Aluminium L(8)tice & Dirty Dozen on Kickstarter

For lovers of interlocking puzzles (and those of you who missed out on my Dirty Dozen), there is a Kickstarter project ongoing now which features two of my designs, the Dirty Dozen and L(8)tice. The third design Slideways, comes from Ray Stanton. All the puzzles are made of heavy aluminium and anodised in attractive orange, blue and magenta. Lovely to look at and challenging to solve.

I had produced a couple of dozen (no pun intended) copies of Dirty Dozen in stainless steel previously for sale in small batches and these were always sold out the moment I listed them on my puzzle site www.mechanical-puzzles.com. Same for the L(8)tice which was manufactured in acrylic.

Here's the link to the Kickstarter page. 

All three puzzles are very affordable, considering they are all produced in anodised aluminium. The Slideways is $20, while both the Dirty Dozen and L(8)tice are going for $25 each. If you buy all three puzzles, there is a package price of $66. Shipping and handling not included.

Both the above designs and their piece shapes are also featured on Puzzlewillbeplayed.com

Dirty Dozen - 

http://puzzlewillbeplayed.com/CombCross/DirtyDozen.JL/

L(8)tice - 

http://puzzlewillbeplayed.com/CombCross/Leighttice/

Slideways Cube

Update 24 October 2017 - Dear Reader, please check out my new puzzle blog and e-store at http://mechanical-puzzles.com

Ray Stanton is well-known for his series of co-ordinate motion "pseudo-burr" puzzles, burrs that look as such but do not behave like a typical burr during the solve.

The Slideways Cube from Ray, which was also his IPP35 Exchange Puzzle is no exception. Physically it looks like an ordinary cube (interlocking) puzzle. It measures about 5.5cm on all sides and manufactured by Pelikan Puzzles out of Mahogany and Cherry. Consisting of just three pieces, each piece is a combination of straight and slanted cut smaller cubes/rectangles glued together. Quality, fit and finish is very good.

The object is to take apart the three pieces and re-assemble. Like Ray's previous puzzles of a similar nature such as the Quad Slideways Burr, Double Slideways Burr, one of the key challenges is to first discover how the puzzle would come apart. Then comes which part/area of the puzzle to press/pull in order to separate the pieces. Pelikan has done such a great job of construction that it took me quite a while to find the joint lines, which are so well hidden, where the three pieces meet; ie the starting point. The fit is snug (made more so by the high Singapore humidity) so it took some effort (and dehumidifying) to slowly ease the pieces outwards away from each other. It comes to a point where the pieces would release themselves and come apart.

Unlike the two other puzzles mentioned, the re-assembly for the Slideways Cube is not as difficult since the final shape to achieve is a cube and the cherry/mahogany combination has a surface pattern which also gives some indication how to pieces are to end up together. Moreover, with just three pieces, it is very manageable with just two hands. No clumsiness of handling here, unlike the Double Slideways Burr which had six pieces. (Hint: always good to photograph the puzzle before you start....and during solve...it will save you a lot of headache later). I have decided not to show the puzzle in mid-solve as this gives away too much. As of the date of this post, Pelikan does not list the Slideways Cube on their site, so I guess there is none available for sale. Not sure of Ray has any spare copies tho'

[Edit 26 March : John Devost has a copy available here]

Hexator & Kissel

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

Over the weekend, I played with two IPP36 Exchange Puzzles designed and manufactured by Vaclav Obsivac from the Czech Republic, more popularly known to the puzzle community as Vinco. I have a number of Vinco's puzzles in my collection including the Cross Box, Murbiter's Pseudo-Burr and the very large sized 18 Dutch Mills. 

Vinco's online puzzle site has an incredible and very extensive range of interlocking and co-ordinate motion puzzles, made of different woods, a large selection of them using exotic woods and all at very reasonable prices. 

Both my exchange copies came assembled. Both are well made with good fit and finish using Cherry wood and will display rather nicely.

