Three more Fuller gems…

Eric Fuller offers some stunning dinky little puzzles from time to time. Made from laser-cut acrylic and the little bits of wood that would otherwise get thrown out, they generally go for less than $20 but come with all of the accuracy and superb finish that you’d expect from Eric’s bigger puzzles. I’m a big fan of them, although I know not everyone shares my enthusiasm for them. 

In the last round of Cubic Dissection offerings there were three of these little guys and I couldn’t resist picking them up – especially since they cost about the same as one of the other puzzles on offer. 

Vortex is a deceptively simple-looking little guy. 4 little C-shaped pieces are trapped in a single sheet of acrylic in a vertex-y shape. Designed by Chi-Ren Chen, its official name on Ishino’s site is 4C Vortex. A couple of sliding moves present themselves early on and you can make yourself a bit of space to get the pieces moving around… for move around they must! The first piece requires 21 moves to release it, and you’ll need another 13 moves to get the remaining pieces free…

Oh, and if you’re guessing that there are probably rotations involved, you won’t be disappointed – there are plenty!

Once you got the pieces out, working out how to get them back in should keep you “amused” for a while – once you start putting the pieces into the frame you quickly run out of space to manoeuvre the pieces in there and it’s not hard to see why you need those 21 moves from getting the last piece into the frame until they’re all lined up and interlocking properly. 

Carbo Cube is a neat little cube made up of 4 burr pieces in checkerboard colouring trapped inside a pair of clear acrylic plates around their waists. Designed by Donald Osselaer, it has a nice balance of dead-ends to get lost in and interesting moves. 

Getting the two plates to move the way you want them to can sometimes be a fit fiddly, especially when the burr-pieces have been moved and you’re a bit ham-fisted like I am…

Navigate your way past the dead-ends and you’ll find that this puzzle isn’t as tough as you might have thought it will be, but there is an unexpected little way of making some extra space in there to get things moving a bit – very cute. 

Gaia comes from prolific Turkish puzzle designer Yavuz Demirhan – four burr-pieces are trapped in a combination of two acrylic plates and a frame that allows the plates to slide at right angles to one another. 

Right from the get-go there’s a lot going on – plenty of movement to explore, although most of it’s not all that useful. In fact you can get two of the pieces almost all the way out in just a couple of moves – yet the actual solution requires a full 11 moves to release the first piece…

Decent little challenge in a pocket-friendly size, with all Eric’s usual quality. 

Bonus Puzzle – Eric recently started selling a budget range of “Raleigh Puzzles” aimed chiefly at new collectors who weren’t necessarily after his high-end limited edition puzzles. They’re significantly cheaper than the limited edition puzzles, but seem to be made of the same woods and while they may not be oiled or waxed like his other puzzles, the fit on them is second to none… so I’ve bought a few of them and found them to be absolutely brilliant.

One really stood out though – Ray Stanton / Akio Yamamoto’s Slideways burr is an absolute classic. Three identical pieces slide together in a co-ordinate motion to form the classic three-piece burr shape. The original was machined in aluminium and it’s gorgeous, although it can tend to suffer from spontaneous disassembly issues…

Eric’s wooden version has no such trouble – and while it might not end up being quite a “collectable” as the aluminium original – the fit of the pieces is astonishing and the friction between them is more than enough to hold them together until you apply pressure in the right directions, at the same time. 

An excellent acquisition – you cannot go wrong with an Eric Fuller precision-made puzzle for $15! 

I highly recommend Eric’s range of Raleigh Puzzles.

More Dvořák Goodness

Next up in my latest order from Jakub Dvořák is a set of three cubes that share a common theme again - two of them from the fertile mind of Yavuz Demirhan and the third from Japanese puzzle designing legend Osanori Yamamoto. All three target a cube shape and each has three burr pieces to be inserted into a holey cube frame ... which almost makes it sound like they should be pretty similar - except they ain't!

The first is called Estergon and was added to Ishino's website back in 2011. It's a 5*5*5 unit cube with three identical (save for colouring) "almost skeleton" burr pieces. Each of the burr pieces is offset into a corner of the cube faces, so you'll realise that the order / combination of the movements is going to be critical since the pieces are going to interact inside the cube. 

When you start playing with this puzzle, and indeed the other two in this post, there's a lot of movement available - it just all seems to be pretty useless! In fact if you push the burr bits out to their extremities, they can almost dangle precariously, mocking you but steadfastly not coming out!

A more methodical approach will identify a couple of possibly less expected moves that then allow you to develop some space, and ultimately allow pieces to pass one another inside the cube and then let the first piece out in a mere seven moves ... albeit seven moves that eluded me for absolute ages!

Estergon 2 ramps things up a bit by moving up to a 6*6*6 cube and giving the ends of the three skeleton burr pieces a 3*3 head. That little "improvement " brings some interesting positions for the internal sticks and makes it a whole lot harder. Given the increased size of the burr bits' heads, this one's even more floppy when you start pulling the three burr pieces out, and yet you won't be able to get past the other pieces inside there ... it will certainly tease you, but it won't give its secrets away without a fight...

