Even Dia-BALL-icer

Since printing out a few sets of George’s Octaballs, I spotted a new design on his Etsy shop for a rather handsome variant – also called Octaball -  so I shopped a little, you know, to justify the postage across the pond and ended up getting a copy of George’s Flippe Ball (I should have got one of those ages ago!), a Frankenstar and a copy of his Maze Pennyhedron Puzzle which I really enjoyed playing with in the Design Competition. 

 

This Octaball is properly round and has a great Yin-Yang thing going on in the colouring of the pieces. It’s a variation of the basic Octaball 2, with the exterior expanded into a complete sphere. It retains the great little expansion and contraction feature of the original, although the shapes you’re looking for on the outside are a bit different – you can still play with expanding and contracting by pushing on the opposites sides.

Expand it fully and you’ve got the four strange shapes in two pairs to reassemble. This time it’s worth giving a little thought to the colouring so you get the full impact of the Yin-Yang-i-ness going properly.

While the pieces may have a little more material, it’s still a wonderfully slippery sucker to put together – you will be “blessing” George’s "creativity" when you’re struggling with this one too!

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While I’m on the topic of balls, George threw in an extra chocolate box to go with the Triple Chocolate Box set I bought from him a while back. He’s been working on the set and found a fourth box shape that’s been christened Hershey.

As with the previous challenges the object is to place all of the conjoined balls inside the box so that the lid shuts (easily!) – I’d really enjoyed playing with the first three – and was particularly impressed that all three appeared to require a different form of packing to get the pieces into the box…

This box doesn’t disappoint! 

I spent a while trying to establish what the likely packing arrangement between the different layers could be and then it took me quite a while to work out where the pieces needed to be to construct those layers…

If you already have George’s Triple Chocolate Box, be warned, there’s another candy bar in town. (Gill and I have volunteered to sample further chocolatey delights in the pursuit of any further boxes that require naming.)