The first is the Hexator, a burr-shaped interlocking solid with 6 irregular pieces each made of different rectangular blocks glued together. Measuring about 5.5cm all round, this was Abel Garcia's exchange puzzle. Taking apart the Hexator was not to difficult once you find where the pieces connect and slide them apart. But the challenge came during the re-assembly. I didn't think it was going to be that difficult but the moment I scrambled the pieces, I wished I hadn't done so. While its only 6 pieces, the pieces are (almost) identical to each other but not so. They just look confusingly similar.

There is only one solution and if you can't find the right pieces to mesh together correctly and in the correct sequence, you'll be going around in circles like I did. To borrow the phrase from one puzzler, the Hexator is confusingly disorientating. While Vinco had deliberately constructed the puzzle to have a symmetrical external pattern of colours on all 6 sides by using darker and lighter woods, I found that this didn't help me much. Thankfully he added the printed solution to the packaging. 

The next is Patrick Major's exchange puzzle, the Kissel, a puzzle comprising 4 identical pieces, each consisting of 3 balls joined together in an L-shape. In the solved state, the puzzle forms a symmetrical bunching of 12 balls. The overall size of the bunch is approximately 7cm all round with each ball about 2.7cm in diameter. 

The Kissel took me even longer than the Hexator to take apart. I had thought that this was possibly co-ordinate motion puzzle and tried to remove the pieces as such. However it was not the case. As I was pulling and pushing (the usual way I disentangle such puzzles) trying to find the one piece that can move, suddenly a piece came off and everything came tumbling down. Again, I had little luck with the dis-assembly and had to resort to the solution. In a way the Kissel sort of resembled a co-ordinate motion puzzle but not quite, since I more or less had to "snap" the last piece into place to lock down the rest, even though a slight amount of force (not excessive) was needed.

4L Co-Mo

Name
4L Co-Mo (4 layers Co-ordinate Motion Puzzle)

Designer
Johan Heyns, South Africa. This circular version is based on a hexagonal shaped version designed by Johan in 2011. Johan has also recently produced a hex-shaped version with a cutout in the middle.

Manufacturer & Availability
Handcrafted and sold by Johan himself. 

Type & Classification
Co-ordinate motion

Dimensions
Relatively large at about 9.1cm diameter and 4.5cm thick, but a good size that fits the hands pretty well.

Materials & Construction
The three pieces of this puzzle is made from Pau Marfim (a Brazilian "substitute" for Maple), Rhodesian Teak and Mansonia. Quality of construction, fit and finish is excellent with the entire puzzle built to tight tolerances. Hefty and yes the sliding is also very smooth. The stand that comes with the puzzle comprises of offcuts re-purposed from the same three woods. A nice little extra touch here!

Overview
This is my first puzzle from Johan and certainly would not be my last. My copy is the less expensive "non-stripey" version (US$38). The stripey version has each of the pieces made from a combination of three woods. It is also overall thicker to maintain the strength and integrity of the puzzle and correspondingly a little more expensive.

Generally I don't have much problems with co-ordinate motion puzzles (based on past experience) and I didn't think I would have much issue with the 4L Co-Mo. But I couldn't be more wrong. I took apart the puzzle in a jiffy (this was the easy part) but spent the better part of an afternoon trying to put the thing back together and still couldn't! 

I made a comment (to Otis Cheng's FaceBook picture post of his 4L Co-Mo) about my difficulty and within minutes, Johan (who must have seen my comment) shot me a PM to let me know that I needed to align certain match markings on the pieces to slide them back to the original state. He mentioned that the markings were a necessary guide to ensure that the pieces fit especially after sanding and turning. In my case, it was a small dot drilled into the joining ends of two pieces. Others could be two dots or a circle, depending.

With this new info, I was then able to position the pieces correctly and slide all three pieces back into the solved state. 

Difficulty Level

Easy to take apart but even with the match markings, this is still a relatively difficult puzzle to put back together; you need to align all three pieces "just nicely" in the correct position and orientation to slide them inwards. If not, one of the pieces would always be excluded. Not an easy task and I did take a bit of time on this as well. Perhaps the hardest co-ordinate motion puzzle I have come across so far. Thanks for Johan's help, otherwise I would still have been grappling with this one. A bit of practice here and there and I got the hang of it after a while.

