together again. As with the previous Namdarian puzzle Sewing Box, the quality of the 3D printing and finishing here is very good. Tolerances are just right allowing the inner ball to rotate smoothly inside the outer circular frame. My copy of the puzzle looks really cute with a contrasting yellow and blue colour. Physically the puzzle is a nice size for the hands at around 8cm in diameter and about 6.5cm tall. Mine also came in a pinkish drawstring cloth pouch with leopard print.

This puzzle reminds me of Hanayama’s Cast Marble (which I don’t own nor have I played with) and also Peppermint designed by Scott Elliot. While the three puzzles share similar design cues, the solves have their own characteristics. Unlike Sewing Box and Peppermint which I struggled with it, I managed GyroTwisty pretty well. I took apart the puzzle in under 10 minutes and got all four pieces back together in a lesser time. Or maybe I just got lucky. I won’t say its very difficult but its certainly not an easy puzzle either. But I suppose with some persistence, it will pay off in the end as you fiddle the pieces.

There is a technique to the solve. Once I managed to line up the outer shell with the inner ball, which itself splits into two, the puzzle came apart quite easily. Really no force whatsoever is required.

For anyone interested to get a copy,  you can email Diniar via the IPP38 Puzzle Design Competition webpage. Yes, the GyroTwisty was also an entry to the competition. The puzzle costs a very reasonable 15 Euros plus S&H.

The post GyroTwisty appeared first on JL Puzzles.

The goal of Double Vision “is to see an undistorted single image of the IPP38 Logo through the “glass” rhombohedron enclosed”. Now what is a rhombohedron you might ask?. Well, it looks like the object below, a sort of slanted cube. The meaning is here.

Double Vision comes in a cardboard packaging which contains a wooden box with sliding lid. Inside is a block of glass rhombohedron and instructions. The wooden box is well constructed with the IPP38 logo printed on a card sitting nicely at the bottom of the box. The block of glass itself looked like it was something extracted from mother earth. It was rough at the edges and not completely clear and see through. In fact it was a bit cloudy on the inside. But still clear enough to see the distorted IPP38 logo. Dimensionally the puzzle is 8.5cm x 8.5cm x 5cm.

Following the instructions, I looked through the Rhombohedron and indeed saw a double image of the IPP38 Logo. I have no idea what is the scientific explanation for this phenomenon. But I needed to see a single image so I turned and flipped the glass on each of its six sides and held the glass in all sorts of ways. But all I saw was still the “distorted double image”.

Well, like I mentioned in the beginning, there is a trick to this puzzle and of course being the dense one here, it eluded me. I looked at the solution supplied and yes, now I could quite clearly see undistorted single image of the IPP38 Logo through the glass. What a neat and cool puzzle!

The post Double Vision appeared first on JL Puzzles.

The Sewing Box consists of an ABS plastic (the stuff for 3D printing) circular frame which holds six different coloured rods in place. Each of the rods consists of two parts split at varying lengths. The object of the Sewing Box is to remove the rods from the frame. Quality of the 3D printing and finishing is very good. The puzzle looks really nice with all that colour around the sides.

I think everyone would agree that the puzzle is very intriguing and enticing looking and begs to be played with. But the solving is a whole different ball game. I struggled with it for quite some time and got nowhere. The rods can rotate on their own axis and all six rods can also rotate around the frame. Eventually I asked Diniar for a clue. All he told me was that the rods are split at different heights (something which I already knew). Anyway, I persevered on. And through a rather painful process of trial and error, continuous sliding and twisting, I finally manage to dislodge the rods. I say dislodge because it seemed that several of the rods all came apart almost at the same instant. It was only then that I saw the “internal mechanism” of the Sewing Box. I like to think I got the rods out more by chance than systematic skill.

I took a fairly long time to solve, like nearly maybe an hour. Diniar mentioned that three other puzzlers, Jim Strayer, Kevin Sadler and Goetz Schwandtner all had taken apart the thing in only 15 minutes or so. Hey, these guys are experts…what do you expect?! Overall, I would say that the Sewing Box has quite a clever and rather very unique design concept, well executed via 3D printing production. Very challenging would be a bit of an understatement. Solving requires a fair bit of (lateral) thinking. And certainly quite a handful to be juggling so many pieces. I saw the official solution from Diniar. And yes, there is a “method” or rather technique to solving but it is difficult to discover. More suitable for the hardcore puzzle enthusiasts.

