Geneva

William Hu’s been designing interesting interlocking puzzles for a good few years now – his designs have often involved twists and turns of the sort that make BurrTools less useful than normal. About a month ago Eric produced 60-odd copies of Geneva and they didn’t last long. 

Geneva is a 4*4*4 almost cube – that’s not a spoiler – you can all count the cubies and see you’re always going to be a few short! It’s made up of ONLY FOUR pieces and it is decidedly non-trivial! 

My favourite sort of assembly puzzle – just a few pieces – you can convince yourself you know where all the pieces must go – and then you cannot find a way of getting them there. 

That’s pretty much the story with this one as well – although I will admit that I had a wobble in the middle of my solve where I began to doubt whether that was the only way to put these pieces together into an almost-cube. BurrTools merrily confirmed I was being an rrrs that was the only assembly so I went back to bashing my head against the desk. 

Knowing where the pieces must end up, and knowing who designed it and that it will invariably involve some rotations REALLY DOESN’T HELP. It is still a wonderful challenge… but the final realisation of how things need to go together and the inspired bit of choreography they perform along the way is an absolute delight – there’s a wonderful reward for persevering and finding just the right combinations to encourage the pieces to intertwine properly.

This is another excellent design from young master Hu!