I reckon this one deserves a specific shout-out given just
how innovative it is… spoiler alert: there might be a little repetition of some
of my gushy praise from the last MPP write-up! You’ve been warned!
Adin has been designing puzzles for several years – he’s
turned his hand to a wide variety of puzzles, from symmetry puzzles (one of which
was included in my IPP34 exchange puzzle in London) to burrs (including Amulet,
which attracted Eric’s attention and ended up in a 2017 Cubic Dissection release). While
he’s been a little quieter on the puzzle scene over the past few years while he
and Sophie have been looking after little Oren, it’s clear the bug hasn’t left
him!
He'd been along to one or two MPP again recently and then a
few months ago he started asking innocent questions about 3D printers because he’d
had an idea for a puzzle that would work a lot better in 3D printing than in
wood – bear with me! I know that sounds like blasphemy…
He talked to a few of us (mainly Steve!) and the inevitable result
was that when a suitably discounted offer was open, he bought himself a Bambu
printer… and I think it’s fair to say that he was pretty darn delighted with
just how easy these things are to use these days – gone are the days of
fettling and tuning for hours to get a successful print every n’th attempt –
they really do just work now!
A couple of weeks later he was posting pictures of a weird
looking experiment with a burr sticking out of a base at a pretty wonky angle –
inviting puzzlers Excalibur-like to “Take me out if you dare!”. Dubbed “Burr.exe
ERROR” it looks like some sort of an AI image experiment gone wrong… but here
it was in real life…
I grabbed a copy from him at MPP and have to say he’s done
an excellent job – for a bloke who only printed his first thing a month or two
earlier – this is a great print of an excellent design… the text on the base is
playfully offset – right off the base – and adds to the idea that something has
gone horribly wrong in the process – to the point that you might prefer to
reboot the universe (something that might be a grand idea with some of the
weird stuff happening around the planet at the moment!).
The pale blue six-piece burr is well and truly trapped in
the base – it’s clear what you need to do, and the base helpfully tells you
this is (only!) a level 9 burr… and it’s a really great solve – it’s easy
enough to find something that moves, and then some more, but there’s a
wonderful little pause in the middle that catches a lot of folks out – in spite
of it only being 9 moves to remove the first piece – it’s anything but trivial.
The base, and the angling of the burr is genius – it stops a
whole heap of moves that would render the puzzle trivial and then he’s done
some clever stuff inside there to make things a bit more interesting.
Sure you could describe this as just a burr in a simple cage that
applies a few restrictions, but that’s missing the point. This is a burr that’s
sunk into a base plate and made a terrific puzzle – who doesn’t love a little entropy
in a puzzle design?
Take all the pieces out and you understand why certain
things are blocked and just why the angle of the wonk is exactly what it is…
Putting it back together is probably the simpler of the
steps because you know where things are, but it will still exercise the little
grey cells a little.
I just really love the idea of this puzzle – and the actual
mechanics / movement are pretty darn good as well… Adin is well and truly back
on the puzzle-scene – welcome back, mate! We’ve missed you. :-)
