Vivaldi Burr

Of all the IPP36 Exchange Puzzles, the Vivaldi Burr must surely be one of the most unique and unusual looking ones present this year! Very nicely packaged, it even comes with portions of a score which act as cushioning in the box!

Exchanged and designed by Rene Dawir of Luxembourg, the Vivaldi Burr was produced by Marcel Gillen, the latter who is most well known for his chess piece puzzles. 

As you can see from the photos, the puzzle takes, IMHO the shape and form more of a cello (than a violin). It is reminiscent of the Japanese Kumiki puzzles, that are interlocking puzzles which take on a familiar shape eg animal or object.

The Vivaldi Burr is constructed entirely of thick MDF board and the pieces are precision cut using a CNC milling machine. Stripped down, it is essentially a "board burr" type puzzle. Quality, fit and finish is very good and everything is nicely put together and all pieces slide and move relatively smoothly.

The object is the disassemble and re-assemble the burr. Make no mistake here; while it doesn't look anything like a traditional burr and you can see everything you are doing, the Vivaldi Burr is not that easy to take apart, even though it may appear to be so. I don't have the exact solution steps but based on my own rough count, it takes about 9 steps to remove the first piece and approximately a total of 24 steps to dis-assemble the entire puzzle completely +/- a couple of steps. The first two steps are obvious. The steps are sequential and if one is missed, it may mean starting several steps from behind again. Putting it back to together is the exact reverse. It took me a good forty five minutes to take apart the thing apart and re-solve.

Moderately challenging to solve, overall a very nice design and well executed "burr" to collect. And something certainly very different from the usual.

Butter Churn

I acquired this metal puzzle from Oli Sovary-Soos a while back when he had a sale of some of the puzzles in his collection. The Butter Churn is one of the puzzles designed by Marcel Gillen who is famous for his chess piece puzzles such as the King, Queen, Rook, Pawn as well as the Fire Plug, all these which have been reviewed previously in this blog.

The Churn is a rather smallish puzzle, approximately about 6.2cm tall and 2.5cm in diameter at its widest. It is basically a "bottle-shaped" cylinder containing a shaft, one end of which is rounded. It is made entirely of aluminium and construction fit and finish is very good. It is quite rare to find one these days (and I had been looking for one for quite a while). I was fortunate enough to spot the Churn tucked in a corner in Oli's photo showing his spread of puzzles for sale. I promptly contacted him to buy it and a week later, it arrived at my doorstep.

The object of the puzzle is to remove the shaft inside the Churn. This is one of those puzzles where there is a hidden mechanism which locks the shaft. The shaft can be pulled about half an inch out but there it stops. One can also hear some ball bearings rolling around inside the Churn. Needless to say, I tried all sorts of ways which I knew to try to remove the shaft, tapping, knocking, gently nudging, twisting, rocking, shaking etc...and as usual nothing worked. Its a wonder that something this small and quite so innocuous can defy all attempts to be solved.

After several days of trying, I eventually gave up and emailed Oli for some help. Oli explained the mechanism and even he said he was only able to open it a couple of times and not repeatedly. I also contacted Jeff Chiou who had briefly written about the Churn in his blog. Jeff sent over the printed solution and a photo of the puzzle in the solved state. He too stated that it was a finicky puzzle. With the help I got, I finally managed (after quite a few more attempts) to extract the shaft from the Churn at last. After studying the internals, I placed everything back in place and tried to repeat the process...once again, it defied me for some time.

Well... overall a difficult (and finicky) puzzle indeed. I would not have been able to solve it without the solution. The mechanism does not look complicated, but I would say definitely quite unique. I think the Churn would have been a nice and interesting puzzle if there is a way to consistently solve it repeatedly. If anyone knows, please feel free to contact me. For now, I will not try to solve it again but just leave the shaft outside and consign the puzzle in a Ziplock bag to my puzzle cupboard!

Cube In Cube / Sputnik

The Cube-In-Cube (aka Sputnik) was designed by Marcel Gillen, best known for his Chess Piece puzzles, some which have been reviewed in earlier postings. My copy of the Cube puzzle came from Finnish online retailer Oy Sloyd Ab. Produced by Bits & Pieces, the larger hollowed-out outer cube is made of aluminium and measures about 5 cm all round. The inner cube is solid brass and about 3 cm. Quality of the puzzle is above average and the overall finishing could have been better. Nonetheless, the combination of the two makes the puzzle very heavy in the palm.

