Ladybird

Name
Ladybird

Designer
Robrecht Louage. Designed in 2014. For his other puzzles including his IPP31 award winning 4 Steps Visible Lock, click here.

Manufacturer & Availability
Produced in collaboration with collector Michel Van Ipenburg. There may still be some copies available from either gentlemen. PM me if you are keen to get a copy.

Type & Classification
Sequential movement; route finding.

Dimensions
16cm (incl the antennae) x 11.5cm x 1.5cm

Materials & Construction
Acrylic, tespa, steel screws and a 1 Euro coin. Construction fit and finish is excellent and all the parts move smoothly with no jamming. 

Overview

Robrecht is very well know for his "remove-the-coin" maze puzzles. And the best part is when you buy one of his puzzles, you get a 1 Euro discount! 

Unlike his other trapped coin puzzles, the Ladybird ups the ante in terms of sophistication of design and aesthetics. This time Robrecht encapsulates his puzzle within a ladybird design. 

Another main difference is that the Ladybird allows for some visibility of the maze route, hence you can see and feel your own progress. However, the Ladybird is no easier because the puzzle involves a double layer maze.

The goal is to navigate two pins (connected to the two antennae) along both maze channels, by manipulating the two maze plates either clockwise or the opposite. Upon successful completion, you are rewarded with the 1 Euro coin that leaves through the circular cut-out on the top cover.

Difficulty

Moderate difficulty but tricky at times. The starting steps gives you a feel of what you need to do. I found that somewhere about a fifth along the way, If you do not get both pins in their right respective positions within the maze channels, you will find yourself stuck much later on and this would require an almost full backtrack. If you are lucky and get it right near the beginning, navigation becomes quite a breeze for a majority of the way. It took me a couple of attempts and one or two backtracks to finally extract the coin. 

Overall a fun puzzle and one of those that once you pick it up, you won't want to put it down until the coin comes out. Done correctly, it doesn't take too long to solve and reset. A really beautiful and interesting looking puzzle.

Cross & Crown 2013

The Cross & Crown (C&C) puzzle you see here is not a modern puzzle design by any means, no, not at all. In fact, the C&C has its roots in a puzzle designed by Louis S. Burbank in 1913, which was patented by the US Patent Office.

The C&C was Dr Goetz Schwandtner's IPP34 Exchange Puzzle. It all started when Goetz had a chance to see and play with a very rare metal version of the original design belonging to puzzle collector Rob Stegman at IPP32. Goetz collaborated with another collector, Michel van Ipenburg and together, worked with IPP31 award winning designer Robrecht Louage to reproduce the version that we have today, making it available to puzzle enthusiasts.

The modern C&C is made of trespa, a strong and durable material widely associated with table surfaces. Metal would have been too expensive and impractical for production in large quantities. The puzzle is precision cut to tight tolerances but everything slides smoothly as intended. Quality of construction and finish is very good like in all of Robrecht's work.

The C&C is a N-ary puzzle. I still have little idea what this means but you can see examples of these and read more about it on Goetz's site. Like the original design, the C&C consists of a "cross" pivoting on a circular disc containing cut-outs. Both the cross and disc are "linked" by four rivets that can slide along each arm of the cross as well as along the channels of the cut-outs. The object is to move all the rivets through these zig-zag channels and reach a point at the end where the cross can be disengaged from the circular disc.

Like an N-ary puzzle, there is a kind of repeating pattern of moves (this aspect I know!); sort of a back-and-forth motion. I have played with several other n-ary puzzles such as the Lock 250, Alles Schiebung and Numlock and have solved them without help. Yet, for this C&C, despite spending a lot of time on it, I just could not get beyond a certain point and found myself keep getting stuck halfway. Perhaps I am way off-tangent on this one, but I am finding the C&C very difficult!

N-ary puzzles exist in all styles, shapes and sizes. The Chinese Rings is perhaps the early originator of such puzzles but it is binary rather than N-nary. The C&C is yet another example of a growing number of N-ary puzzles that have come to the market since Jean-Claude Constantin's 1250-move Kugellager a while back. For those keen to acquire a copy of C&C, you can contact Goetz via his puzzle site.

Puzzle Master of Canada and Mr Puzzle of Australia also retail different N-ary puzzles, as do Wil Strijbos.

RetroFit

RetroFit is one of several puzzles which I acquired recently from Eric Fuller's latest puzzle offering. 

The name given is appropriate for this puzzle; "Retro" - it was designed 4 years ago by Singaporean designer Goh Pit Khiam in 2010 and "Fit" - object is to fit the 5 identical polyominoes (in this case, nonominoes- made up of 9 units), flush into the box frame which is partially covered by a "floating" acrylic sheet.

This version from Eric is made of Rosewood, Ipe, Walnut, Bubinga, Paduak for the pieces and  Maple for the box frame. Construction and finish is excellent as always. An earlier version made of laser cut Walnut exists also for this design, which was Walt Hoppe's IPP31 Exchange Puzzle in Berlin reviewed by Allard in his blog.

