Minima Ronde

I wonder if Frederic Boucher had any idea just how ubiquitous his Minima form-factor would become when he started toying with his first few designs. It’s seen some truly mind-blowing “simple” packing puzzles that are anything but straight-forward from Frederic himself… then he’s given us some wonderfully complicated sequential discovery puzzles. And then he’s also invited a bunch of other designers onto the bandwagon to bring us their take on the 2*2*3 space.

Volker Latussek had already dabbled in the space with Minima Flop using standard cubie-pieces and decided to have another bash with pieces that each have one full cubie and two half cubies. Six such pieces will neatly fill the standard Minima box and then some judiciously carved holes will turn it into a rather neat little puzzle.

As with all of Volker’s puzzles, the shipping configuration is designed to tease the puzzler and this one comes with an interesting little challenge – you can’t just shake the pieces out of the box… so it begins.

Retrieve the pieces and you can fiddle around with them outside the box and get to know them a little… you’ll spot that some of them are handed-copies and that will restrict the potential assemblies a fair bit.

Having found an assembly, reverse-engineering how the heck you can get them into the box is a wonderful challenge. I really enjoyed this bit of the solve – Volker’s given you a whole bunch of holes and it turns out that every single one of them is important… there’s a wonderfully convoluted series of moves required to get everything inside and quite often you’re having to fiddle around with the order of insertion because your initial assumptions are going to be proved wrong!

I found myself stopped in my tracks a few times as I had to reassess and find a way around something that seemed impossible… for six little pieces, this one packs a whole lot of puzzling and some ingenious moves to get everything in just the right spot.

Another superb challenge added to the canon!

Pluredro House

Juno has taken it upon himself to fix the Housing Crisis by making an affordable starter home available for sale. As you’d expect it’s a neat little timber-framed number and it contains a number of rather puzzling features.

I placed my order and realising it was due to arrive while we were away in Italy, I asked Yukari to post my copy over to Steve’s place as there was going to be someone in residence while we were all enjoying the heatwave (and some Puzzling Time) in Italy. It arrived safe and sound and then Steve duly delivered it to me at the next MPP…

Rich had a bash at it that evening and made a modest amount of progress before resetting it for me… I duly threw myself into it and made a similarly modest amount of progress before hitting a brick wall, which is odd for a timber-framed house.

The first few steps flowed beautifully, but then there just seemed to be no way to progress…

I did the obvious things of going back to the start and then retracing my steps (even though I needed to cheat a bit in there – if you know… you know) but that yielded no further enlightenment… even trying it under a different star sign yielded no noticeable changes in outcome or indeed any further progress… I remained stuck for quite some time…

Now I should probably have expected this – Juno did warn us that he thought this puzzle was quite a bit harder than his previous sequential discovery puzzles. He also said that he’d taken pity on us lowly puzzlers and included a visual hint for the particularly contentious step in the solve… and I knew that I was even at that step yet!

Puzzles are getting harder and I’m getting slower in the brain department – that’s probably not a great combination.

When the next MPP rolled around a few folks spent a good deal of time on the House and eventually managed to blast through the brick wall – and several other not insignificant obstacles thereafter. Several far better puzzlers triumphed over the House and so the following day, complete with my puzzle guru nearby, I tackled it once more – this time with a handy source or encouragement and nudgings on tap.

Getting past the first brick wall was helped by engaging a little bit of Think (c) – mainly along the lines of what the heck could be stopping me and how could I get around it…? The next few steps where a rollocking ride with progress seeming to flow until I got to the “contentious” step – but here I found Juno’s visual clue to be spot on and helpful with things just magically all lining up and things just seeming to magically happen.

At some point we find ourselves having moved into a single-storey house and turning it into a double-storey – but the fun really comes when you – cue thick cockney accent - blow the bluddy roof off it.

The locks and their tools are classic Juno – but don’t be lulled into thinking you can set your tools aside once you’ve used them – some of them are somewhat multi-functional!

This one’s definitely a step up on the hardness scale  - a few things are reasonably blind but do ultimately yield to the right amount of Think (c) – sadly my stores of the latter seem to be depleting rapidly as I age!

Juno’s House has probably provided the most puzzling value for money I’ve had recently – and still it looks like a mere child’s toy. There is a proper shed-load of puzzling crammed in there though, all of it with well thought-out design and perfect tolerances… if it’s not working, it’s because you’re not doing the right thing, not because anything’s a bit finicky!

