Minima Tokyo aka Jammed Coin

I picked up a copy of this gorgeous puzzle from Tye at IPP in Tokyo… given that I’m a huge fan of Frederic’s Minima series, I was always going to be interested, but finding out that it had been made by the guys at Ars AEnigmae added an extra reason for getting hold of one… and it is a thoroughly beautiful object.

It’s clearly larger than Tye’s other Minima’s (is that “’s” redundant?) but appears to be based on the usual 2*2*3 voxel-space – and a quick peak in one of the holes shows a Japanese coin trapped inside one of said-voxels – and that pretty much determines the eventual size of the puzzle.

There’s an obvious bolt screwed into one side of the box and a few holes showing some of the cubies inside the box – albeit none of them quite as interesting as that split cubie with a coin in the centre of it. Nothing seems to move at this point although a gentle shake of the object suggests there’s a lot more going on inside than you might have assumed.

Given there’s pretty much nothing else to do at this point, you might as well unscrew the bolt and that releases a piece to slide out through one of the holes – trust me – that’s not a spoiler… Removing that piece frees up some space in the interior and allows the remaining pieces to shift around a little… and if you contrive to hang some of the bits out through the windows, you can even try something more adventurous with those pieces, but if you’re anything like me you’re going to get sick and tired of the fairly limited possibilities.

I spent a couple of months with this puzzle mocking me on my desk – I’d pick it up and run through the things I knew I could do – yup they all still worked perfectly, and then I’d experiment with all sorts of other things I could think of… generally with zero progress.

During my Christmas break I finally managed to get some traction on this puzzle and as soon as I did, my jaw dropped and I knew this was going to become a favourite. There was quite literally something magical going on and the progress was thick and fast from there even though there were some very surprising steps in the solution.

Somewhere in the middle of all this there’s a dramatic change of gear as you realise that your goal is shifting and you have a new challenge to focus on – those latter stages make for an excellent sequential discovery puzzle on their own.

I took a very long time to solve this one – and a huge chunk of that is down to the excellent craftsmanship from the guys at Ars AEnigmae – if anyone had any concerns that the boys might struggle to keep up to Eric’s insanely high standards, this puzzle will thoroughly banish those concerns – they’re doing him proud!

If you can’t find a copy to buy (I think Tye sold out pretty quickly!), find one to borrow from a friend – it is excellent!