This packing puzzle is IMHO just nice; not too many pieces, fun and the right difficulty level; ie enough challenge to hold your continual interest but not overly difficult. However you do need to think a bit outside the box (or frame) to figure this one out and the solution, when you discover it, would surprise you.

Cat & Dog Sliding Puzzle

This sliding puzzle comes from Dutch collector and puzzle designer Ton Delsing. Ton's area of interest in particular are sliding puzzles and he also designs his own sliding puzzles for sale and exchange. Ton's Horrible Hexagon was one of the design entries of IPP 31 in Berlin this year. I had first come upon the Cat & Dog featured in Geduldspiele's website where it was described as "one of Delsing's best puzzles...". My only previous encounter with sliding puzzles was some years ago with the 15 puzzle and more recently, making my own Lego version posted earlier in this blog. With my limited experience, I decided to have a go at the Cat & Dog. I happened to have a puzzle that Ton wanted and eventually exchanged mine with one of his.

The Cat & Dog measures 116mm x 92mm x 18mm and is formed by a number of wood layers glued together. The frame and sliding tiles are cut by LaserExact!. Overall construction, fit and finish is very good. The object of the puzzle is to rearrange the tiles in the unsolved state (as in the photo above) to one of two finishes printed on the back of the puzzle (as in the photo below).

Unlike the traditional 15 type sliding puzzle where all the pieces can slide in various directions, the difficulty level of the Cat & Dog is significantly increased by the restricted movement of the upper middle blank tile in the centre; which can only move either up or down one position. This severely curtails the movement of all the other tiles, especially since horizontal movement along the centre is no longer possible. If both the upper and lower blank tiles are not moved, the rest of the tiles can only move within the frame in a circular fashion and there would be no way to rearrange the order or position of the lettered tiles. Thankfully, the lower blank tile is movable along with the rest of the lettered tiles and this frees up "more space" for repositioning of the lettered tiles.

I started off with much gusto! But after nearly half a day of continuous trying, I still ended up with at least two tiles in the wrong position. This puzzle can literally make you go round in circles! I emailed Ton for some assistance but unfortunately even with his hints, I could not achieve Finish No.1. I spent another day or so sliding but still got nowhere.  A second email from me saw Ton send me a detailed solution. The solution looks rather complicated and would require I think, some time for me to properly digest. My only consolation is that Ton did say the solutions to his sliding designs are not easy...yes, I fully agree! I have decided to put away the Cat & Dog for the moment and come back to it another day. Probably its my lack of experience, but this is one heck of a tough cookie!

Four To Square

The Four To Square is a 4-piece 2D packing puzzle designed and made by Jacques Haubrich. This puzzle was entered into the 2011 IPP Competition in Berlin. Made of stainless steel, the puzzle is 73mm square in size. Overall quality and construction is very good and the 4 irregular shaped pieces are of a slightly different colour tone from the tray giving the puzzle a nice contrast. The object is to pack the 4 pieces flat into the tray.

While it might look deceptively simple with just 4 pieces, which is what I had (wrongly) thought initially, the puzzle is actually much harder than it appears. I actually spent quite a bit of time on this puzzle over a number of days, yet I just could not fit in the last piece nicely into the tray. For a while, I even wondered if Jacques had sent me the wrong pieces as he was packing his puzzle off to me or the pieces of my copy were not cut that precisely! Well, thankfully it was neither. Truth be told, after much trying and not getting anywhere with this, I emailed Jacques for a clue. He was kind enough to send me a drawing with one of the pieces in the right position within the tray. Even with his clue, I still took a bit of time to finally get the remaining 3 pieces nicely inside the tray. I was just not thinking out of the tray (or box) and trying to fit the pieces from just one angle!

Overall, a nice little (no pun intended) challenging packing puzzle.

P&L Packing Puzzle

The P&L was designed by Junichi Yananose and made and sold by Mr Puzzle Australia (aka Brian Young) for exchange at IPP31. It is actually a petite packing puzzle measuring 80mm(L) x 63mm(W) x 23mm(H) and very pocketable. Again the attraction for me to this puzzle was the use of 5 different woods consisting of Queensland Silly Oak, Tasmanian Blackwood, Pepperwood, Rosewood and Queensland Silver Ash. My copy is very well cut and made and all the pieces fit into the box very nicely.

The object of the puzzle is to pack into the box 5 L-shaped pieces and 5 P-shaped pieces. One of the L-shaped pieces has a No.31 (IPP31) on one of its surfaces and this No.31 must show up on top when the puzzle is in the solved state. The 10 pieces form two layers inside the box with no empty spaces. Externally, it looks like the box has got extra thick sides and an unduly small space for the pieces, but this is because the opening of the box leads to a much larger hollow inside the box to which all the pieces must fit in.

The P&L in my opinion poses a reasonably fair challenge. Just when I thought I was about to be able to fit every single piece into the box, I find that I can't fit that one last piece; and out comes all the Ps and Ls again. It took me a couple of hours of trying different layout configurations within the small confines of the box before I finally slotted in the last P on top. Overall, a nice and cute little packing puzzle but those with large hands and fingers may find the small pieces a bit fiddly and clumsy to handle.