5L Bin

If you like n-ary puzzles, you’ll love fiddling with this one… I’d almost hesitate to call it a puzzle, once get the hang of its n-ary-ness it is very much a satisfying fidget toy.

Eric has done a fantastic job of bringing Goh Pit Khiam's design to life through a walnut bin and some well-machined aluminium L’s. (Yes, that is the correct number of i's in there.) The notching on the L’s enforces a strict set of sequential moves to either insert or remove a piece.

It’s a handy size for sittin’ and fiddlin’ and I’ve spent quite a while just going forwards and backwards through the gears, releasing the first piece and then getting everything back inside the bin again. (Once you release the first piece, they can all be removed…)

It makes for a great executive toy (we’re all executives in our own little worlds, right?) and really looks the part thanks to Eric’s awesome quality.

…and if you want an extra little twist, try a suggestion from the Discord folks: running through the sequence holding the bin with one hand and using only gravity to move the pieces – it’s interesting to compare the feel of doing that with the usual two-handed process of pushing the pieces around inside the bin – of course you’re effectively doing the same thing but you wouldn’t know it!

Another lovely little n-ary puzzle for the hoard! (...and as I write this they're still available over here!)

Merry-go-round

If you liked Power Tower from Goh Pit Khiam and Jack Krijnen, then you’re going to love Merry-go-round from the same duo…

A couple of months ago I had an email arrive in my inbox from Jack with a picture of a Merry-go-round and an invitation to express an interest – now, dear reader, this will probably surprise you, but I expressed a lot of interest, immediately… in the name of research, of course. 

Jack duly came back and asked me what combination of pieces I wanted – apparently there isn’t a standard set, you get to make it up as you please… so we traded a few emails and he pointed out the folly of some of my ways and made some really helpful suggestions, and a few weeks later a neat little box of bits arrived in Barnt Green. 

Now, when you’re playing, Merry-go-round looks like a slimmed down version of the Power Tower, with a square central post and bumpy arms radiating outward – the post forces the arms to interact and depending on the number of bumps they have, they’ll produce binary, ternary, quaternary etc. movements. This design allows combinations of pretty much any n-ary-ness (see what I did there?) with as many arms as you like, up to the natural maximum for each post, of course…  

The top arm is a binary slider and then each arm below it can have any selected n-ary-ness – each successive arm can move one space when the arm above it has moved from one end to the other… repeat until done. 

Given my selection of arm lengths, Jack had suggested a pair of central posts with 4 and 6 slots respectively and I’m rather glad he did! (You’ll work out why later…) My sets of sticks came in two lengths and a selection of -aries. The shorter sticks start at ternary and work up to quinary – and there’s enough of those to fill the taller post (with the binary stick) and then there’s the longer set of sticks… that go from senary to septenary and novenary (or 6-, 7- and 9-ary if, like me, you needed to look that up!).  I know, that was a little silly of me…

Sometime before Christmas I duly loaded them up and set about assembling them – cunningly using the longer sticks in the short 4-slot post (Thanks Jack!) – significantly reducing the number of moves to complete the solutions…

After a few plays with them, and mixing and matching the bases to confuse myself (quite successfully!), I set about modelling them in BurrTools… and I have now established that with my sticks I can create puzzles using the 4-slot post with from as low as 22 moves (using some of the pieces backwards!), up to 1318 moves(!). The 6-slot post raises that to a rather heady 48948 – I am eternally grateful for Jack talking me into getting the 4-slot post, or else those longer sticks would hardly ever see any action at all…

Definitely the go-to-puzzle if you need a few hours (or more!) of n-ary therapy!

Power Tower

This rather interesting puzzle first appeared at this year’s Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition. Designed jointly by Goh Pit Khiam and Jack Krijnen, the competition entry had four interfering sliders to produce a new incarnation of n-ary puzzle. The rounding across one of the corners produces a great lump of puzzle that fits easily in the hands and makes operating the sliders quite comfortable. 

Sadly I didn’t get to spend much time in the competition room at IPP34 and apart from a cursory fiddle, didn’t get to enjoy this puzzle at all … so when Jack mentioned he’d made a couple of copies I registered my strong interest and managed to collect a copy from him at DCD in October… only the new version is a serious development on the competition entry – the International Space Station compared to a Sputnik, so to speak. 

At first glance it looks as though Jack’s just given it a couple of extra sliders, which would have been nice on its own… but he’s gone and done a lot more than that! He’s introduced an optional magnetic stageblocker piece that can be used to block off one of the last three channels – pop this piece in place and you can select to have either three, four, five or six sliders in play… I don’t need to tell you what that means for move counts! 

Again, that little addition would have been pretty darn nifty! 

But wait, there’s more!

The puzzle arrives in a neat little wooden box to keep the main part and all the “spare” sliders together so you don’t lose them… which would be a little over the top if the only extra sliders were the few you weren’t using out of the set of six sliders you might expect… but here’s the real kicker! Jack supplied two sets of slider pieces – one binary and one ternary set… so you can choose to set it up as a binary or a ternary puzzle. [In fact Goetz has a copy with a quaternary set as well!]

…now all of that would make this a worthwhile puzzle, but the last little touch is what makes this thing awesome for me – the way they’ve designed the sliders, ANY combination of sliders can be used… so you’re not limited to having “just” a binary set or a ternary set – you can mix and match them in any combination… so you can choose a puzzle from 3 up to 6 sliders, any of which can be either binary or ternary … trust me, even if you know all of this, getting an unknown set-up courtesy of a fellow puzzler with a rogue slider thrown in there for good measure can really disrupt any sort of rhythm you might develop when trying to solve it. (Thanks Ali!)

To give it its full name, this is the mixed base, variable stage Power Tower. It is a great idea that’s been brilliantly developed to the limit to provide a super little tormentor’s puzzler’s kit for experimenting with n-ary puzzles. It’ll give you 120 different configurations and anything from 11 to 727 moves.

It goes without saying that Jack’s handiwork is simply superb, yet again, and he’s produced a puzzle that’s an absolute delight to fiddle with. 

Thanks Jack and congrats to you and Pit Khiam on the design – elegant and clever!

...and if you'd like to read more - there's a great article in the latest edition of CFF from Pit Khiam on The Design of N-ary Mechanical Puzzles... which features the development of the Power Tower.