A total of 67 designs from around the world. From what I can see, there are loads of really interesting designs and I can’t wait to play with them at IPP38 next weekend.

Click on the link below to view the wonderful and incredible creations puzzle designers have come up with.

http://puzzleworld.org/DesignCompetition/2018/

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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.

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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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I have met Tomas on a couple of occasions during the past IPPs. Not only did I buy the Ring Bottle Puzzle but also a couple of other bottle puzzles. One of the latter had already shown some signs of mould inside! And you can tell by the marks and stains inside the Ring Bottle that I have not touched it for a long time!

The Ring Bottle is the design of Wil Strijbos, who also entered the puzzle for the IPP21 Puzzle Design Competition in 2001. The competition version featured a red plastic rod and balls. It is also not your typical looking bottle in that the body is slightly curved like a hip flask. Not sure whether the shape was intended to have anything to do with the puzzle or merely co-incidence. Dimensionally it is about 16.5cm tall (including the stick) and about 8.7cm wide.

IMPOSSIBLE OBJECT

Bottle puzzles like the Ring Bottle are usually classified as “impossible objects”, meaning that it looks physically impossible to solve. The majority of impossible objects are  of course possible to solve. Some of the impossible puzzles that I have played with include Smiley In A Bottle, Cast Vortex Puzzle In A Bottle, Puzzle Jam, and truly impossible looking stuff like 4 Street Elbows and of course Wil’s Coke Bottle series.

Impossible To Solve?

At first glance it looks difficult to solve. The Ring Bottle Puzzle is like a hybrid between a bottle puzzle and a disentanglement puzzle. The goal here is not to remove the stick or the balls attached to the string. Rather the puzzler is required to remove only the metal ring that is resting on the larger of the two wooden balls. The ring appears to be trapped by the larger ball  and the stick with no chance of release. Like most bottle puzzles, some form of dexterity is required in the solve.

For such puzzles, some initial thinking is required prior to play. Otherwise you just end up wasting a lot of time and effort and no solution. I would imagine that puzzlers who are experienced with entanglement or string puzzles would more or less figure out quite quickly how to untangle the ring. While it may look impossible, it does not defy physics and there is a solution. It took me a while and bit of trying this and that before I managed to the ring off the large ball and then out of the bottle,

The challenge doesn’t end here. The trick is also to be able to get the ring back to its original position. Now this second task was for me far more difficult as I had to wreck my brain to figure out the reverse steps. I must have at least tried 4-5 times before finally hitting upon the right strategy and then the solution. Now one thing that still puzzles me; how to get the two balls in and out of the bottle??

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Unlike the previous two Push Boxes which I managed to solve it one way or another without help (and within a relatively short time), the Push Box 3 stumped me the moment I got it out of my puzzle cabinet. I was very surprised to see that the drawer was already out-meaning the puzzle was in the solved state. My first thought was that Dr Nightingale had changed his design to make the goal of the puzzle to “close the box” this time, instead of opening it.  So I decided to try to solve it on that basis instead. I must say I spent quite a lot of time on the box over a number of days but couldn’t get anywhere. Like the previous boxes, there is a ball bearing rolling around inside somewhere and the drawer is spring loaded and refused to stay inside. I even entertained the idea that the puzzle may have been damaged during transit from Paris back to Singapore.

Finally I decided to throw in the towel and shot an email to Dr Nightingale to consult him (no pun intended). Dr Nightingale replied to say that the “open box” was already solved; meaning that perhaps the long plane ride had caused the puzzle to open solve itself accidentally. Anyway he gave me some directions as to what to do and after another longish period, suddenly the drawer went in and stayed shut-so it wasn’t damaged after all.

Like the previous two versions of the Push Box, I still have no clue how the mechanism of this puzzle box works. But I am happy to return it to the shelf with the drawer nicely tucked inside the box. Will there be a Push Box 4? Well, I will know when I attend IPP38 this coming August.

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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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