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 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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