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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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.

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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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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.

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Swiss Cheese Puzzle

Like your typical packing puzzle, the Swiss Cheese puzzle came in a regular shaped tray and 5 pieces. But with an interesting theme. The cheeses were a combination of different shapes with holes and half-holes  and hiding at the top left corner in its own recess was the little mouse. The Swiss Cheese is made  from laser cut Red Alder and Walnut wood. Quality of construction, fit and finish is very good. And after you have solved the puzzle, you will also realise that the tolerances are very tight. The mouse just fits nicely within the tray with the rest of the pieces. The back of the puzzle has the starting position of the pieces etched into the surface and other accompanying text. This is just in case like me, you can’t solve it and have to transport the puzzle around.

Waite’s design was inspired by and pays homage to an earlier mouse/cheese puzzle designed by Vladimir Krasnoukhov, which has 5 pieces of cheese and a mouse. There is also one other puzzle bearing the cheese/mouse theme that I am aware of, the Quattro Formaggi designed by Jean Claude Constantin.

Che(Easy) Solve? 

Now, the goal is obvious; place the mouse and the four cheese pieces flat into the tray. With only four pieces which don’t look too out of the ordinary, I didn’t think the puzzle would be beyond me. But I should have known that a William Waite designed puzzle cannot be that easy.  On his site, William says this the Swiss Cheese is “filled with red herrings to lead you astray, this puzzle consistently resists efforts even to fit the 4 pieces of cheese in the square at all”

I struggled for quite a few days on this one before finally throwing in the towel. Afterall I have a lot of puzzles (exchange and  others) still to go through. I emailed William for the solution and I am glad he didn’t give it to me outright. Instead he gave me a clue, which on hindsight I should have asked him in the first place!

Surprising even myself, with his clue, I solved the Swiss Cheese in under  a minute. All this while the pieces were staring back at me and I was led astray thinking there was only one possibility of a solution. Yes the damn red herrings! I didn’t consider the other possible alternatives. Hmm…lesson learnt for other packing puzzles on their way. But the final solution with mouse in its resting place looks very cool and you will wonder how the pieces can fit in the way they do! For those interested, you can contact William Waite via his website.

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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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I narrowed the list down to about four to five puzzles and as I was going through each of them, I decided to give Formula a try.  A couple of the others came in the solved state already but my Formula came unassembled. A large number of pieces were outside of its container and loosely strewn about inside the cardboard packaging, while the rest were jumbled up inside the wooden cube.

First off, Formula is Tim Udall’s IPP37 Exchange Puzzle. I had played with one of his other exchange puzzles previously, the Cubic Burr. Formula was made by Vinco Obsivac out of a mixture of different woods not identified. Very well made and finished with all the pieces fitting nicely with pretty tight tolerances. The puzzle has an incredible 27 pieces of varying shapes and sizes (as you can see from the photo)! The goal is to place all 27 pieces flush inside the box with none sticking out. Scary for the uninitiated! The 27 pieces come in ten different sizes, with 7 of them consisting of more than one piece.  Size wise, its about 6cm all cube all round.

Formula was designed by a Mr. Justin Math (I have never heard of him tho’ in the puzzle community, but with a name like that, he must obviously be good at math or a good designer or both).  Strangely, aside from the usual information listed on the packaging about the puzzle, there is that extra bit; “pieces: (a+b=c)3 = 27 bricks”. Not being a maths kind of guy myself, I didn’t quite get what the formula meant and/or its relationship with the puzzle or solution. If anyone can shed some light on what this formula means, please PM me, thanks!

Update 29 Jan 2018 – Paco Molina, a puzzler from Spain has offered the following explanation and analysis of the formula above-

“(a+b+c)^3 = a^3+b^3+c^3+3a^2b+3a^2c+3b^2a+3b^2c+3c^2a+3c^2b+6abc
The formula describes how many pieces are for each type (and their size). And I guess the solution can be obtained by placing the pieces that represents a^ 3, b ^ 3 and c ^ 3 diagonally (bottom-up right-left and forward-back). The solution could be drawn on a piece of paper before solving it or at least part of it and figure the rest. (Well, I guess, because I do not have the puzzle).  It is related to this one that I posted here (L’s Tri-Ls from Vinco) http://puzzlesab.blogspot.com.es/2014/02/ls-tri-ls.html“

Typically of such 3D packing puzzles, I usually try to figure if there was any logical or systematic way to find the solution, without all that mathematics mumbo-jumbo. My first random placing of the pieces inside the box to check out how the pieces would fit resulted in the third photo here. The last small piece sticking out a bit ie wrong solution!

Logic (and my puzzling experience) would indicate that the largest pieces should be at the bottom and allow the smaller pieces to fill the gaps in the middle and towards the top. So I tried this method and surprise surprise, my approach actually worked! On the third attempt to fill the cube, everything went in nicely. A nice a-ha moment for me to end the weekend. But in all that I also realised that I needed to keep a number of pieces with similar dimensions to fill the final layer on top. So my solve I guess was combination of a bit of luck, logic and experience. But more than that, I also think that the puzzle has multiple solutions; otherwise I would not have been able to solve it so quickly!

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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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The Cubi 20 was also Frederic’s entry into the Puzzle Design Competition. It is a 3D packing puzzle and the objective is to get the 5 odd-shaped pieces into a cubical box. Coming from Frederic, one would not expect this to be the run-of-the-mill multi-piece packing puzzle. With the Cubi 20, Frederic had designed the puzzle with his trademark style; using half-cubes for his pieces. This adds to the trickiness and complexity. The box also has three protrusions forming along the top and inside to further restrict ease of entry of the pieces. The puzzle measures about 65mm all around. My copy is made out of laser cut MDF board for the box frame and Magnolia wood for the pieces. The competition version on the other hand is made from elm, wenge, zebrawood, walnut; very exotic woods.

True to form, I found myself struggling with the solve. I had a fair idea of how the pieces needed to go into the box having had previous experience with some of his other puzzles. But unfortunately, I got stuck (or rather, one of the pieces got stuck) for a pretty long time.

I was aware that perhaps due to the high humidity, the pieces may have expanded and thus I had even made it a point to dry the puzzle out in my camera dry box for several days before play. But in the end, with no solution in sight, I asked Frederic for the solution anyway. He also mentioned that this was one of the early copies and hence the tolerances were not that accurate. When I saw the solution, my suspicion was confirmed – one particular piece kept getting jammed during play and could not fit where it was supposed to be within the box. I needed to use a little more force than necessary to get that same piece into place…and when that was done, everything slotted in nicely into their respective positions.

Notwithstanding, I think Cubi 20 is a well-designed puzzle which would certainly appeal very much to hardcore packing puzzle lovers. The tight tolerances, half cubes and obstructions in the box adds significantly to the difficulty quotient. Pity my copy was not really working as intended. Frederic designs puzzles across several genres and he also sells them from time to time. Check some of them out here and if you want to buy any of them, you can PM me for his contact.

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If you are familiar with Goh’s work, you may have come across several other (physically) similar looking puzzles in the “blocks” family such as his Arrow Blocks, Stumbling Blocks, Road Blocks and Check Box. But don’t be mistaken; while they look alike, each of them are different in their own right in terms of design and solutions and all providing good challenges.

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