Z-Shift (Peter Hajek)

Some of you may know that another of the relatively regular Midlands Puzzle Parties (MPPs) has just passed by, and I'm confident in saying that a great time was had by everyone there.

One of the other attendees and fellow puzzlers who I met there was Peter Hajek, who I had met several times previously on my recent travels through the puzzle world. With him he brought a handful of very interesting and clever puzzles, several of his own design. This is one such puzzle that Peter brought with him, and that I was lucky enough to be able to get a copy of for myself.

This puzzle is called 'Z-Shift', and it is quite unlike any other puzzle that I have encountered thus far. It was designed by Peter as his exchange puzzle for IPP31 last year in Berlin, and manufactured by Buttonius Puzzles & Plastics.

It looks like a simple 2D assembly type puzzle, but what really makes it interesting are the varying levels of difficulty that can be solved using the same 7 pieces in different combinations. Despite the seven pieces there are only two different piece types, as the four larger pieces are identical, as are the three smaller ones.

The larger 'Z' pieces are made up of two layers of acrylic that have been glued together. Both sides of the piece are identical in shape, but one side is blue while the other is red. Due to the opposing nature of the 'Z' shape both layers can be seen at the same time from either side. The smaller pieces are only single layered and in just the one colour.

As you might be able to see from the picture here, there are a total of five puzzles that can be solved using a specified number of pieces, the first of which is to make a large red square and a small blue square using only the four larger identical pieces. This takes a bit of perspective to be solved as it could be quite easy to get the wrong idea with what to do with the pieces. But within a few minutes most puzzlers should be able to solve it. As the puzzle starts off easier it encourages people to try and solve the other problems as well, I've found that this is actually a very good puzzle to give to 'first time' puzzlers to try out as it holds interest very well.

Each of the conundrums on the card requires a different approach to be solved. Just because you solved the first one doesn't mean that you will immediately know how to approach the others. As an example; the conundrums lettered A and B are particularly clever and may require some serious 'out of the box' thinking to find the correct solution.

All in all a very fun little puzzle that I thoroughly enjoy. And the opinions of others that I have given it to seem to confirm my thoughts as well! I've taken to carrying it around and springing it on any person who dares to look bored in my vicinity.

Square Dance (Tom Jolly)

This is another of Tom Jolly's designs that has been made in superb quality by Eric Fuller, and was in his latest batch of puzzles. I didn't think it was much to look at when I first saw the photos, but after playing with it I couldn't have been more wrong.

It looks a little like a packing puzzle, and in a way it is, but once you start playing with it you'll realise pretty quickly that it is much more intricate than what you may first expect.

Eric made the frame either out of Padauk or Bubinga, but in both versions the pieces are made from Holly. This gives a really nice offset between the frame and the pieces. All of the pieces are given a  bevelling on their outer edges as well, which is also a nice touch. The version that you can see here is with the Padauk frame, and only 40 of these puzzles (Padauk and Bubinga) were made for sale, each signed and dated by the manufacturer.

The puzzle starts when you remove the first piece, which is a single block held in place by a pair of magnets. I thought this was a particularly nice touch as the whole thing holds its shape in the solved position very nicely. It also has Eric's signature and date of manufacture written on.

Once the first piece is out the other pieces have to be removed by sliding movements within the frame. Each piece is made up of three layers. The top and bottom layers are perfect squares (as can be seen in the picture), but the middle layer of each piece is what makes this puzzle so interesting. The irregular tabs and slots on each piece make sure that you have to perform linear sliding moves in order to release any further pieces. In fact after popping the first cube out of the frame it will take you another eight moves to release the next one! To make things even more tricky, the frame is not entirely grooved all of the way around on the inner edge, so sometimes pieces may not move as far along as expected.

After a bit of analysis using BurrTools it turns out that this puzzle has two slightly different solutions; one level 30 (1.8.5.3.2.3.3.2.3) and one level 31 (1.8.5.3.4.2.2.3.3). The level is denoted by the total number of moves needed to solve the puzzle, and the number sequences show how many moves each piece requires for it to be removed. The first number is one, because that first cube just pops out from its magnetic catch, then you need to do eight more moves to get the next out, five for the next etc. The second piece comes out in a very clever way as well, not quite how I imagined it would.

Now as far as difficulty goes I would say that Square Dance is more than a little challenging. In fact I would say that it is a lot challenging! As of writing this I am yet to solve it 'properly', and I have given it a good few hours of my time so far. But I am still very much enjoying it and am very much determined to finish it! The design is original enough to hold my interest, and the pieces are not at all boring to mess around with.

This has to be one of my absolute favourite designs by Tom Jolly thus far. I really hope that the collaboration between Tom and Eric continues, because by looking at the puzzles they've been putting out recently they really can't go far wrong.

My Little 3-Card Burr Saga

Quite a while ago now I was sent a copy of George Miller's 3-Card Burr as a gift from Wil Strijbos. I had an idea of how it went together as I had seen a few copies in other people's collections in the past, however I also knew that it had a rather interesting quirk to it. Once the puzzle has been assembled into it's final burr state it will not be able to come apart again without the cards being destroyed in the process.

Scott Elliott phrased the process involved much more eloquently than I would've in a comment on his blog, so I'll just add it here:

"The one-way feature elegantly balances topology against the limitations of the cards' material properties. You must put the cards under a great deal of stress to assemble the puzzle, but the cards work together to keep that stress under control until you reach a fully-assembled equilibrium. Once it's assembled you can't go back because neighboring cards resist the movement instead of assisting it; the force required to overcome the resistance would exceed the material strength of the cards."

I was worried that there could be a real chance that I could screw up the assembly of this puzzle, and as such destroy it completely. So with this in mind I did something which even I consider to be very sad; I decided to keep the puzzle unsolved until I worked up the courage to put it together.

