'Just' a couple o’ 6-piece burrs

I’ve recently come across a couple of rather interesting, if not innocuous-looking six-piece burrs. 

The first is a copy of Bill Cutler’s L5 Notchable Burr. One of my puzzling buddies recently decided to slim down his collection a bit and spend the proceeds on some camera equipment – and it would have been rude not to support his new venture, so I bought a few puzzles from him, including this one. 

Giving credit where credit is due, Bill’s website lists this design as being “Discovered by computer program in 1987” – coyly avoiding to mention the fact that he happened to have written the program to explore the possibilities and is the guy who’d been studying these burrs in more depth than anyone else around – so I reckon we can all agree that this is Bill’s design, so what if he used some of the newer tools available to designers. 

As the name suggests, it’s a level 5 burr (i.e. minimum of five moves to remove the first piece) consisting of only notchable pieces (i.e. pieces that can be cut simply by taking notches out of a stick) and it has a unique solution – in fact, it isn’t possible to construct a burr from notchable pieces to give a higher level solution – but there are other notchable designs with the same level... 

This one was made by Jerry McFarland and one of the mahogany pieces has his customary JM stamp on it ... along with the digits ‘71’ – which confuses me as I don’t think it refers to the design, and it can’t be when it was made... any thoughts?

It’s a fun little burr to play with - in spite of it ‘only’ having a level 5 solution, assembling it is a pretty decent challenge, and taking it apart involves a good degree of progressively opening it up more and more before the first piece will emerge – really interesting little burr – and a good spot among the thousands that Bill’s analysis must have thrown up.

The second burr came to me by a slightly more circuitous route – all-round Burr-wizard Guillaume Largounez (yip, the same guy who facilitated those monster burrs!) got in touch a little while back and asked if I was interested in a copy of Abad’s Level 9 burr. 

As it wasn’t a name that I recognised, I did a little surfing and had a look at the pieces laid out on Ishino’s web-site – and one look at the pieces will show you why it’s now a well-known design ... a point that Guillaume made in his email – those pieces are a serious challenge to manufacture! Comparing these pieces to the notchable ones above is like comparing chalk and cheese – a couple of these pieces require all sorts of wood-working shenanigans to get a square corner in there. 

Guillaume had convinced Maurice Vigouroux (yip, him again) to make up a few of these in Satin Bloodwood and after a small dent hit my bank account, one of them duly headed in my direction.

This is a mean little burr... assembled on the shelf it looks like any other standard six-piece burr – but start playing with it and it gets your attention rather quickly – there’s a lot you can do with these pieces, and a few blind alleys to get lost down. The solution appears to consist of a couple of stages where you start by opening things up a bit, then move a piece or two ‘out of the way’ before opening it up some more and eventually, nine moves in, the first piece comes free – at that point you won’t be surprised that it pretty much crumbles in your hands when you see quite how far apart all the bits are at that stage. 

A really interesting burr designed by Rafael Guarinos Abad and expertly made by Maurice Vigouroux – very chuffed to have one of those in my collection – a really unusual little guy.

Nemesis: Monster Packing Puzzles and Big Burrs

Recently I’ve bought a few puzzles that I never expect to solve. 

Weirdo!

That’s probably fair, but hear me out…

The first one is a packing puzzle that came from a recent auction – it’s a copy of Parcel Post made by John Devost in June 2008. It was sitting there looking rather unloved with nobody bidding on it, so I bought it. It’s a really beautiful piece of work – the pieces are made from walnut and the tray is made in padauk with maple slipfeathers. The tolerances between the pieces when they’re packed in the tray properly are incredibly fine – there is virtually no wiggle room at all, yet the pieces literally just drop into place – perfect!

The Parcel Post design has been around for ages (one source quotes “early 1900’s”), although the mists of time appear to have obscured the original designer’s name. The puzzle contains eighteen rectangular pieces to be placed inside a shallow tray. Pretty soon after you start playing with this puzzle, you’ll work out that there will be three layers of pieces in the solution, but that unless some of the pieces are arranged vertically across layers, you’re not going to get very far … and that little twist makes this an absolute killer puzzle in my books. I’ve spent a fair amount of time fiddling around with it and it has beaten me every time. There are too many pieces that could fit vertically and too many ways of almost making up three layers of bits with suitable gaps in them for the vertical pieces – I’m satisfied that I’m beaten, but it looks great in the collection, so it’s going to stay.

So that’s my first nemesis… (By the way, what is the plural of nemesis?) 

The other two puzzles that are likely to defeat me forever are fairly recent acquisitions. They are Big Burrs by literally any definition – first off, they are eighteen-piece burrs, the smaller of the two has pieces that are 12 centimetres long and the larger’s pieces are 15 centimetres in length. They’re called Tiros and Lange Wapper 14 respectively – both creations of Alfons Eyckmans’ fertile mind – although these are both variants of the original design with variations added by Guillaume Largounez to eliminate the alternative assemblies. The puzzles were made by Maurice Vigouroux and they came via a slightly circuitous route via Guillaume through my puzzling mate Chris – the Puzzle-Place guy. They are pretty unique as these burrs aren’t often manufactured (they present a couple of manufacturing challenges like blind corners and weak elbows that a lot of folks might avoid – but Maurice handles them with apparent ease – and some hand-chiselling and dowel reinforcement if you’re interested). They’re beautifully finished, including some decorative finishing around the edges of the pieces so that when properly assembled, the bevelling matches – and provides a unique solution – nice touch Guillaume! Take a look at Chris’ ‘special’ copy over here – it is simply gorgeous! 