This one also took me an inordinate amount of time to work out - there are some unusual little moves and you're pretty spoilt for choice in terms of what to do along the way, so there is plenty of opportunity to wander down a blind alley along the way - or that's my excuse at least!

[A little word on the craftsmanship here: Jakub made these two at the same time and I guess he knew folks would be getting them together, seeing as how they're one and two of a set... so he resized the sticks on Estergon so that the cube was the same size even though it's a 5*5*5 cube next to Estergon 2 which is a 6*6*6 ... nice touch!] 

Castle Hole by Osanori Yamamoto shares some similarities with Estergon in that it's a 5*5*5 cube with three simple burr pieces running through it, but whereas Estergon has solid sides in its target state, Castle Hole has three faces with three missing cubies on each... and those little holes make all the difference. 

 

Being "just" a 5*5*5 cube, the pieces don't tend to dangle around quite as much as they do with Estergon 2, and working out where you can move the pieces using those extra little holes will yet again provide plenty of blind alleys to wander aimlessly around - ask me about them, I suspect I explored them all along the way! 

In the end, there's a single, rather elegant solution to freeing up just enough space to remove the first piece in 11 moves...  a great little puzzle - really like the wood on this one.

Four from Yavuz Demirhan

It feels like ages since I sat down to write about puzzles... not just because there have been a bunch of posts about strange geometric constructions, but because I've been swapping out my old PC for a new one and that invariably ends up swallowing several hours / days / weeks until I've got things back the way I want them ... anyhoo - as of yesterday, I think that little piece of joy is now behind me... so back to the puzzles!!

Ali, one of my puzzling partners in crime recently dropped me an email passing on an offer of some new puzzles from Jakub Dvořák at the New Pelikan Workshop. The email listed a bunch of puzzles from Yavuz Demirhan and Osanori Yamamoto and the accompanying pictures looked pretty good, but to be honest, the prices listed made them just simply too hard to pass up ... so I felt a little guilty when I went back to Ali and asked if he could add one of each onto his order - until I discovered that that was exactly what he and Nigel had done as well... and so the three of us ended up ordering a set of Jakub's latest puzzles each. 

They duly arrived a little over a week later and I was well and truly gob-smacked at the quality of these puzzles that had effectively cost me an average of fifteen quid each - absolutely fantastic. 

The first four puzzles are all designs from Yavuz Demirhan and you'll see that they share a common family theme - they all consist of fixed frames with a set of burr pieces to be inserted / removed from the frames. Each has a unique solution and as you might expect, as the number of pieces rises, the level of the solution rises with it...

 

Pylon 2P2C is the simplest of the group having two burr pieces (2P) trapped between two columns (2C) ... it looks like there's a fair amount of open space between the columns, but the protrusion in the frames severely cuts down what you can do with the pieces... that said, there are a few things you can do with the pieces, and a little experimentation will take you down the pathway to the level nine solution and removal of the first piece ... and then another nine moves will release the other piece. It's a nice little puzzle that shouldn't hold up a seasoned puzzler for more than a couple of minutes. 

Columnata 2P3C ups the ante a little by throwing three columns into the mix along with two skeleton burr pieces. Adding the third column, even though it only has a single internal protrusion, takes this up to level 12. 

 

Although it's not as straight-forward as Pylon 2P2C, a little experimentation will show you what can be done, and how the pieces might be able to get past one another and then ultimately out of the frame - again, this one should be accessible for most...

Columnata 3P2C makes things a lot more "interesting" with several protrusions inside the two columns and a lot more wood in the three burr pieces - so instead of dealing with simple skeleton pieces, they now carry a lot of their own restrictions with them... and that brings a lot less freedom to the equation. Experimentation will show you where the main problems are going to come from but not going to show you a way out very quickly ... this puzzle takes 19 moves to release the first piece, after all. 

After a little playing around and trying to find an exit, I switched tack and rather than trying to find an exit that worked, experimented with swapping pieces around, and then trying to find an exit ... and that strategy ended up paying dividends ... this is a really neat little puzzle...

The last in this set is called Guillotine - it looks a bit like Columnata 3P2C, except there's an extra board inserted between the two columns ... and that board is free to ride up and down in the tracks - much like a Guillotine , only slightly less terminal. 

The burr pieces on Guillotine are once again skeleton pieces, but the combination of the frames with a few interesting protrusions and the moving board with not a lot of extra holes in it makes for a really interesting puzzle. 

Even though this one "only" has a level 18 solution, it's easily my favourite in the set. The combination of the board moving in two axes while the burr pieces are "free" to move in three axes, albeit trapped by the fixed frame, makes this a great puzzle to get to grips with.

Four fantastic little puzzles from Jakub and the guys at the New Pelikan Workshop - tremendous quality puzzles and fantastic value for money... can you tell I'm a big fan?