It’s been a couple of weeks since my last puzzle blog post. Hence I thought this weekend, I will write about this wooden puzzle box that captured my intrigue.

Of Mice & Mazes is a rather interesting looking puzzle box. Designed, manufactured by Thomas Beutner, it was also his Exchange Puzzle at IPP38 in San Diego this past August. It’s an all wooden puzzle box. At first glance, I even thought it looked very much like a Karakuri styled box from the Japanese master craftsmen. Measuring 13cm x 9cm x 5.3cm, the box is constructed out of glued strips/layers of wood. The outer surface is some sort of light coloured veneer. It has a round ball knob at one end of the box. Obviously for the purpose of pulling out the drawer. And on top there is a little wooden mouse “attached” by a magnet. Construction, fit and finish is more than good enough for an exchange puzzle, but of course, not to the level of Karakuri quality.

The object is to open the box and retrieve a deck of cards stored within. I would classify this puzzle as a “sequential discovery” puzzle where the trick to solving the puzzle is to use whatever “tools” that come with the puzzle. But you need to “find” those tools first. Take a look at the Angel Box for instance.

Solving the Mice & Mazes box took a bit of fiddling and experimentation. I started with the obvious of tugging at the knob and expected, I could pull a drawer out but only partially. I was stuck at this stage for a while. So I decided on a more careful examination of the box. In doing so, I was able to successfully navigate four or five other steps which eventually saw me extracting the drawer. Inside the drawer was a deck of new unopened cards. A quick check with the provided solution confirmed that I had solved the puzzle box correctly. Oh by way, no force whatsoever was needed too.

The mechanism/trick of the drawer is rather clever, and so is the solution. What aided my solve was that I was able to see part of the insides which gave me the idea for the solution. Made it much easier of course! And where does the mouse feature in all this?…for those who have this puzzle, I will leave you guys to figure out for yourselves!

The deck of cards itself is not an ordinary deck but came from a Kickstarter project according to Thomas. These cards called “Bicycle Mazing Playing Cards” are “maze cards” (hence the name of the puzzle) and every card in the deck has a picture of a maze.

Reassembly was just the reverse and I easily got all the parts back to original. Overall a nice puzzle box with an interesting design and trick to it. 

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The goal of Double Vision “is to see an undistorted single image of the IPP38 Logo through the “glass” rhombohedron enclosed”. Now what is a rhombohedron you might ask?. Well, it looks like the object below, a sort of slanted cube. The meaning is here.

Double Vision comes in a cardboard packaging which contains a wooden box with sliding lid. Inside is a block of glass rhombohedron and instructions. The wooden box is well constructed with the IPP38 logo printed on a card sitting nicely at the bottom of the box. The block of glass itself looked like it was something extracted from mother earth. It was rough at the edges and not completely clear and see through. In fact it was a bit cloudy on the inside. But still clear enough to see the distorted IPP38 logo. Dimensionally the puzzle is 8.5cm x 8.5cm x 5cm.

Following the instructions, I looked through the Rhombohedron and indeed saw a double image of the IPP38 Logo. I have no idea what is the scientific explanation for this phenomenon. But I needed to see a single image so I turned and flipped the glass on each of its six sides and held the glass in all sorts of ways. But all I saw was still the “distorted double image”.

Well, like I mentioned in the beginning, there is a trick to this puzzle and of course being the dense one here, it eluded me. I looked at the solution supplied and yes, now I could quite clearly see undistorted single image of the IPP38 Logo through the glass. What a neat and cool puzzle!

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The U-Sockel came to me courtesy of fellow puzzle collector/designer Goh Pit Khiam. He had dropped by my place last Sunday to take a look the 77 new puzzles I had brought home from the IPP38 Puzzle Exchange in San Diego, USA this past August.

The U-Sockel consists of a wooden stick affixed to a base and a ball permanently attached somewhere towards the top. Two U-shaped thick wire rods “interlock”t themselves around the wooden stick. The object is to get the u-shaped wire rods off the wooden rod.

