I have known puzzle collector and designer Rex Rossano Perez from the Philippines for the last several years. Like most others who use social media, I got to know him via Facebook and within the puzzling community. From what I understand, Rex started with mainly twisties but eventually the dark side took over and he got into the “real” stuff. He also started designing puzzles and had a number of his designs uploaded to PWBP. Like me, he frequently used the triangular/hex format and came up with a number of unique and interesting designs. He has been producing 2D packing puzzles on and off. Most recently he came up with four new and interesting coin puzzles.

I am also very grateful to Rex for all his help in providing me with Corel, DWG and DXF files. These files enabled me to bring to life and manufacture a variety of my own designs. These have included a number of 2D packing puzzles and interlocking ones such as Dirty Dozen, L(8)-tice, Berro(skull) and Partitions (by Goh Pit Khiam).

Last week I received from Rex the four coin puzzles. He had started off designing the Rizal first. Then he added extra features to his next three designs, Aguinaldo, Barasoain and Kusing 25 . The puzzles went from the usual “free-the-coin” puzzles to sequential discovery puzzles.

Sequential Discovery puzzles are a class of puzzles where you have to use certain “tool(s)” that are incorporated within the puzzle to aid in solving the puzzle. Apart from these given tools, no other external tools or implements are allowed. All the four coin puzzles are produced from coloured acylic sheets. The layers of acrylic are screwed together at the four corners. They are all pretty compact in size. For example the smallest, Aquinaldo measures about 5.7cm x 5.7cm x 2cm (excluding the protrusions). Construction, fit and finish is excellent. On all my copies are precision cut and the moving parts all slide smoothly. Each of the puzzles carry a coin of different denomination, and the Filipino names of the puzzles reflect some famous person featured on the coins. All four puzzles have different mechanisms and solutions.

With my new puzzles in hand, I was wondering which one to start with. So I asked Rex to rank the puzzles in order of difficulty from the easiest to hardest. He indicated them as Rizal being the easiest and Kusing 25 the hardest. The other two were somewhere in between. I decided to try out both the easiest and hardest and leave the middle two for another day. So I got to work on Rizal. Being the easiest of the four, I quite quickly managed to extract the coin from the case. It was not difficult. But Rizal had a certain level of trickiness with a simple but elegant solution and minimal moving parts. It was fun to solve and easy to return the coin back in place. I took approximately about 5-6 minutes with Rizal.

Happy with my success with Rizal, I moved on to Kusing 25, the hardest of the four. Now this one was a different beast altogether. Knowing that it was a sequential discovery type puzzle, I set about searching for the necessary tools. It din’t take me long to find what I needed. But the tool was recessed in the puzzle in such a way that it took me more than a several moments to extract it.

It was obvious that the tool was needed to progress with the next steps. Without it you are stuck. Difficult to describe more here without giving away any spoilers. So I will just say the tool needs to work in conjunction with some other movements including the sliding plate. It took a fair amount of fiddling to free the coin. Much longer time needed than Rizal and a lot harder too. Whereas careful observation and thinking helped me to solve Rizal pretty quickly, Kusing 25 had a mechanism that was well hidden inside the layers that gave no clue whatsoever. A lot of parts seems to be moving and interacting with each other and I had little idea what was going on. A very much more complicated design than Rizal.

Not only that, I also had much difficulty returning the coin to its place. The coin kept wanting to come out of the box. The restraints which were supposed to lock the coin in place refused to work no matter what I did. In fact, at the time of this writing, I still have not succeeded in getting the puzzle back to its original state. I shot Rex a note to let him know that I was stuck in the current situation with the coin. He replied …”then that is the puzzle”. Now I know why its the most difficult of the four puzzles. The design genius of Rex is somewhere inside still waiting to be solved!

I am not sure what will be in store for me for Barasoain and Aquinaldo but from what I have experienced so far, I think they will be fun. If I can manage to fully solve Kusing 25, I think I wouldn’t have too much of a problem with these other two then….but until then. So far the two I have played with are great coin puzzles. They are well made and with a good level of challenge. For anyone who is interested to purchase, please PM me and I can link you up with Rex directly. Happy Puzzling for 2019!

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It’s been several weeks since my last puzzle blog post. Sorry, I was very busy with work and other commitments. I had also spent quite a bit of time producing and listing new puzzles in my shop. If anyone is interested to see what is available, please feel free to click here.

Just last week, my friend Frederic Boucher emailed me to say he was sending a new puzzle design of his for me to try. I received it this mid this week. I always look forward to Frederic’s puzzles.  He has this uncanny knack of coming up with designs that are rather unusual. Not only that, he designs different puzzles across several genres as well. Click here and you will know what I mean.

There are many good puzzle designers out there and the puzzle community knows who these folks are. But many of them focus on just one or two particular categories, most typically interlocking burrs, dissection and packing puzzles, just to name a few. Well, Frederic is a bit of a Jack of several trades; which is good, because I never know what I will receive from him. Its usually a surprise!