The ‘easier’ of the two, Lange Wapper 14 was shipped disassembled as an assembly challenge – chance would be a fine thing! The complete solution requires 70 moves – removing the first piece from a completed burr takes 14 moves, and the next two pieces take another 21 and 15 moves respectively – now can you see why I think it’s a monster?! “Assembly challenge” may be a little bit of an understatement!

Tiros

Tiros, mercifully was shipped assembled (and it may well stay largely that way forever! – Nah, at some point I’m going to take it apart just so that I can say I have!). This particular monster requires 150 (!!) moves to release the first piece(!) and I think it currently holds the record for burr level on a standard 18-piece burr – a further 36 moves dispatch the remaining pieces to a pile on the desk.

These burrs are lovely, and given their pedigree, I’m very chuffed to have been able to add them to the pile o’ puzzles I try hard not to call a “collection”. But do I stand a hope in heck in of ever working out how to take them apart and put them together again (without the use of Master Röver’s software) – I very much doubt it …

So there you are, three of my current nemeses, or nemesi if you prefer, to answer my own question…

Daedalus

Daedalus was one of three puzzles that Gregory Benedetti entered in this year’s Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Contest at IPP31 in Berlin. His Ambigram Burr was one of the top ten vote winners that didn’t manage to win a prize and his S in Bloom looks like an interesting packing puzzle to pop on the Shapeways wish list, but Daedalus was the one that looked most interesting to me. 

[Keeping an eye on the Puzzle Design Contest website just after the competition is finished is a great way to find out where you can get hold of the puzzles entered in the contest – Top Tip!]

Closed

After the competition, the entry for the Daedalus was updated to mention that about 10 copies were available in marblewood and that about 20 further copies would be available from Gregory in other assorted hardwoods. One of my puzzling mates, Chris, had been in touch with Gregory and lined one up for himself and mentioned it to me as Gregory was about to ship one to Chris and the rest to John Devost to sell on Puzzle Paradise. With a little help from Chris, I managed to snaffle one for myself in the process and he duly brought it around at MPP4 for me – thanks mate!

The marblewood versions all got taken pretty quickly, so I had a selection of hardwoods to choose from, some of which I’d never heard of before – a little time on Google and glancing through the Hobbit House had me settling on a Wakapu cube – and rather handsome (and heavy!) it is too. 

The cube comes with a 52-page booklet, most of which is devoted to a series of wire-frame drawings showing the disassembly / assembly process. It also happens to note that the puzzle was made by Maurice Vigouroux – a rather sought-after craftsman – BONUS!

Opening

In its fully closed form, the puzzle hides all of its secrets rather well – there is literally no clue to the sheer pandemonium hiding inside in wait for an unwary puzzler. One of the pics on the Contest website shows the Daedalus with a single piece removed – and it has teeth! From that picture you can surmise that the pieces are constrained by a series of pins and channels, but even that doesn’t really prepare you for the challenge. 

Now in the past I’ve been caught out by Gregory’s Youtube channel name “Rotations Required” not in fact coming into play [on Stand Py Me] – however this time he’d given plenty of warning on the puzzle forums that Daedalus required rotations – plenty of them – ah well, sayonara Burr Tools on this one.

The day after MPP4 I had a pretty good go at solving Daedalus and ended up spending an hour and a half on getting it apart – now just to remind you, this is effectively a 3*3*3 cube that breaks down into 8 pieces – but those pins and those channels seriously manage to get in the way of taking this thing apart – and in fact putting it back together. 

From the very beginning there are a couple of things you can do to enable the cube to grow arms and legs, albeit in rather strange directions! Having given yourself some space, you can then start manipulating things around and about – and plenty of this involves rotating things in various directions ... and while you’re in there, you’ll discover that there’s a lot that you can do that isn’t in any way helpful as Gregory has rather kindly given you several blind alleys to explore in there!

...all the bits...

It must have taken the best part of an hour to release the very first piece, a single little block, albeit one with teeth! Progressing toward the next piece seemed to take me backwards for a while and it remains a non-trivial disassembly until virtually the last few pieces are ready to come out. 

This is the sort of puzzle that you can settle down with for a few hours and be challenged and entertained in equal measures – this is not a puzzle to pick up and expect to solve in five or ten minutes...

I’m way too much of a wimp to try and reassemble this brute without the instructions, although my mate Chris isn’t, and has – but he’s much better at these things than I am!    

Reassembly, even with the (disassembly) instructions is tricky because you need to work out which pieces are going where and the drawings don’t always make that clear unless you flick backwards and forwards a bit ... and now, having done it a few times, I’m getting used to the high level stages involved, but I still find it catches me out, like the third or fourth move from the end it’s just far too tempting to bang one of the pieces all the way home, effectively blocking one of the remaining pieces from being closed up properly ... this is a great puzzle.  I like it. I like it a lot!