Summary

The 4L Co-Mo is a great co-ordinate motion puzzle; very high quality and sturdily constructed with thick stock and can withstand abuse (but be more gentle with the stand tho'). Johan calls his works ICTA (Intellectual Coffee Table Art), not puzzles. How true; supported on its own stand, the 4L Co-Mo displays really very nicely on any desk or mantle. And did I mention that it is very good value for money too?

Co-Mo Cross & Little Box

These two puzzles came to me courtesy of Pelikan, from the Czech Republic. These are from their most recent batch of offerings and are available on their site. The Co-Mo Cross and Little Box were both designed by William Hu. 

The Co-Mo Cross as the name suggests is a co-ordinate motion puzzle. The puzzle is made entirely from American Walnut. Extremely well constructed as per Pelikan standards with fine attention to detail. Its so well put together that I had a very hard time finding the joint lines of the pieces which are completely hidden amongst the grain of the pieces. I only discovered them after I had played with the puzzle for a while. Incredible how Pelikan achieved this. Very snug fit yet when you co-ordinately slide the pieces, they move very smoothly against each other. Not a large puzzle by any means but comfortable to hold. It measures 6.4 cm x 6.4 cm x 6.4 cm.

As I said, it took me a while to detect which and how the pieces had to move; but once I got this, the four pieces slid apart quite easily. Re-assembly also took a bit of effort as the tight tolerance of the pieces requires one to get all the four pieces at their correct positions just right for them to slide back into position. Not easy this step and I had to fiddle for a while to get everything into the solved state.

William Hu states: "Co Mo cross was an attempt at making a very small and concise co-ordinate motion puzzle with very few slanted cuts - of which there are only two in this design. The shape of a 2x2x2 cross is made of two pairs of identical pieces (which are mirror pairs). The separating motion is a little unusual but pleasant."

The next puzzle is the Little Box. This one measures 6 cm x 6 cm x 6 cm and is made of eight exotic hardwoods consisting of Maple, Wenge, Cherry, American Walnut, Acacia, Mahagony, Padouk and Amaranth. Again everything is nicely constructed and this one has all beveled edges for each of the pieces.

Why is it called by such a name when it doesn't even look anything like a box? William had this to say: 

"Little Box is a very simple assembly puzzle intended for beginners, with a small hollow inside. Serially interlocking with a single, relatively easy to find solution, this puzzle is a nice introduction to non-cubic assemblies. The shape of the pieces is inspired by the rebated joint in woodworking.."

Right in the centre of the puzzle is the hollow which contains a surprise; cute little cube, which indeed surprised me when it dropped out after I removed the first piece. While it may be easy to take apart within six steps, reassembly is not as simple. I got some of the pieces mixed up a bit and had to backtrack a couple of times before finding their correct orientations with each other.

Both are wonderful puzzles from a great designer and comes with great craftsmanship. Not difficult puzzles for experienced puzzlers (and non-burrists) but definitely worthy to be in any collection. And did I mention they are superb value for money too?

TetraParquet

Here's another interesting co-ordinate motion puzzle I played with earlier in the week. Both in terms of the puzzle design and the physical shape. Anyway I needed something less stressful after my struggle with the Optiborn.

TetraParquet was Stan Issacs' IPP34 Exchange Puzzle in London last year. The puzzle is triangular shaped and consists of six (also triangular shaped) pieces. Its called "TetraParquet" because the puzzle has four faces, and each face consist of a further three triangular faces. It was both designed and made by Wayne Daniel out of exotic woods; which I think is Maple, Paduak and Walnut. The woods give it a symmetrical 3-colour contrast. Construction, fit and finish is very good and everything slides smoothly. Reminds me of the Cast Delta, but in 3-dimensions.

Object of the puzzle is to take apart the six pieces and reassemble. Each of the six pieces have triangular "plates" glued and attached to the edges. These plates are the connectors between the pieces which holds and "lock" the puzzle in place. Very delicate looking parts!