It looks simple enough, unfortunately is anything but! Pit Khiam had told me that he also couldn’t solve and had to resort to a YouTube video solution (which incidentally was uploaded by Nick Baxter). There is one or two others non YouTube as well. I told Pit Khiam I will try to solve it without the help. But I struggled for a whole Sunday afternoon and night but got nowhere as well. Finally I threw in the towel and watched the video. Anyway, I couldn’t have solved it without the solution.

The U-Sockel is really a tough one. But I am really in not much of a position to comment. I generally don’t fancy entanglement or wire type puzzles and hardy play with any. There is a sequence to follow. Once you memorise the steps, its quite easily re-solvable. As I followed the instructions on the video, I also found myself having to use a tad bit of force to move the u-shaped wire rods the way they were supposed to move. I thought for puzzles of this nature, no force was necessary. Apparently not in this case.

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Before I go any further, yes, you are at the correct blog! This is JL Puzzles, not a certain other highly esteemed blog I frequent. I have not turned colors, just indulging in a bit of moonlighting between Puzzlemad assignments. Jerry has very graciously offered me space here to write and I thought it best to take full advantage. What I post here at JL Puzzles will be a little different from my current fare. The intent is to put out shorter, quicker posts on individual puzzles. Something easier and faster that won’t take up my whole weekend, but which will still be of interest to the solver/collector/designer community. It remains to be seen if I can actually pull that off. It’s hard to sit down and write, but once I do things seem to get away from me.

So today let’s look at a puzzle which wasn’t even intended as a puzzle, per se, the Flight Case. You may recall a blog article a couple years back concerning a pair of de facto puzzle boxes produced by Joe Porper? Flight case is along these lines. Precisely along these lines. It is a “gimmicked” box employed by magicians to convincingly, and impossibly, disappear and reappear items. Although primarily useful for magical routines, it is also very interesting as a puzzle box.

Flight Case was designed and produced by working magician Leo Smetsers from Holland. As such, it comes complete with a routine which, with a little practice, even I could pull off. But that was not my intent in purchasing it. I wanted to solve the box.

Upon arrival of my Flight Case, I duly locked it with the miniscule brass padlock provided and then proceeded to explore. Within about 10 minutes, trying this and that, I managed to get it open. The mechanism is actually very simple, but also well hidden. Quite invisible, in fact. Examination of the exterior provides no clue to the mechanism, although there is plenty of room for speculation. In terms of difficultly, I would say it is moderate to low for the experienced puzzler. It is much easier than Strong Box 2.0 and perhaps equivalent to Strong Box original. It could be handed out for examination during a routine, but not for too long!

How does it fly?

Although Flight Case is not difficult from a solving perspective, I think it would be of interest to serious puzzle box aficionados. Difficulty is not necessarily the defining quality in a puzzle box. Craftsmanship, beauty, and design ingenuity all play their part. Certainly within the very narrow subcategory of trick magic boxes, Flight Case stands out as a very high quality item on all counts. It functions flawlessly with perfect fit between moving parts.

Construction-wise, with its faux-wood panels and riveted aluminum and steel frame, it stands apart from everything else I have seen. I’m not a puzzle box guy by any means, but I do keep my eye on them (often lustfully). Like the best puzzle boxes, Flight Case is a hand-crafted item made in small numbers, usually to order. The price reflects this, running north of 200 USD. Though not in the stratospheric range like some boxes, it is a serious purchase.

I wouldn’t recommend Flight Case to anyone who is principally interested in the solving aspect. It probably won’t provide sufficient value based on that criterion alone. But if you take the broader view, this box may be something to consider. There are a very small number of high quality trick boxes produced by the magic folks. Joe Porper’s Strong Boxes are probably the premier example, but Leo Smetsers’ Flight Case is in the same class and is a necessary item for the committed collector. And hey, once you have it, why not put it to use? The routine can be mastered by anyone willing to put in practice time. It would be great for friends and family entertainment. And on the practical side, it’s the only way to get full value for your money.

That concludes my short but sweet maiden JL Puzzles blog post. Thanks so much Jerry for this opportunity! Back over to you….

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

A big thank you to Mike for a very nice write up on the Flight Case. I am already looking forward to his next article!

