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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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!

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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.

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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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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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Unlike the IPPs with hundreds in attendance and a planned 3-day agenda and side tours, our little SPP was just a small gathering over dinner with just 8 of us, including Oskar! David Ang of Cubewerkz came with his gang of twisty enthusiasts and speed-cubers (all students by the way – Bin Jie,, Seung Ha, Ryan Peh and Daryl Tan) plus the two of us from the non-twisty domain, Goh Pit Khiam and myself. As you might imagine, given such a small group, the number of puzzles that went around were rather few. I showed off to Oskar some of my recent designs and prototypes such as my Handkerzzle, L(8)tice-2, Micro-Hex and a 2014 design but recently reproduced-Ball In Cylinder #2.  David brought a number of twisties he was currently selling on his new site and Pit Khiam took out a couple of his own designs and also displayed his Android platform digital puzzles. Oskar had a number of goodies in his bag, mainly his 3D printed and incredible looking gear mechanisms and twistie-style puzzles. All in all, it was a pleasant evening of catching up with Oskar and the rest of the gang  and a chance to handle some of Oskar’s newest toys!

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Like the Straight Up two years ago, French Point’s objective is for the puzzler to open and close the blade. But David has upped his ante a notch. What is quite different now for the French Point is that the “blade” this time is actually made of metal, not plastic as in the Straight Up. Three layers of thin aluminium (I think) sheets joined together form the entire length of the blade. The handle while plastic, retains that lacquer covered shiny look. The blade has some curved cut-outs which looks (very) precision cut;  by CNC cutter maybe? Could David have used a real  razor blade for his puzzle? Well, maybe since there is machine cutting anyway, but it might have been too dangerous for play! All in, very nicely executed and the quality and finish is very high; even the box it comes in looks expensive.

The French Point comes unsolved, so the blade is locked into the handle. Without going into too much detail about how the mechanism works, which surely will be a spoiler for sure, a series of tilt and flip motions are necessary to unfold the blade. One can hear some rattling noise inside and you know for certain that there is something restraining the blade. It didn’t take me too long to feel my way to the solution-since nothing is visible on the outside and obviously trial and error here and there is required to solve this puzzle. But I had a bit of trouble and it took me a tad longer to fold the thing back together, even tho’, ironically, I can now see the “hidden” locking mechanism and how the trick works. I reckon there is an efficient and correct way to get the blade open in a jiffy and I thought I had nailed it. But still it eludes me now and again.

If you are interested to get a copy, its available from David’s website at US$70/-.

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I decided to up the ante and see if I could come up with an 8 piece version with a (higher) unique solution. After several days of toying with Burr Tools, I managed to design a version, L(eight)tice-2 having a level 5.1.2 single solution. I contacted Andrei and told him about my design and asked if he would consider making copies of L(eight)tice-2 in aluminium.  There were several exchanges of Facebook messages and Andrei agreed to cut a prototype out of 5mm aluminium sheet.  This was several weeks before IPP37 in Paris in August.  Andrei said he would try to have the prototype ready and show it to me at IPP.

On the Awards Night Banquet of IPP37,  Andrei walked over to my table and plonked this heavy hefty aluminium L(eight)tice-2 down. It was pretty massive at 70mm x 70mm x 40mm! I played with it for a while but very gently. I did not want to unravel the pieces as I knew I wouldn’t be able to put everything back together at the dinner table without help. It felt fairly stable and none of the pieces dropped out even after being shaken pretty hard. This prototype was returned to Andrei and he said he would try experiment with 3mm thick stainless steal to produce a smaller sized puzzle. Andrei later reported that another attendee at IPP37 solved the puzzle by hand without too much difficulty. Well, kudos to him for being such a good solver.

After I returned home from IPP, I tried to improve on my design; unfortunately there is only so much one can do with board burr pieces confined to dimensions of 70mm x 40mm. But after quite a fair amount of tweaking,  I did manage to increase the level of difficulty from Level 5.1.2 to a Level 6.1.1.2. However the downside was that I could not get it down to a unique solution. So this latest version would have 2 solutions, one Level 5, the other Level 6. The Level 6 solution with 13 steps (on paper at least) seems to indicated that the whole ensemble would be harder to solve and also appearing even more stable than the earlier version.

I subsequently dropped Andrei a note about this second iteration of my design and when the time came to produce copies in stainless steal, he adopted my “improved” design ie L(8)tice-2. While waiting for his metal puzzle, I decided to cut a copy out of acrylic. The plastic version confirmed my theory above; fitting pretty snugly together and harder to solve. A couple of weeks later, Andrei finished producing his copies and listed them for sale on his site. He had experimented with various tolerances and the copy I received from him was firm and “tight”. The puzzle feels very solid and heavy in the hand and no way would the pieces be shaken loose unless it was violently thrown to the floor.  My copy of L(8)tice-2 had nicely rounded corners and polished to a smooth matt surface, very nice to the touch. Very good construction and high quality indeed.  At either level, the L(8)tice-2 is not an easy puzzle and I still cannot solve it without the aid of Burr Tools. And I must add that it is quite a challenge to handle all 8 pieces at the same time during assembly! Metal interlocking burr puzzles are rare and hard to come by. I am really delighted  that Andrei Ivanov has made available the L(8)tice-2 (US$48) and other of his metal puzzles for sale.

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But this year at IPP37 in Paris last August, I received a pleasant surprise. His exchange puzzle HOPE was not a sliding block puzzle but an interlocking caged burr!

At first glance, the HOPE appears to consist of a cage and 4 separate burr pieces. But actually the entire puzzle is only made up of 3. Typically 3D printed puzzles do not have that sort of sharp and precise lines and edges found on well-crafted wooden puzzles. But the copy I have I must say, the quality is really very decent and well made (printed). The slightly shinny shade of blue chosen by Diniar for the pieces really stands out; a nice contrast against the white cage holding them. And if there’s one thing I really like about this puzzle is the colour and aesthetics. The puzzle measures 7cm x 5cm x 5cm. Pretty sturdy and tough too.

The object of course is to remove the pieces and then put them back in the cage. This is where the 2 pieces bring the level of difficulty down a couple of notches. The “H” and “P” pieces are fused together as in the “O” and “E”. While there are only 2 pieces, this burr is still (as far as my counting tells me) a level 15 or 16.1 solution puzzle. This means it takes 15 (or 16) moves to extract the first of the 2 pieces out of the cage. Not a walk in the park for novices.

I am usually hopeless at this sort of interlocking puzzles but I did manage this one pretty well and didn’t have to resort to Burr Tools! A bit of practice here and here I was able to repeat solve the HOPE a couple of times even. Not too difficult once you commit the moves to memory and frankly, for this puzzle it is not that hard to do so.

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