LOOKS DECEIVE!

The puzzle consist of an ordinary square box with an acrylic cover (which can be removed). The pieces are all identical rectangular shaped sticks. All contain either one or two magnets embedded within except for one piece. The size is about 5.5cm x 5.5cm x 3.6cm. Quality of construction, fit and finish is very good. The pieces fit nicely into the box with just enough tolerance.

Anti-Gravity Box is a 3D packing puzzle. The goal is to place the box on a flat surface and fit all 6 pieces into the box through the two holes on the side. Really nothing to it it seems. Except there are certain restrictions which make this a much more challenging puzzle than it looks. Firstly, you can’t move the box like shake or tilt it etc to get the sticks to move inside. Secondly, you can only use your fingers and the sticks to aid in moving the other sticks. You also cannot turn the box upside down. The lid must remain on top except for reset and storage.

With all these rules in place, the difficulty quotient goes up many notches. Oh, there are those magnets there as well. They are either there to help or hinder, depending on how you want to look at it. When you start playing, they’re both, as I discovered.

GREAT DESIGN AND GREAT FUN

To solve the Anti-Gravity Box, a bit of thinking (in fact quite a lot, for me at least) of thinking outside the box is required (no pun intended). I don’t want to place any spoilers here but there is a sequence to follow, just like how an interlocking burr works. Pull or push the wrong piece or in the wrong direction and you are stuck.

I had to reset (dump out the pieces inside) the puzzle well over half a dozen times and plan (and re-plan) the moves before I finally got the last piece into the box as intended. Any one who has studied some basic science would know that magnets attract and repel and this had to be taken into consideration as well. Very challenging to say the least and a fair amount of dexterity is also required. I checked my solution against Frederic’s and yes, mine and his were about the same. It take approximately 18 moves to fully pack in the 6 pieces.

Overall, a rather unique and I would say, a very clever design. I enjoyed the thinking process and the fun factor was great. Challenging but not to the extent you would want to tear your hair out. Just need to ponder the moves ahead to save you all the trial and error. A must have for packing puzzle enthusiasts.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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The puzzle measures 5cm x 5cm x 2.6cm and made up of laser cut acrylic and brass pins. Construction fit and finish is excellent with tight tolerances throughout. While Chorazin would probably be classified as a 3D assembly, put-together or 3D packing style puzzle, Like the Tel Arad, Yael has managed to come up with something that is very original in terms of puzzle design, breaking away from the traditional norm of what a packing puzzle we usually expect. With most 3D packing puzzles you put the pieces into a box, sometimes even sliding them within, the Chorazin requites you to rotate linked pieces into a frame from all four sides.

Each of the four pillars holding the top and bottom acrylic plates hold a varying number of little square pieces linked by brass of rivets/pins of varying lengths. The object is to flip or rotate the linked squares and put together the links into the “frame” with nothing sticking out from the sides. The four sets of linked squares move like a chain but some of the linked squares have limited movement. Looking at the way the puzzle has been put together, one cannot but help marvel at the design process (and testing) and all the work that went into the creation and production of the Chorazin. I am not sure if computer assistance was required in the design and I will make it a point to ask Yael when I next meet her.

Initially the puzzle looked to be rather difficult with all the links free-moving and flipping all over the place. It didn’t help that the frame was also loosely connected by the four pillar pins. However, there is a bit of logic to solving and applying the same with some thinking and close observation, I was able to determine how the links rotated, their orientation and the way they should be placed inside the frame. I was stuck towards the end when I had one link which simple refused to go in nicely with the rest but after some re-adjustment to the pieces here and there, the final link rotated into its correct position.

Overall a very fun and nice packing puzzle with just the right amount of difficulty for an Exchange Puzzle. Great design concept!

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Design-wise, the YACP is pretty far removed from the usual 2D packing puzzles with its whimsical shaped pieces and the non-use of the linear style we puzzlers are so accustomed to. The YACP consists of a black tray about 9.5cm square with five clovers of different colours as well as a small gray rectangular piece. All acrylic laser cut to exacting standards. Quality of construction, fit and finish is excellent and each of the clovers have a small knob attached for easy handling. Aesthetically the YCAP is pleasing to the eye with the clovers adorning bright colours.  And I must say, having played with the YACP for the good part of an hour, the tolerances between the pieces is very tight indeed.

The object of the YACP is to place the five clovers flat in the tray AND also fit the rectangular piece inside a channel on one of the sides. The tray contains cutouts for each of the clovers, all of which look deceptively similar but with very subtle differences. I wonder if Rik had used some form of software to design this puzzle because those little differences meant I had a number of misses; everything would all fit in nicely including the rectangular piece but the last clover would just not fit into its slot.