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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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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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The Eiffel Six Cube was designed and manufactured by Alistair Morris of the UK. It also served as his first Exchange Puzzle at IPP37 in Paris last year. I had played with one of Ali’s earlier designs a while back, the very brilliant Bolt & Nut Puzzle, which stumped quite a few puzzlers too.

The object of the puzzle is to form a cube with each of the 6 faces bearing the image of the Eiffel Tower. Like most puzzlers that have played with this puzzle, the initial impression is that it would not be too difficult. But it remained unsolved for me for more than several days over the past week.

“EIFFEL FOR IT”

Yes, I did…I FELL FOR IT! This was the title that puzzler Lionel Depeux had suggested to Allard to use for his blog post. Why? Ali had cunningly designed the Eiffel Six Cube in a way that if you are not observant, you will “fall” for his trick. During my sessions with this puzzle, many a times I had come to the final stages of forming a cube but the last piece would always elude me. And this came to a point where I wondered if Ali had mistakenly printed the Eiffel images on the wrong places or mis-glued his cubes which resulted in the wrong shape of a piece. The correct solution just seemed impossible to achieve.

I decided to ask Allard for a clue and so shot him a message. After a couple of cryptic responses which I didn’t find of much help, his last reply to me before I went to bed (yes, Singapore is about 7 hours ahead of the UK) was to examine the puzzle carefully.  The next morning I took out the Eiffel Cube again and this time I played with it more slowly than I did before, taking my time and looking at how each piece interacted with the rest. Suddenly it hit me….and I found the solution! I first reaction…WTF!  At last I got to build a cube with the Eiffel Tower on each of the six faces. What an incredible A-ha moment! Totally brilliant design and  a real surprise ending!

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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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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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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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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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I have never been good at nor too interested in disentanglement puzzles, hence my collection is very small as I generally don’t buy any. As far as I can remember the only one that I have ever bought was the Tricky Dick puzzle. Those in my current collection come mainly from Puzzle Exchanges over the last several years.

Anyway, as I was rummaging through my Exchange Puzzles looking for something interesting to solve this week, I couldn’t help but notice this large zipper bag. Inside was the Simplexity designed and made by the late Markus Gotz of Germany. This disentanglement puzzle was Markus’ IPP35 Exchange Puzzle in Ottawa, Canada in 2015.

Unusual Design & CHOICE OF Materials

Disentanglement puzzles come in different varieties and choice of materials. There are the metal tavern type puzzles and wire puzzles (usually thick heavy wire twisted together). Then there are the wooden ones with ropes and/or combination of ropes and wires. There are also those made frombamboo which I call jungle puzzles. What is unusual about Simplexity is the materials used by Markus. His puzzle “uses wood in its natural form by using a forked branch” This is in combination with a rope and a looped wire piece. I do not know what tree the branch came from but it must have been quite a feat to find about 100 similar looking fork branches to make the minimum 100 copies for a puzzle exchange. Moreover the branch of my copy is smooth, so Markus must have debarked and sanded the surface as well. Loads of work no doubt.

Another difference is the goal of the puzzle. The aim is not to remove the rope or any other part of the puzzle (like most other disentanglement puzzles). Rather the objective here is to “reposition” or move the rope from one side of the wire loop (where the longer fork is) to other other side (the shorter fork). The rope is permanently attached to bottom end of the branch and cannot be removed. However it can slide back and forth through the hole it is in.

still in a state of disentanglement

Markus did warn puzzlers to be careful not to entangle  the rope around the branch or wire piece, otherwise there would be loads of problems. Well I didn’t encounter this state of affairs. In fact I managed to disentangle the rope “off” the wire loop…which for me was quite an achievement. However, I was stuck at this stage of the solve for quit a few days and as of this post, I still have not figured out how to “reposition” the rope. Frankly, it does not look as difficult as it would appear. But here’s a classic case of a deceptively simple looking puzzle  but damn difficult. Apparently, according to Markus there is a “trick” to it and once discovered, the solution is very simple! I have yet to see the trick. Let’s see if I can do better over the coming weekend.