An excellent starter home for the well-seasoned puzzler!

 

Popplock T15

I was one of the super-lucky folks who managed to acquire a copy of Rainer’s latest masterpiece from him in Assisi… I handed over a small pile of cash just before the traditional Sunday Puzzle Party and he gave me a fairly substantial paperweight.

The T15 is another big brute of a lock – styled as a padlock, this is the sort of padlock one might use to lock the gates of your medieval castle… it has a bunch of rivets and pins around the face but the one thing that seems to be missing is a hole for the key… come to mention it, it doesn’t come with a key… curiouser and curiouser.

The shackle is made up of three heavy steel plates riveted together and the central button has a large T (for Tricklock) on the one side, and Rainer’s logo and the lock’s designation on the other… without an obvious place to start, you’ll need to begin experimenting to find a suitable thread to tug on…

The first move is a bit sneaky (albeit quite tame by Rainer's standards!) and then other things start to be able to move.

There’s a fun bit in the middle of the solve where you’re trying to make sense of how various things interact and if you get it wrong, you seem to get thrown back to the start again – at a suitable time, some magic happens and you know that you’ve made progress… and if you’re good, you can avoid undoing that progress.

I’m not very good… in fact I spent a long time not making a lot of progress at this point. I’d described my progress to a couple of friends who’d solved it and they nodded sagely and provided gentle encouragement to continue… but continue, I could not.

When Louis was round to stay he asked me to show him how far I’d got and when I showed him it transpired that I’d literally virtually completed the solve – there was just one “move” left on the solve – but I needed a lot of encouragement to achieve said move – almost to the point that I suspect a few others are going to be caught in purgatory for a while like I was.

As always, Rainer’s tolerances and machining are sublime and everything works just beautifully until that last move where a somewhat agricultural yank seems to be required – albeit one with a deft touch – IYKYK.

Rainer’s 2026 Tricklock is another doozy!

Doog’s Single Barrelled Side By Side

OK, so this is a bit embarrassing… I’ve been struggling with the final step on this box for a very long time… almost since I got the box from Doog in Assisi – and that was several months ago!

With this box, Doog announced that he was challenging himself to push his design and workmanship to the next level – which is quite a statement given that I’ve never heard anyone complain about either the novelty of his designs or the functioning of his mechanism. Sure, some of his earlier boxes might have looked a little rustic, but that very element conned me into woefully underestimating their puzzling – and when I did solve them, I had not only found a lot of respect for Doog’s ingenuity, but also his craftsmanship.

I really liked it when he began putting nice wooden veneer on the outside of his puzzles (I admit it, I’m shallow!) so when he announces he’s stepping up a(nother) level, I’m all in!

The name on this one’s a neat allusion to one of the locking mechanisms – usually a single-barrelled thing couldn’t possibly be a side-by-side, but this one manages it.

The chassis is (very neatly!) constructed of plywood making it incredibly stable. It’s dressed up in some beautiful veneer and it appears to have three sections to it, with the top one having three aluminium rods peering out of it. There are a couple more bolts and rods on the sides and that’s about all you have to start off…

Finding the first tool isn’t too challenging and finding a use for it is also reasonably straight-forward. That may lead to another discovery or two but then you may find yourself wanting for a little while…

The next discovery is terrific because it really works against the puzzler on a couple of levels at the same time. Crack that one and you’re gifted the mother-load of bits and pieces which you must somehow use to defeat the final set of locks…

…and this is the part that had me scratching my head for months… not because the mechanism is finicky or things required “encouragement” – they do not – on both accounts! Doog’s even tried to be helpful with some of the breadcrumbs he’s sprinkled around – I was just thinking on altogether the wrong wavelength – and as I kept trying to do the wrong things, I found my way consistently barred… I even tried brute-forcing that part of the solve and failed abysmally.

I watched Rich blast through it and he tried to be helpful by telling me to trust Doog, but I couldn’t make enough sense of the breadcrumbs… and thus it remained until Louis solved it and said something differently which made me realise just how much I’d been overcomplicating things… and so yesterday, after having this box on my desk-of-shame for months, I took it out and worked through the solve properly… and it was glorious – the precision on the final locks is incredible.

Doog said he wanted to push his workmanship to the next level – I reckon job done mate! It’s sublime. (And I’m really sorry I overcomplicated it and it took me so long to finally solve it myself!)