This is a take-apart type puzzle similar to the Cast Cage and Aluminium Hedgehog, where the object is to remove the centre piece, in this case the inner brass cube. There is only one solution to the puzzle; the brass cube can only be extracted from one of the 6 open circular holes on one of the sides of the outer cube. Each of the circular holes have 4 tiny v-grooves cut into the sides. In order for the brass cube to be freed, the corners of the brass cube must fit nicely into the v-grooves for a smooth exit out of the hole. The difficulty is enhanced by the fact that the brass cube itself is not a perfect cube with equal dimensions (although this is not obvious), as the differences in lengths of the edges are approximately -/+ 0.5mm. Similarly the v-grooves for each of the 6 holes are also not all identical in their respective positions. As a result, there is only one correct side of the brass cube where all 4 corners will be able to pass through the v-grooves of the correct hole. 

Notice the 4 v-grooves cut into each side of the 6 circular holes

The solution is purely trial and error here and a good memory certainly helps when you try the various combinations and not repeat the ones that don't work. It is not a difficult puzzle; just that it requires a bit of patience (and dexterity) to try to match the correct side of the brass cube with the correct hole of the outer cube. Puzzlers with big fingers may also find it a bit cumbersome to try to manipulate the brass cube within the confines of the outer cube. Notwithstanding, there is some replay value here.....unless you have marked the puzzle to remember which side of the brass cube can be removed from which hole, you will invariably find yourself doing the trial and error thing in order to repeat solving the puzzle.

Fire Plug

Update 23 October 2017 - Dear Reader, please check out my new puzzle blog and e-store at http://mechanical-puzzles.com

This puzzle is another one of Marcel Gillen's designs and like the name it bears, looks rather like a fire hydrant. In fact if you didn't know it was a mechanical puzzle, you would have mistaken it for perhaps a multi-directional valve or some heavy duty machine part, owing to its industrial-like appearance.

I acquired this puzzle from the same anonymous private seller who had sold me the Queen, Pawn and Rook reviewed in an earlier post. Like Marcel's chess piece puzzles, the Fire Plug is very rare and cannot be obtained from any online puzzle shop as far as I am aware.

The Fire Plug is a very heavy puzzle (feels almost the same weight as a Revomaze Extreme) with a ball burnished cylindrical body made out of aluminium (most likely by cast moulding). Inserted into the sides of the cylinder are 2 brass pegs, each 2 1/2in long with a cross section diameter of about 5/8in. On one end of one of the pegs are the initials M and G. The cylinder body is 3 1/4in tall with a diameter of 1 5/8in. My copy is well made and fit and finish is very good.

The object of the puzzle is to extract the brass pegs from the Fire Plug to reveal a hidden item within the puzzle, in this case a tiny little cute plastic Dalmatian dog with a fireman's hat. Marcel Gillen had chosen to hide a Dalmatian inside the puzzle for good reason - because Dalmatians have long been associated with fire fighting; click here to read the rather interesting history.

I found the Fire Plug very difficult to solve. My initial fiddling with the brass pegs and causing one of them to rotate and slide from end to end gave me the impression that the two brass pegs were locked vis-a-vis the cylinder body. Further more the way the two brass pegs were positioned relative to each other suggested that both were criss-cross interlocked somehow as well. I also heard some other sounds (apart from the Dalmatian rolling about inside) which indicated that there was another moving part involved, either a tiny ball bearing or pin of some sort, which is not entirely uncommon in puzzles of this nature where everything is hidden from view. I thought  I could "feel" my way to unlocking and removing the brass pegs from the cylinder. But boy was I wrong! I tried all sorts of moves by the book including twisting and turning, pulling and pushing, turning the cylinder upside down, shaking it, banging it etc but to no avail.

In the end, after some time trying, I gave up and decided to go for the solution. The moment I looked at the solution, I realised that there was no way I could have solved the puzzle without it. The way the brass pegs are locked in place is very clever indeed and to solve the puzzle, one had to execute a number of moves in a particular manner and sequence. However, once you memorise the moves, it is easy to repeat solving the puzzle.

Overall the Fire Plug is an extremely challenging puzzle indeed and aside from its unique (and interesting) appearance, ranks very highly as a collector's puzzle due to its rarity. Don;t hesitate to buy it if you come across one.