For anyone interested to get a copy (15 Euros plus S&H) and I would highly recommend the Sewing Box to those who relish a good challenge, you can email Diniar via the IPP38 Puzzle Design Competition webpage. Yes, the Sewing Box was also an entry to the competition, and the most colourful one!

The post Sewing Box appeared first on JL Puzzles.

But during IPP38 in San Diego this past August, I received one of the coolest (and most high tech) Exchange Puzzles around! This was the Super Cube from George Miller.

A quick demonstration during the Puzzle Exchange by Roxanne Miller showed me that this puzzle is in the realms of the tech/digital sphere.  Nothing like your typical twisty or Rubik’s Cube. It completely blew me away. Having said that, I am aware that there were in the past, electronic versions of the Rubik’s Cube such as the TouchCube and some other variations.

Is this cool or what?!!

The Super Cube comes packaged with not just the cube itself. But you also have to download the Super Cube app onto your smart phone or tablet to enjoy the Super Cube experience. You can just play with the Super Cube in the usual fashion. But the app also provides a number of challenges and “games”.

From a construction stand point, the build quality and finish is excellent. Even for a non-twisty puzzler like me, I can tell that the Super Cube turns with quiet buttery smoothness, almost like a competition cube.

How it works is that Super Cube is connected via Bluetooth to your smart phone or tablet and the cube will work with the app as intended. Obviously there are electrical components inside the cube. That’s why it comes with a charging cable that connects to the Super Cube via a pair of connectors shaped like miniature headphones.

I wasn’t interested in the other challenges. You can see from my iphone screenshots below what sort of extra challenges are available. And I am sure they are fun and many twisty enthusiasts would love them. What I was particularly drawn to was the Quick Solve function! As the name implies, this function allow you to solve a scrambled cube using the app. Once paired, the app is able to detect the scrambled state of the cube, no matter how you may scramble it. It will direct the puzzler to orientate the cube in the correct manner in order to start following the solving directions given by the app.

Once you have got the faces of the cube in the right orientation, you simply follow the on-screen twists and turns. The app will make the first twist and you follow. It will only show the next move after you have made yours. It won’t “run ahead” of you such that you are unable to keep up with the turns. Great for twisty novices and puzzlers like me who have little (or no) experience…haha! I had good fun with it. I posted about the Super Cube on Facebook and it has drawn mixed reactions with some puzzlers saying that a cube is not solved like this. Well, like any new (tech) product, including puzzles, there will be detractors and supporters alike.

Click on the YouTube video link HERE at the which shows how the Quick Solve function works with the Super Cube.

The Super Cube is available from a number of online retailers for around US$40.00. Google Giiker Super Cube and you will be able to sell who sells them.

The post Super Cube appeared first on JL Puzzles.

Typically, an Exchange participant (pre-registered and approved) is required to produce 100 copies of a puzzle of an original design.The design can either be his or her own or from some other designer. These puzzles must also not be commercially available elsewhere. Out of the 100 puzzles, one copy is donated to the IPP. during IPP, this is displayed on a large round table for all attendees to view. The remaining 99 are used for the exchange.

However, it is only on rare occasions where all 99 exchange participants exchange their puzzles. The number is usually less than 99. There have even been several times where there were more than 100 exchangers. In the latter case, each exchanger will exchange up to the limit of 99 puzzles. More often than not the average number varies between 85 – 95. This year at San Diego, it was a low year with only 78 exchangers. Hence I came home with 77 new and different puzzles. Below are the photos of the puzzling folks from around the world I exchanged with.

The post IPP38 Puzzle Exchange – 11 August 2018, San Diego, California, USA appeared first on JL Puzzles.

I have been very fortunate to get my hands on Shane’s Haleslock 2 and Haleslock 4 previously as well as a couple of his other non-lock wooden puzzles The Circle and Turn The Plug. All fantastic puzzles! The Haleslock 3 comes to me courtesy of Peter Hajek during the IPP37 Puzzle Exchange in Paris last year.