Taking apart is not too difficult (unlike the Pennyhedron puzzles reviewed previous). Some manipulation and you can begin the feel the joints coming apart as the pieces start to split. Putting it together is harder as the pieces only fit together one way (meaning you can't interchange the positions of the pieces since the plates can fit into adjoining pieces only if the pieces are correctly matched). You start off by building two halves and then bring them together. There is then a need to maintain the six pieces slightly apart (not too far that they are totally separate) and slowly ease the six towards each other. Tricky and it took me a bit of fiddling to finally get the puzzle back into the solved state. 

Not a overly difficult puzzle by any means, but certainly it displays very nicely! 

Orchid Pennyhedron

A while back, I played with Stephen Chin's Rose Pennyhedron. In my blog post, one reader had also offered an explanation of how the "pennyhedron" puzzles got their name. And there is some other general information on "Rhombic Dodecahedrons"  Over the weekend, I played with another similar puzzle, this time it's the Orchid Pennyhedron, George Bell's IPP34 exchange puzzle. 

The Orchid was designed by George and made by Stephen (or "Chinomotto" as he likes to be known). Quality of construction, fit and finish is very good with contrasting woods used.

Externally both puzzles look rather similar (both have six triangular "facets" to each surface) and both the Rose and Orchid are comprised of three pieces. However while the Rose has three identical (or congruent) pieces, the Orchid only has two. The third piece appears to be a mirror image of the other two.

Like the Rose, the object is to find a way to split the three pieces apart. This is a co-ordinate motion puzzle. The effort required here for the Orchid was no less than that of the Rose. In fact it took me a while longer to both take apart the pieces, and bring them back together again. The fit was so good I took some time to figure out where the pieces were suppose to come apart. Its likely to pose some difficulty to the uninitiated! 

But having played with the Rose previously, I knew what I needed to do. Some pressing at strategic spots and the pieces began to split gradually. I took two tries to reassemble properly as the first attempt did not get a perfect alignment of the three pieces, which resulted in a rather uncomfortable feeling rough edge between two of the pieces.

From what I understand, George and Stephen each have a whole collection of these pennyhedron puzzles, each looking very similar externally but all with various designs and interlocking. If you are keen to find out more or want to get one of these, these two gents would be the people to approach.

The Rose Pennyhedron

Stephen Chin from Australia had named his IPP34 Exchange Puzzle the "Rose Pennyhedron", probably because it sounds better and also easier to pronounced than its scientific designation ie "Rhombic Dodecahedron". What a mouthful!

What is an "RD"? Well, you can check out its meaning here. You're not alone if you don't understand the explanation, I don't either.

The RD comprises three pieces, each of which is made up of several other triangular-shaped pieces glued together. The woods appear to be Maple and Cherry. Overall the construction fit and finish is very good and the tolerances are very tight. So tight at first that that I had to leave it in my dry-box for a couple of days to make sure the puzzle was dehumidified.

The object of the RD is to "open" it...separate the pieces. As I mentioned, the tolerances are very tight so it took me a while to find the join lines separating the three individual pieces; no easy task mind you.

Once I got past this bit, it was a matter of pressing and pulling to see how the three pieces would separate themselves. This is a co-ordinate motion puzzle and for most co-ordinate motion puzzles, generally no force is required, but for the RD, I did find that I needed to apply a tad more strength to split the pieces. When it opens, the puzzle does look like a flower opening, hence the name."Rose". But I am not sure what the "penny" refers to tho'.

While the pieces appear to be identical, I found that if I did not fit the pieces together as per their original positions relative to each other, the fit was not perfect and I could feel this in the join lines. Took me several tries before I got it right and the whole puzzle became smooth to the touch.   

[Edit 26 Jan 2015: Lionel Depeux has written to me about the name Pennyhedron (Thank you Lionel). Here are his comments below-

I believe there’s no hidden meaning to be found in the name: ‘Pennyhedron’ was the name for the original puzzle of that kind (designed and made Stewart Coffin), which was only a 2-piece puzzle.

