Slide X

Name
Slide X

Designer
Yasuhiro Hashimoto

Manufacturer & Availability
Produced by DYLAN-Kobo (PUZZLE of MINE). Copies may still be available.

Type & Classification
Sliding Block Puzzle

Dimensions
7.6cm x 9.8cm x 0.4cm

Materials & Construction
Laser cut acrylic. Very precisely cut with sharp edges, resulting in an excellent quality puzzle.  Tolerances are just nice and the combo colours of red, white, blue and black make the puzzle stand out.

Overview
Slide X was Iwahiro's (Hirokazu Iwasawa) IPP35 Exchange Puzzle in Ottawa, Canada last year. 

There are a total of 8 pieces; 4 white rectangles and 4 black "L" pieces. Together they cover a substantial part of the red tray.

This is a sliding block puzzle with a bit of difference. Instead of moving the pieces from a start position to an end position as what most puzzlers are used to, the challenge is to form various silhouette shapes. A great and unusal design concept nonetheless!

The main challenge consist of a warm-up "practice run" (see photo) to change the silhouette of a "red cross" to a "U". This one takes 14 moves. Not a lot of moves but because now you are focusing on the "U" shape, the puzzle is harder than the 14 moves would suggest (at least for me). So what I did was to focus my attention on where the pieces should end up and tried to ignore the "U". 

Now for the main problem which requires a minimum of 48 moves, the instructions do not come showing the end position of the individual pieces. So the starting point is probably to pack the pieces into the tray to see how the "T" is formed. And then figure it out from there. A photo would certainly help! In any event, it was too difficult for me and I gave up after a number of tries. 8 pieces to slide is really no joke. But I did succeed in one of the other easier challenges on the separate problem sheet.

Difficulty
There are a total of 14 challenges in all with increasing levels of difficulty, ranging from 14 to 114 moves! I am not good at sliding puzzles. Notwithstanding, I think this one is really difficult especially for the higher level challenges. Definitely a sliding puzzle not to be missed by die-hard sliding puzzle enthusiasts.

Caramel Box

Caramel Box is the IPP34 design competition entry from Yasuhiro Hashimoto and Mineyuki Uyematsu (MINE). It also came in top 10 for most votes garnered for the Puzzlers' Award.

While I am not too familiar with Hashimoto-san, I enjoy MINE's designs and have a couple of his puzzles including the T4-II and T4-III. His packing puzzles usually do not have a lot of pieces (no more than 4), but yet provides a nice (and not overly difficult) challenge that is just right. Caramel Box is one such puzzle, although it did stump me a fair bit longer than the previous two.

There are two challenges here... to get two sets of various irregular shaped pieces flat into the metal box. Usually not a problem since its only a 3x3x2 but in this case the opening of the box has an obstruction in one corner, making the solve more difficult than one might imagine.

Packing the pieces would require you to figure out the shape the pieces must form to fit inside the box...pretty straight forward, although the wrong shape would mean getting stuck along the way. And then figuring out how to insert the pieces into the box...which is not so straight forward. I found the second challenge easier than the first, which is a bit odd since the first is usually the easier of the two.

Quality and build is excellent. The two sets of wood pieces are made from Teak and Poa Rosa respectively and the box is thick walled steel. A really solid mix of metal and wood.

Overall a really nice puzzle of high quality. I believe there are still some copies available for sale. You can purchase the Caramel Box and other puzzles via MINE's website. Yes, he does ship overseas.