Shane has based his Haleslock 3 on one of these old lever padlocks. The lock comes with a key and has a shiny brassy looking front plate with a little sliding door. Externally nothing very unusual about the look and feel of the lock, so Shane must have done something to the internal mechanism to make it a puzzle lock.

simple elegant solution…but damn, i am nowhere near!

Having played with Shane’s Haleslock 2 and 4 (and a number of Popplocks), I thought I would have more experience and figure out this one pretty quickly. But apparently not. The key goes in as one would expect and even turn in both directions. At various points there is resistance when turning the key and this was all I managed to find out and the progress I made. Which was not a lot.

I tried the usual prodding of the rivets, maybe something would move (a trick I learnt from one of the Popplocks) but nothing budged. I also examined the lock a lot more closely after my “slip-up” with the Haleslock 2 but there was nothing unusual I could find.

After spending the better part of several days on and off trying this and that without any success, I threw in the towel and emailed Shane for a clue. Over the course of our email exchanges, I realised that the clues he shared with me were already some of the things that I had done, but perhaps not “far reaching enough” or the right way. Finally after some more trying, wa-lah… the shackle unlocked.

Like most puzzle locks, you cannot see the internal mechanism with the lock in the solved state. Re-locking the shackle were the steps in reverse. And I was able to do it without a cinch.  Essentially, the solution lies in just a few steps…of course easy to state now on hindsight. A rather elegant solution I might add.

The post Haleslock 3 appeared first on JL Puzzles.

SPIR ALA Rips

Not sure what the name means but Vesa Timonen seems to have done it again. Again just two pieces  but this time with one hole in each piece. The goal is to place the pieces flat on a table such that the resulting shape can be bisected into two identical shapes. I absolutely had no luck with this one but did however enjoy the nice strong woody scent emanating from the Curly Birch used to produce this puzzle.

French Revolution

French colours adorned here of course. Consisting of four pieces, one blue and three red, the goal is to form three possible symmetrical shapes using a combination of the blue piece and any two of the three red pieces. As of this post, I only managed to  find one of the  three possible solutions. Like the name suggest, I kept going round in circles to no avail. The other two shapes have eluded me thus far.

3 Pieces 9 symmetric shapes

A straight forward self-explanatory name for the puzzle but this one is anything by straight forward. And the puzzle consist of only three pieces. The goal is to form 9 symmetric shapes but after two days of play, I managed only to form 3 shapes…a rather dismal result percentage if I may add.

SYM-353

Now this one is from me, yes! SYM-353 was my exchange puzzle at IPP37. Why the “353”? Well, it consist of three pieces; two with 3 sides and one with 5 sides. Sym 353 was a  design collaboration between Stanislav Knot of the Czech Republic and me. My original design had just one solution (as I intended). But Stan saw my design and thought the three pieces could form another symmetrical shape. With some adjustments to the shapes, this proved to be true. Little did we realise that there were two more possible solutions when I sent the puzzle to Ken Johnson of Canada and Rex Perez of Philippines for testing. Each of them came up with a new and different solution, resulting in a total of 4 possible solutions.

The post Symmetric Shape Puzzles appeared first on JL Puzzles.

This rather unusual disentanglement puzzle came to me courtesy of Roxanne Miller during the IPP37 Puzzle Exchange.  For those who attended IPP last year and did an exchange with Roxanne, you will have realised that there is a certain sort of theme going on. Planned by Roxanne (and George Miller) of course. This theme runs through the outfits (or lack thereof) which Roxanne and George wore during the Exchange, right through to the puzzle itself and its packaging.  Rather devilish you might say!

Where’s the serpent?

The object of Adam & Eve is to “get the heads of Adam and Eve together”. At the starting position, Adam & Eve are joined somewhere around the lower limbs. The trick is to be able to navigate the two parts around and “along” each other to the final position as shown. It might have been relatively easy if the two circular metal rings and the red apple on the chain had not been present. The way the metal part have been bent and cut also causes some restrictions of movement.

I spent a while experimenting how the two figures interacted with each other, how to move Adam and Eve and so on. Not easy but later I figured out that I had to “dump” the apple to progress. It looks impossible to do so but like all good disentanglement puzzles, there is way of solving which is not obvious. Eventually with further trial and error, I got the two heads to lock together.