As to where the original name came from, you’ll find an explanation on Eric Fuller’s website:

http://www.cubicdissection.com/html/purchase/discont/pennyhedron.html ]

Double Slideways Burr

It looks like any other ordinary burr. But don't let that fool you. The Double Slideways Burr (DSB) is one of the hardest co-ordinate motion puzzles around.

I got my copy of the DSB from Ray Stanton during the IPP34 Puzzle Exchange in London this year. Ray's exchange copies were made by Eric Fuller and the six pieces are cut from Walnut, Maple and Sapele. Very well constructed with fine edges and tight tolerances.

Why is it called the Double Slideways Burr? Well, because Ray had previously come up with the (Single) Slideways Burr, which consists of just three pieces. Although the DSB has double the number of pieces, the difficulty quotient is probably quadruple (or more) that of the SSB. I have never played with the SSB before, so I was thrown right into the deep with the DSB.

I spent the better part of two evenings figuring out the DSB, attempting different combination and orientation of pairs and pieces, looking for a way to "slide" the pieces together. After all, it must slide together somehow right?...given its called "Slideways". I even got my wife to help me hold some pieces while I grappled with the rest. But I got nowhere and eventually gave up. I emailed Ray asking for a hint. When Ray replied, I realized that I was way off tangent all the while. Even with his help, It took me another good hour or two before finally getting the six pieces to form the intended shape! 

This one is a real tough cookie. I happily emailed Ray a photo of my solved DSB and was quite pleased to hear from him that I am so far, only the fourth person he knows that has managed to put together the DSB. (Edit: as of 21 Nov 2014, there are 11 people who have solved the DSB). I don't intend to take it apart since I am not sure if I can re-assemble it again, and I don't wish to find out...so it will sit nicely solved in my puzzle cabinet.

Let me put it this way...if you have never solved Ray's earlier puzzle, the SSB, well, the DSB will be very difficult indeed. But if you have solved the SSB before, then the DSB will still be very difficult indeed! And unfortunately, Burr Tools cannot help here. 

For those keen on acquiring an SSB or DSB, they are available from Eric Fuller's website for $15 and $39 respectively. For other co-ordinate motion puzzles reviewed previously, please click below:-

1. Choreographed Motion
2. Cross Box
3. 18 Dutch Mills
4. CM 13
5. Brass Ball
6. Cast Galaxy
7. Aroma

Hanayama Cast Galaxy

A puzzle designer's dream....enter a puzzle design competition, win a prize and a major puzzle manufacturer picks up your winning design and mass produces it...leading to fame and fortune! 

In recent years, a number of designers have had their IPP award winning designs produced by Hanayama. They include Vesa Timonen (Cast Loop), Dmitry Pevnitskiy & Kirill Grebnev (Cast Harmony), JinHoo Ahn (Cast G&G) and Kyoo Wong (Cast U&U). But Bram Cohen has had not one but two of his designs turned into commercial puzzles (Cast Rattle, Cast Galaxy)

Released in July this year, the Galaxy is the latest cast puzzle from Hanayama. As of the date of this blog post, the Galaxy is also the best selling cast puzzle domestically in Japan (loads of royalties for Bram, congrats!).

I bought my copy from Torito who had set up shop during IPP34 in London this past August. The Galaxy can also be purchased from PuzzleMaster and Ebay.

The Galaxy is fabricated out of steel (I think). Consisting of 4 interlocking pieces, the object is to separate them. Fit and finishing is overall good and in this instance, I actually like the shiny surface. 

Hanayama has rated it 3 stars for difficulty level, but I think it deserves perhaps a 3.5. Solving requires you to twist and turn the pieces in various directions; for most part you'll hit a dead end and be confused. But get them (just) right in the correct position and they can thereafter be disentangled. Some co-ordinate motion is required. Virtually no chance of accidental solving. 

Both the taking apart and re-assembly is more than fairly challenging. The putting back together is I feel more difficult and you have to make sure you set up the pieces correctly. However, once you get the hang of it, its quite manageable to repeat solve. Overall a nice looking, compact and fun puzzle; one of the best ones so far from Hanayama that I have come across.