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I think a wooden puzzle coming from Wil Strijbos would be usually somewhat of a surprise. Most puzzlers know Wil Strijbos as a designer of challenging, high quality (and some rather expensive) puzzles made of metal!  Well, don’t let the title of this post fool you. This wooden puzzle from Wil was actually his Exchange Puzzle during IPP37 in Paris last August. And this wooden puzzle was designed by someone else. This is not to say that Wil has never designed wooden ones. He has many years ago, and one of them called Just Fit (The Cut) also happen to win  the 1990 Hikimi Puzzle Competition for wooden puzzle designs.

Back to the puzzle. This interlocking burr goes by the  name of Framed Sticks 4U and is designed by a Mr Gong. Now I have never met Mr Gong, but I understand he is a close friend of Wil and resides in China. Mr Gong has designed a number of wooden burr puzzles (made out of bamboo) which have been sold by Wil in the past several years through Wil’s distribution email list.

design & construction

The FS4U is a 6 x 6 x 5 solid. It is an interlocking framed burr consisting of a square frame and 4 typical burr pieces (sticks) with the usual type of notches. Nothing overly unusual. The frame (box) spots a couple of obstructions glued to the insides which restrict the movements of the pieces and thus brings the level of difficulty of the puzzle to a Level 24 solution. This means that it takes 24 moves to remove the first piece. And a total of 30 moves to disassemble the entire puzzle.  I checked Mr Gong’s design against other 6 x 6 x 5 size puzzles on PWPB and I didn’t find any which were similar in design or number of pieces. Only one other design had a similar shape. So Mr Gong’s design appears to be very different from the rest.

The FS4U is made of two different woods but as to the exact species I don’t know. The burr sticks consist of two pairs with dark and light colours to give the puzzle some colour contrast. Construction and fit is good. Although the copy here is not the kind of very impeccable standard that one would get from the usual few North American or European puzzle craftsmen.  Everything worked properly and the sticks slid smoothly. No issues. The puzzle is produced under Wil’s Streetwise Inc brand, the same company that manufactures all of Wil’s metal puzzles. Size wise, it is about 7.5cm x 7.5cm x 6cm and surprisingly quite heavy in the hand, so the woods used  must probably be some exotic wood.

The puzzle has a shiny finishing to the external surface, as if coated with some form of vanish covering, which seems rather unusual since.  Most wooden puzzles would have some form of (tung) oil rubbed into the wood to smoothen,  nourish and preserve the wood But this is my first wooden puzzle I have with such a smooth and shiny surface.

SOLVING & PLAY

At Level 24.2.2.2, the FS4U is not easy. The disassembly took me a while to get the hang off, given there are some dead ends during the solve at the beginning. But because you can see the movement of the sticks from both the top and bottom openings of the frame, it is not as difficult as other similarly high level burrs. At some point I was able to figure out the moves to remove the first piece. Once that came out, the rest just popped out of the frame. Re-assembly was a different thing altogether! Despite my best efforts to remember the moves (and even photographing the process, because I know burrs like these are quite beyond me), I still had to resort to the provided solution sheet. Thankfully I was also further aided by Burr Tools, which helped me get all the pieces back to their proper places.

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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 Coffin’s Four Piece Cube is very well made out of white oak and finished with an oil finish to give it a smooth touch and allows the pieces to slide smoothly but remain snug in the solved position. Dimensionally it measures about 6.8cm cube all round. Pretty hefty in the hands. The puzzle comes packed in its own box and even wrapped with orange wrinkled paper. What’s unusual about the puzzle is also that the packaging comes with accompanying notes to the puzzle; which describes the puzzle and gives various references to other publications. A good read for those interested to find out more.

The object of the puzzle is of course to take it apart and put it together again.  This is an interlocking cube after all, and the pieces fit so very well that I took a wee bit of time to find the first piece that moves. After that, it was a matter of tugging at the remaining pieces for them to come apart. Putting it back was not so easy if you scramble the pieces and happen to forget the orientation and positioning of each piece.

The other puzzles I have exchanged with Norton include his Octassembly and Packed Pyramid. Both of which are quite different in design from Coffin’s Four Piece Cube. Norton is a retired maths and computer science professor from Amherst College.

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