If I can solve this one without help, I would imagine that wire and disentanglement enthusiasts would not have a problem with this one. Its challenging no doubt but not frustratingly difficult at least IMHO. It will not get you into knots which you can’t extricate yourself, unlike some types of really complicated wire and rope puzzles. If that really happens, you can always dismantle the chain holding the apple. The Adam & Eve is one of those puzzles with just the right level of difficulty for an Exchange Puzzle. And did I mention that it was pretty fun to play with too? Nice design theme and concept, great to look at and a must-have for collectors.

The post Adam & Eve appeared first on JL Puzzles.

If you have seen or played with the famous “impossible object” puzzle called 4 Street Elbows, you will probably know who Saul is. Double Feature is also similar in concept to his IPP35 Exchange Puzzle called Restricted Area, another Coffin design.

The Double Feature is produced by Saul himself under the brand name Here To There Puzzles. Measuring 6.5cm x 6.2cm x 6cm, it’s a cuboid packing puzzle made out of two different woods. Construction fit and finish is decent. There is a top cover consisting of a sliding panel with slanted edges. Keeps the packed pieces in nicely.

not so “straight” forward

The goal of the puzzle is to pack six irregular pieces (five of which has 5 units each and the 6th with 2) into the box, under the lid. The box is also also affixed with two obstructions (once the sliding panel is removed). So it’s not just a matter of just trying to drop the pieces in but figuring how to navigate the pieces through the opening.

It is obvious given the obstructions that removal and assembly of the pieces would not be that easy. Especially more so for the latter. A good memory helps of course.  This is aided by the fact that the puzzle already came fully assembled. If you can figure out how to remove the pieces completely, the return to the box should not be much of a problem. But if not, forming a cube outside the box with the six pieces may help you to re-orientate. Burr Tools would not help here since the solve requires more than rectilinear moves. You probably figured out what this means! From my count, about 14-15 moves for complete disassembly.

The post Double Feature appeared first on JL Puzzles.

Naoaki Takashima designed this sliding block puzzle way in March 1985. From what I have heard, Takashima-san owns the largest collection of mechanical puzzles in Japan. The collection it seems is well in  excess of 10,000 puzzles. IPP37 was Takashima-san’s 30th IPP party todate! So far I have played with one other of Takashima-san’s puzzles and that was his IPP36 Exchange Puzzle called Seal, another sliding bock puzzle. The Puzzle 9 was first given out by Takashima-san at IPP9 in Tokyo in 1988.  Back then very few copies were distributed as there was no puzzle exchange as what we have in today’s IPP gatherings. Last year in Paris, Takashima-san decided to use his Puzzle 9 as his Exchange Puzzle.

classification

Sliding block puzzle. For more information on sliding block puzzles generally, you may want to take a look at Edward Hordern’s 1987 book called Sliding Piece Puzzles available from Amazon. Takashima-san’s Puzzle 9 design was featured in Hordern’s book and numbered as “B25”.

MANUFACTURE

Produced by a company called ASOBIDEA in Japan. There is not a lot of information about this company. They do sell a small range of products including some folding puzzles. The assembly of the puzzle was done by Takashima-san.

The Puzzle 9 is made from laser cut acrylic and quality is outstanding in my opinion. The puzzle measures 14cm x 8cm x 0.4cm. The pieces which resemble playing cards have their design etched on, no stickers used here. Very good detailing indeed. Having produced acrylic puzzles myself in the past, such detail and quality would not have come cheap at all.

solving

The object of the puzzle is to position the pieces in the START position and move rearrange the pieces to arrive at the END position. The Puzzle 9 is similar in some sense to the very well known 15 Puzzle which has a pretty long history. Aside from rearranging the pieces to the desired format, the Puzzle 9 also requires the solution to show the uncovered #9 at the top of the tray, an additional challenge.

The Puzzle 9’s solution eluded me for quite a few days. Even just getting the correct order of the cards right I had problems. When I finally took a look at the provided solution, I realised why I was not able to solve it. I can’t say more here without giving away anything. It has a nice rather unexpected solution which awaits the successful solver.

The post 9 Puzzle – Hordern B25 appeared first on JL Puzzles.

