Compressed and Round Trip by Gregory Benedetti

Greg’s burr designs have never been accused of being similar to other designs – Greg’s designs stand out! In their solved states, some of them may look reasonably conventional, but that’s just a ruse to lull you into a false sense of security…

Back in Washington D.C. his Blind Burr kicked my backside very thoroughly when I tried to solve it in the Design Competition room… and I was delighted when I finally worked it out. The Ambigram Burr changed the rules quite a bit and his Glued and Welded burrs are just the thing to inflict on someone who reckons that a burr is a burr is a burr… 

At last year’s IPP Greg came up with another new take on burr design – he’d dubbed it New Old-School (or NOS) and the pieces had a rather distinctive look about them… with a few diagonal cuts it was clear these pieces were meant to slide along one another in pretty unusual ways. He’d had a few of his new designs 3D-printed and was handing them around for puzzlers to have a bash at… and one evening I spent a good hour or so trying to assemble what Greg assured me was the simplest of the ones he had there… I didn’t feel particularly bright as the others were all solving them far quicker than I was… 

One of the other people showing a fair amount of interest in those designs at IPP35 was Eric Fuller, so when he announced that he’d made up a few copies of two of Greg’s NOS designs I didn’t hang about… and they are every bit as good as I hoped they’d be!

NOS 1 is also known as Compressed – Eric’s made these in maple and done a great job of making them look like standard six-piece burrs… of course they don’t behave like standard six-piece burrs, but that’s half the fun of them! 

Start fiddling with this one and you can actually get one or two pieces to appear to move in a pretty standard manner… it doesn’t seem to help, but it is a little comforting! 

Experiment a little more and you’ll find pieces start interacting, and then things start getting really funky! Soon enough you’ll have pieces heading in all sorts of different directions and shortly after that you’ll find you have a hand-full of pieces! 

Well done… now all you have to do is reassemble them – Good luck!

[Actually, with only two types of pieces it’s not too difficult but seems a bit fiddly the first few times… but rest assured – there’s a reasonably simple strategy for putting them all back together again that doesn’t require an extra pair of hands and the skills of a circus contortionist!] 

…and I’m willing to bet that you’ll be rather surprised at the final move-count… after all the other interesting things you tried to do with those pieces earlier on in your journey… :-)

NOS 3 a.k.a. Round Trip is a lovely rich Padauk. Once again this is another wolf in sheep’s clothing – fiddle around and try to find the first move, and when you do, it is guaranteed to take you by surprise! Weird stuff happens – all by itself… this thing takes on a life of its own. 

…get past that first little surprise and then it sort of behaves itself – as long as you’re OK with multiple pieces moving all the time..

The first piece is released after a few moves, but the next takes quite a few more – and they’re quite interesting… until you manage to totally dismantle it and find the pieces are all unique – and if they don’t imbue you with great respect for Master Fuller’s craftsmanship, you aren’t paying attention. 

Putting this one back together again is a totally different challenge to NOS 1 … and provides a nifty exercise in logic. 

A couple of awesome Benedetti designs cleverly made by Fuller … hopefully there’ll be a lot more from that team – and you know it’ll be a wild ride if there is!

...and don't just take my word for it! Kevin really approves as well!!

Stickman Matchbox Puzzle (a.k.a. Stickman #29)

Robert Yarger announced the latest little Stickman masterpiece in an email in mid-November last year… Rob’s puzzles are SO popular that he’s forced to offer them on a lottery-basis (you can sign-up on his website) or he’d risk upsetting a number of collectors who consider his creations super-collectible! Having had the email with the offer to buy a copy of the latest Stickman puzzle, I spent a little while weighing up the pros and cons, debating things internally and then sent him the money approximately 12 milliseconds later…

Rob duly popped it in the post and it rocked up at Puzzling Times HQ a couple of weeks later (after a little detour to HMRC for the traditional ransom demand) … unfortunately for me, Gill has developed a bit of a Christmas tradition: any packages addressed to me arriving at chez Walker in December are automatically confiscated, wrapped and placed under the Christmas tree…

So I had to wait until Christmas morning before I was allowed to open the package and play with the newest toy in my Stickman collection…

I had a wonderful Christmas morning, let me tell you!

