Petit Puzzle

I’d been putting together an order from Jakub at the New Pelikan Workshop and just before I was about to finalise it, I spotted a new pic from Jakub on Facebook featuring an interesting caged burr called Petit Puzzle designed by Osanori Yamamoto. I asked Jakub to please add it on to my order and let me know what the new total was, but he refused to take any money for it and told me it was a gift from him. 

The parcel duly arrived a few days later and this little puzzle is really excellent – with just three pieces, two burr-bits in a cage, it looks seductively simple – I mean, there are only three bits to it – how hard can it be?

Well, it has a level 11.2 solution… and its designer is well-known for designing “interesting” puzzles. This one’s no exception!

From the starting position there are only so many things you can do … and some of them lead to dead ends. Find the right path and you’ll find yourself being presented with a few more forks in the road, some interesting movements and then a view of how things should probably proceed in order to make enough room to get one of the pieces out of the way … and then there’s the little Yamamoto twist in the tail right at the end as well.

Reassembly isn’t trivial but shouldn’t take too long – and don’t be put off by the relatively high level – there are a couple of distinct stages to solving this one and each one takes a few moves to accomplish … eminently solvable – even by non-burristas like me!

I feel compelled at the end of this little write-up to make specific mention of the quality of this puzzle – Jakub and the New Pelikan Workshop guys have always produced good quality puzzles and charged incredibly reasonable prices for them, but they seem to have stepped things up a gear recently – the quality of this puzzle is easily on a par with that produced by one of my favourite American burr-makers. In fact at the last MPP I challenged a couple of my mates to guess who’d made this puzzle and some of them actually thought it was that American chap – Congratulations Jakub! The quality of your work is astounding for the prices you charge.