The Eiffel Six Cube was designed and manufactured by Alistair Morris of the UK. It also served as his first Exchange Puzzle at IPP37 in Paris last year. I had played with one of Ali’s earlier designs a while back, the very brilliant Bolt & Nut Puzzle, which stumped quite a few puzzlers too.

The object of the puzzle is to form a cube with each of the 6 faces bearing the image of the Eiffel Tower. Like most puzzlers that have played with this puzzle, the initial impression is that it would not be too difficult. But it remained unsolved for me for more than several days over the past week.

“EIFFEL FOR IT”

Yes, I did…I FELL FOR IT! This was the title that puzzler Lionel Depeux had suggested to Allard to use for his blog post. Why? Ali had cunningly designed the Eiffel Six Cube in a way that if you are not observant, you will “fall” for his trick. During my sessions with this puzzle, many a times I had come to the final stages of forming a cube but the last piece would always elude me. And this came to a point where I wondered if Ali had mistakenly printed the Eiffel images on the wrong places or mis-glued his cubes which resulted in the wrong shape of a piece. The correct solution just seemed impossible to achieve.

I decided to ask Allard for a clue and so shot him a message. After a couple of cryptic responses which I didn’t find of much help, his last reply to me before I went to bed (yes, Singapore is about 7 hours ahead of the UK) was to examine the puzzle carefully.  The next morning I took out the Eiffel Cube again and this time I played with it more slowly than I did before, taking my time and looking at how each piece interacted with the rest. Suddenly it hit me….and I found the solution! I first reaction…WTF!  At last I got to build a cube with the Eiffel Tower on each of the six faces. What an incredible A-ha moment! Totally brilliant design and  a real surprise ending!

The post Eiffel Six Cube appeared first on JL Puzzles.

I first had a glimpse of the Currency R&R a while back as pictures of the puzzle were posted by Rex (and I think Stan as well) on their respective Facebook feeds after the design first emerged.  It looked like a real tough packing puzzle and then, I was pretty sure it was. What was also really interesting was the design theme. Rex and Stan had designed the pieces to resemble currency symbols. There are 5 currencies used here. They are the Dollar, Japanese Yen, Spanish Peseta,  Euro and British Pound. The angular shapes of the pieces forming the currencies are nicely executed and look like the real thing.

Now what people do not know is that the Currency R&R started as R&S (Rex & Stanislav). Initially conceived in 2015 as a sliding block cum packing puzzle by Rex, the two gents worked on it as a sliding puzzle.But during this time, Stan also came up with a simple packing design which eventually resulted in the Currency puzzle that we know today. I am not sure what the second “R” in “R&R” stands for tho”. Was it a typo error?

Fast forward sometime to 2017 and at the IPP37 Puzzle Exchange in Paris, I got a copy of the Currency R&R in my hands. Exchanged by Frans De Vreugd. Frans had seen the puzzle and requested it for his exchange puzzle. The puzzle is made out of laser cut acrylic with coloured symbols and the tray consists of two sides both which can be used. Construction and fit is perfect and the puzzle is very well cut.

One 2d packing challenge becomes Five 

The Currency R&R had been “modded” by Frans to include more challenges than the original design. The original version was just to pack the 5 currency symbols into the tray. The new challenges include 1) Packing the 5 symbols into a modified (tighter) tray (the side with with the etchings). And using a combination of 4, 3 and 2 symbols, pack the pieces into the tray such that none of the pieces can slide (anti-slide puzzle). The latter challenges had multiple solutions while the two traditional packing ones each had a unique solution.

Depending on the design, a 5 piece packing puzzle can be moderately difficult, difficult or very challenging, but rarely easy. My personal take on the Currency R&R is that the puzzle straddles somewhere in between difficult and very difficult, but leaning  more towards difficult. While its hard no doubt, I would not say its frustratingly hard. Or perhaps it was just my good luck the day when I played with it! Both challenges took me about forty minutes in total.

For this particular design, a bit of thinking and careful observation would also help in the solve. Particularly paying attention to the shape of each piece and how they might interact with each other inside the tray. I don’t want to say more to avoid spoilers. The remaining anti slide challenges (using a combination of pieces) were not too difficult and I could manage almost all of them. Especially after my experience with Gridlock at the Arc De Triomphe.