One can randomly try all the possible combinations (which I would imagine run into the hundreds) of clovers and rectangle and with persistence, time and luck, eventually arrive at the solution.  This obviously could take a very long time, without the hint of the solution in sight. However, I would suggest that with a bit of logical thinking and experimenting, one can eliminate certain possibilities in terms of the placement of the clovers and solve the puzzle much sooner. At least that’s how I managed to solve the YACP in about 40 minutes.

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The IPPA is the IPP37 Exchange Puzzle of Juozas Granskas of Lithuania, whom I had the pleasure of meeting the first time last year. The IPPA is not your typical packing puzzle which forces you to fit a certain number of pieces within the confines of a tray. Rather, the design requires the puzzler to arrange the pieces into the tray to form a certain shape or cover certain parts. In this regards, Juozas has designed the IPPA using an “international” airports theme. The object is to fit the five hexaminoes (a piece with 6 units) into the tray, leaving uncovered only three empty cells plus the IATA code letters of selected airports. In some ways, it is similar to Lixy Yamada’s 2016 8 August puzzle reviewed earlier, but with a different theme. Dimensionally it is 11cm x 10cm x 0.8cm.

As you can see from the photo, a number of the major airports around the world are included, giving it a total of 17 challenges. Too bad Singapore Changi International Airport (SIN) was not included (the latter being one of the best in the world).

Update 5 Feb 2018: Tyler Somer, a puzzler from Canada emailed me the following which explains why Singapore was not on the puzzle and how the list came to be formed. “….. the list of airports is a summary of the locations of the International Puzzle Parties, up to this point, with the exception of Ottawa. I recall that Juozas was disappointed that he was not able to arrange the grid to include Ottawa, but the reason for this difficulty is that the Ottawa airport “YOW” would require 2 more letters. He had to choose either “NRT” or “YOW” but could not include both, as both of these would introduce 2 unique letters to the grid — all other airport codes use repeated letters, or at most 1 unique letter. (With no IPP yet in Singapore, its airport code is not included in the list of challenges.)…”

Apart from the  17 airport challenges for the IPPA, Juozas has also added a bonus challenge; that is, to arrange the 5 pieces inside the tray to leave space for a 6th hexamino.  As IPP37 was held in Paris, I thought I would try finding the answer for CDG (Charles De Gaulle Airport). Not too difficult to solve, since you can keep trying various combinations of adjusting and rearranging the pieces until you leave the letters C, D and G uncovered. Next I tried LAX and got the solution pretty fast.  I didn’t bother with the rest but instead went to the bonus challenge. However this bonus puzzle was much harder since a hexamino can take  a variety of shapes; 35 possible shapes to be precise. The bonus task took more than several minutes but eventually I got it. There are two solutions but I didn’t attempt the second one.

Overall, the IPPA takes on a different design concept from the norm and adopts a rather interesting theme for play. Not too difficult and with more than enough challenges to keep you occupied for a good while, assuming you go through all 19 problems.

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The puzzle in question is The Melting Tile, which also happens to have been the IPP37 Exchange Puzzle of puzzle/puzzle books collector Yee Dian Lee of Malaysia. I would imagine most puzzlers would have heard of the famous Melting Block puzzle designed by Tom O’Beirne, which has seen different variants made by different puzzle craftsmen over the years. The Melting Block is a 3D packing puzzle that requires a puzzler to fit a ninth block into a box which already contains 8 other block pieces (of varying shapes) with no internal spaces/voids. Sounds impossible right? Yes and No. Bill Cutler describes it as such:

The Melting Block is more of a paradox then a puzzle. The eight pieces fit together easily to form a rectangular block 57 x 87 x 132. This fits into the box with a little room all around, but looks to the casual observer to fill up the box completely. When the ninth piece is added to the group, the pieces can be rearranged to make a 58 x 88 x 133 rectangular solid. (This second construction is a little more difficult). This is a great puzzle to show to “non-puzzle people” and is one of my favorites.

Goh Pit Khiam applied this same principle and came up instead with a 2D version the goal is to remove 7 pieces that fills a tray completely, rearrange them and fit in an 8th red piece…and completely fill up the tray again…again seemingly impossible. Quite a design feat I might add, and burr tools is not something you can use here for this sort of design.

When Oscar came to Singapore and we had an informal second Singapore Puzzle Party, Oscar played with The Melting Tile and managed to solve it over dinner. I decided to give my copy of this Exchange Puzzle a try, but (fortunately or unfortunately) with the benefit of knowing the hint for solving such a puzzle…which Oscar alluded to during his solve.

With a hint or not, this is one of those puzzles which can be solved with some persistence. Given the fact that it has only 7+1 red piece to fit into a squarish tray, it is not such an impossible task as one would imagine. Both solving and un-solving and placing the pieces back to where they belong doesprovide some degree of challenge, easy for some, difficult for others.  But notwithstanding, a nice puzzle to confound non-puzzlers and even puzzlers alike. I love it when people give that look of bewilderment on their faces when they see the small red piece fit inside the tray with the rest…”gosh, how’s that possible?”

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