This little box is easily one of the cutest looking puzzles you’re going to come across – designed to resemble a matchbox, Rob’s gone to huge lengths make it look thoroughly matchbox-like – and simply gorgeous! The label on the box is picked out in yellowheart and detailed with the Stickman branded logo and there’s a bunch of beautiful inlaid maple veneer just to provide additional detailing and features on the box… and it wouldn’t be a proper matchbox without striking surfaces down the sides – in wenge … and they’re purposefully not flat with the sides of the box, they stick out just a bit like they would on a real matchbox… just so that it looks right – no other reason! Push the drawer open a bit and there are a bunch of large matches inside – purple-headed, white-tipped matches … all handmade by Rob…

Right, so it looks great – what about the puzzle?

Well, Rob described it as “somewhat simple in operation” … “when compared to past Stickman designs” – and the clue is on the comparator – given just how complex some of the previous designs have been, that’s a fair comment, but the first part on its own would certainly not be a fair description of the puzzle at all!

Push the drawer and it will come out a little bit – more than enough to admire the lovely matches inside there, but clearly there’s more to this than just a drawer that opens about a quarter of an inch… spend some time exploring things a little and soon enough you’ll find some other bits move a bit – and you might even find yourself being able to do something you hadn’t previously been able to do – progress!

Find how to combine those discoveries together and you’ll be able to work through the roughly 10-steps needed to open the box fully and find the secret compartment…

Amazing skills in a beautiful little puzzle…

Sweta Cross

It feels like ages since I’ve sat down and jotted off a quick blog post… hopefully with the imminent completion (of my part at least) of my recent mammoth project, I’ll find a bit more time to write these things again…

OK, so what do we have for you today?

Wil Strijbos’ latest creation – the Sweta Cross.

This puzzle resulted from a Swiss company’s desire for a puzzling gift to give away to their customers. Wil spotted the possibilities in making a variant of his original aluminium Cross puzzle and giving it a nice red stand – et voila instant Swiss flag! The company wanted their give-aways to be “accessible” to non-puzzlers, so Wil set about coming up with a reasonably straight-forward design… and ended up finalising the design while he was visiting his sweetheart, so he named it after her with a nod to the Swiss company who’d commissioned it…

…and all would have been good if he’d stopped there…

…but that’s not Wil’s style – knowing that he’d end up selling some of them to puzzlers as well, he also produced the puzzlers’ version… and while it looks similar to the Swiss giveaway, this one is for hardened puzzlers only…

At first glance it might look a bit like his old aluminium Cross puzzle – similar size, also made of aluminium… then you spot the little windows on the ends of the arms… behind which appear to be some brass bits and a few ball bearings… at which point you may think you recognise this trick, set it down on a horizontal surface and give it a spin expecting the pieces to magically separate once Mr Centrifugal does his thing… but it doesn’t.

If anything, the pieces seem even more solidly locked together…

OK, so we need a different strategy – we look carefully at one of the ends – we notice there’s a hole in the centre of the brass bit behind that window, and occasionally one or two of the balls disappear down the hole, except for some reason they seem very unwilling to head into that hole – which is weird, right?

…and I’ll leave it there for now… you should enjoy this on your own...

The easier version has far fewer bits to wrangle and they’re far more cooperative… but you’ll never get to see one of those unless you happen to be a customer of that particular Swiss company, so you may as well make peace with wrangling multiple little thingies all with an apparent mind of their own…

This is a brilliant Strijbos design – everything is on show, all the time – and yet it’s also perfectly disguised at the same time. 

There’s a great “A-Ha!” moment when you work out what you’re trying to achieve … and then another when you work out how the heck to actually do that!

If you’ve ever liked any of Wil’s other designs, you’ll love this one!