The post Currency R&R appeared first on JL Puzzles.

The Concentric Arc is a maze puzzle.  On both discs  there are curved channels cut out. These form 3 layers of “concentric circles” spanning out from the centre. The puzzle is made of trespa, a strong and durable material widely used for home table surfaces. The puzzle is precision laser cut and the quality of construction and finish is very good.

To solve, one needs to rotate the two discs (held together at the centre by screw) and navigate a rivet “floating” along the maze channels to a point where it can be fully removed. And to remove the rivet, the round hole on the top disc must coincide with a similar hole on the bottom disc.

OH NO!, another maze puzzle which i can’t solve?

When I first looked at the Concentric Arc, it reminded me of the Cross & Crown, Dr Goetz Schwandtner’s IPP34 Exchange Puzzle. This is another maze puzzle with two similar looking discs having all the cut-outs and such. However the latter is a N’ary style puzzle, requiring a lot more moves in a particular sequential fashion. Moreover I was not able to solve the Cross & Crown successfully either.

Nonetheless as I fiddled with the Concentric Arc, I found it to be less intimidating than I initially thought. In fact, after several minutes of play, I managed to remove the rivet. But to really solve a puzzle fully, you must be able to return the puzzle to the original state, at least one senior seasoned puzzler has exclaimed. Here is where I had a tad more problem than before. I had forgotten the moves. So I thought again with my random fiddling, I would be able to get the rivet back in place somehow. But this was not to be for quite a while, in fact quite a long while.

The post Concentric Arc appeared first on JL Puzzles.

Gridlock was Jerry Slocum’s IPP37 Exchange Puzzle at Paris last year. A nice soft spoken elderly gentleman whom I have had the great pleasure of meeting since I started attending IPPs in 2013. Jerry Slocum is the “founder” of the IPP,  first established 30 years ago, back in 1978 . He hosted the first gathering in the living room of his Californian home for a handful of collectors. Since then, the modern IPP today has grown in numbers and today, attendance at each event is anywhere between 400 to 500 people, hosted in different countries around the planet. For some history of the IPP and other interesting facts, click here.

anti slide or anti solution?

The Gridlock was the combined brian child of three persons; Brian Young, Junichi Yananose and William Hu. How did three guys come together to design something like that? Well, according to Sue Young (Brian’s wife), she said that “the puzzle started out as William’s idea. But it didn’t work properly. At that time Juno (Junichi) was working here with us and him and Brian started playing with it and over time it ended up looking like something quite different. But all 3 guys had a hand in the final product so that’s how we put the designers down”.

There is nothing very unusual in the physical look and feel of the Gridlock. The puzzle consists of a tray with 6 pieces, the latter which look pretty simple and ordinary as well. All made of acrylic.  Construction, fit and finish of the puzzle is pretty decent. The tray (and pieces) have all the details of the puzzle etched onto them. Gridlock was produced by Mr Puzzle of Australia.

The goal of this anti slide puzzle is as what it’s name suggest. To place the 6 pieces into the tray in such a way that not a single piece will slide in any direction within the tray. If you look at the solution of AntiSlide Tetramino mentioned above, you will understand what I mean by not being able to slide in any direction.

Like I mentioned, I (severely) underestimated the level of difficulty of the puzzle. The initial hours (yes, hours, not minutes) I spent on this puzzle yielded only one solution which I thought to be the correct one. Unfortunately, upon checking with Brian (and Sue), it was apparently very close but not quite. Brian and Sue even sent me photos of some rather outrageous solutions from other puzzlers (no names mentioned) which I must admit were rather ingenious, if a bit off-tracked.

The next several days I emailed to Sue and Brian a further two solutions I came up with. But as luck would have it, they were both still not the intended solution. I must state at this point that the correct/intended solution is the one the puzzle exchanger or designer submits for the IPP Exchange Puzzle Book. This book features all the exchange puzzles with puzzles and solutions, names etc for each particular IPP.

As of the date of this post, I am still trying to figure out the correct way the pieces fit inside the tray. I am still no nearer than when I first started. I mean, how many ways can there be to fit the pieces into the tray without sliding? Below are three of what I thought were the solutions for Gridlock…which are ALL INCORRECT.

The post Gridlock At The Arc De Triomphe appeared first on JL Puzzles.

OMPIC was James Dalgety’s IPP37 Exchange Puzzle. I have met James during the past IPPs and also corresponded with him on occasions. His Exchange Puzzles have always been rather interesting, intriguing and challenging. Take for example his past exchange puzzles that I have played with; the Perplexing Palace Puzzle and Dot Box. Incidentally the Dot Box also won the Jury First Prize in the IPP35 Puzzle Design Competition. And for those interested to learn more about puzzles, their history and classification, James Dalgety also runs the Puzzle Museum, a private collection of tens of thousands of puzzles, which started in 1886.

REALLY A ONE MINUTE PUZZLE?

First off, the OMPIC looks very much like a hollow cube that has been pressed from all three sides.  It looks bent and squashed! Yes, it was intended this way. The OMPIC was produced for James by Vaclav Obsivac of Vinco puzzles. Made of two types of wood, the puzzle measures about 5cm all round. Construction, fit and finish is very good. And during play there was no jamming of the pieces even tho the tolerances were cut quite tightly.

GETTING THE CUBE INSIDE

The goal is to first “build” a cube with the four odd-shaped pieces inside the squashed hollow cube/cage. Can it be done in a minute? Well, I am sure some expert puzzlers could, but I certainly coudn’t. In fact I took about 8-9 minutes to solve the thing! To get the cube into the cage, one needs to know how to first form a regular cube. Now this already took a couple of minutes alone.

The next challenge is of course to remember the orientation of the pieces and then figure out how to insert each of the pieces into the cage. The cut-outs on each of the sides of the cage are identical rectangular shaped. They do (intentionally) pose an obstruction to the entry of some pieces and a certain order of movements is needed.

Initially I tried the usual random sort of thing and of course that got me nowhere. Some thinking is required. Given there are only four pieces, the logic and steps and what needs to be done while challenging, are not overly difficult. Some of the pieces can only go inside the cage in a certain way. And one needs to make sure the last piece can be inserted without hindrance. The question is -How?

The OMPIC is an interesting and fun puzzle to solve and it has IMHO just about the right level of difficulty. Not to mention the puzzle displays very nicely and even comes with its own ring support which holds it at the correct (tilted) angle.

The post OMPIC appeared first on JL Puzzles.

The Security Lock is manufactured by German based board games and puzzle maker Siebenstein-Spiele. It measures about 13.5cm tall (including the shackle), 11.5cm wide and 1.7cm thick. It comprises three layers of laser cut wood sandwiching a single acrylic layer all screwed together. The overall quality of construction and fit is very good. All the pieces move and slide smoothly. The Security Lock also comes with a laser cut wooden key.

A puzzle lock?

While the Security Lock is shaped like a lock with shackle and all, it is essentially a sliding block puzzle. This seems to be recent new trend in design. This lock is similar to two other wooden locks in my collection, using a sliding block concept. The “n-ary” locks  and their variants are still around and will remain so, as designers come up with new ones.

The body of the lock acts like a tray holding eight square and rectangle pieces. The layer of acrylic functions as a cover (with some cut-outs) to prevent the sliding pieces from being removed (in order to cheat). The blocks restrain the shackle in its place. The goal is to slide the pieces in such a way that the shackle can slide upwards and be freed.

The key has is useful too. Obviously it does not function like a real lock key does, but it helps to prod and move the blocks around inside the constrained space. The acrylic cut-outs are too small for most adult fingers to shift the blocks.

Solving

The blocks can only move up down left and right. In the starting position, two blocks are obstructing the shackle. The shackle needs to slide upwards to the opened position. So obviously these two must move out of the way for the shackle to slide free. Hence the movement of the rest of the blocks in a certain way to achieve this. I cannot remember how many moves it takes to solve this “puzzle lock” but I would rate this puzzle as much more than a moderately difficult puzzle. Although not frustratingly so. I hit dead ends several times before I figured out the sequence of the moves.

Getting the shackle back to the starting position is a matter of reversing the steps, but similar problems persisted and I had to again try several times before everything went back to their original state. Puzzlemaster of Canada rates it as level 8 – demanding, but I think their assessment is a bit on the high side. I would rate it more a level 6.5.

The post Security Lock appeared first on JL Puzzles.