3-Card Burr DIY Attempt

Because I really wanted to know if I could assemble the puzzle, I asked fellow blogger Allard if he would mind sending me a rough diagram of the cuts needed  so that I could make a copy for myself that I wouldn't mind if I screwed up a few times. He kindly obliged and thus my DIY attempt at the 3-Card Burr was born!
It was made from a cheap set of plastic playing cards that I had lying around. All it took was a few vague guessed at measurements, some pen lines and a scalpel and the job was done. The fit -to put it nicely- is not amazing, but it does work! And for me that was the main thing.

Quite some time passed from this point, and I was content that I had sort of solved this puzzle with my DIY attempt, and this negated the fact that I owned a perfectly solvable puzzle that was still in it's original packaging. During this time I was entering into a rather unusual puzzle exchange with Scott Elliott for a copy of a puzzle that he owned but wasn't particularly attached to (more on that later).

Now I say that this was a rather unusual puzzle exchange because neither myself nor Scott had properly exchanged a puzzle before, so this was new territory for both of us. Somewhere along the line I had mentioned to Scott that I owned an unsolved copy of the 3-Card Burr, and he saw this for the shame that it was. So to add an interesting twist to our puzzle exchange he imposed an 'unconventional stipulation' on my 3-Card Burr. As part of this exchange I was required to properly assemble my copy of this puzzle!

3-Card Burr PVC Practice Copies

Although Scott had put forward this unconventional stipulation, he is not a cruel person. To compensate for this unusual condition (not that he had to of course) he very kindly said that he would send me a couple of PVC samples to practise on that he would make up using his awesome 3D printer. These PVC copies could stand a little bit more force than the card version, so they would be perfect for me to practice on before putting together the real thing. I put these together using the same method I applied to my DIY version, and they went together no problem. I even took them apart again, which is something that cannot be done with the card version, showing that there is indeed more 'give' in the PVC.

Now that the warm up was complete I had no real excuse to hold back any more. I unwrapped George Miller's 3-Card Burr from it's shrink wrap packet and proceeded to put it together.

George Miller's 3-Card Burr

I had a bit of a scare during the assembly process when one of the cards got caught up and had begun to bend a little bit too much, but luckily this was easily corrected with a bit of gentle prying. The tolerances were so tight that I have no problem believing that this puzzle will never be able to come apart again, but now that I have it together I'm not bothered by that in the slightest.

Scott was right, you really do have to put this together and see it for yourself to really appreciate it, and I'm actually very glad that he decided to bring this unconventional stipulation into our already unconventional puzzle exchange.

And here they all are together, my little 3-Card Burr family:

My 3-Card Burr Family

A big thanks to Scott for pushing me into eventually doing the right thing. And also to Allard for his help in making my DIY attempt possible.

V-Cube 7 - Illusion

I solved my first 'twisty' puzzle!!! And no, I'm not counting the time when I pried apart my childhood Rubik's Cube.

Okay, so that may not be a very big deal to many of you, but I've always had huge problems whenever it comes to solving two particular types of puzzles. One half of those are puzzles of the wire 'disentanglement' variety, and the others are of the 'twisty' variety.

Recently I came across a range of puzzles by the Greek twisty puzzle manufacturer V-Cubes (or Verdes Innovations if you prefer). These were twisty cubes of the 7x7x7 variety as opposed to the Rubik's Cube 3x3x3, but were only composed of two colours. The puzzles in this series are called V-Cube 7 - Illusion, and are considered to be a good starting point for anyone looking to get into twisty puzzles, like me! Not that I need to get into any other puzzle varieties mind you...it just sort of happened this way.

Just by looking at the picture it doesn't actually look as though the cube can be scrambled as each side is perfectly identical. However one side has a reverse checker-board pattern, and this is the side that you scramble into all of the others. Thus the puzzle is to essentially solve the one irregular side of the cube, and then all of the other sides will automatically be solved as well.

I have to admit, due to some kind of fear that I have developed against twisty puzzles it took a good few hours before the cube was scrambled properly. I kept doing a couple of turns and then putting it back again. I hated the idea that I may never be able to get it back to it's starting position again. To solve this dilemma I gave the cube to my other half, who although has no interest in solving puzzles did actually take quite a keen interest in scrambling this one. Personally I think she just likes to see me suffer.

I worked out a good method in my head for solving this cube. I started by finding the only centre cube that was a different colour, and then started solving it from the inner pieces outward. Then I got the edge centres in place, followed by the rest of the edge pieces. The corners did not need solving as in this puzzle they are all of the same colour. Getting the edge pieces right actually took longer than all of the others as I had to keep the solved pieces in position whilst bringing them into place, which is much harder than it looks!

It actually only took me about 30-40 minutes to solve this the first time, and each time I did it afterwards I became quicker as I was picking up the methods needed to solve it.
Now I don't think that I'm anywhere near the stage of picking up a proper 7x7x7 with six different coloured sides, but I will be much less afraid of giving many other twisty puzzles a go from now.

The quality of the V-Cube - Illusion is really nice! The cube feels weighty, turns perfectly and hardly ever catches. They are available in four different colour patterns (yellow/black, white/black, red/white, green/white) and they currently retail for around 30 Euro (or 40 USD). I bought mine directly from the V-Cube Online Store.

Impossibly Impossible Jars

As I may have mentioned before, I'm also getting very interested in 'impossible objects'. These are not exactly mechanical puzzles in the sense that they cannot be physically solved, the real challenge is to work out how they were created. Most people just want to know how it was done, whereas I much prefer coming up with all manner of ridiculous theories, and I'm quite happy to never be told the truth.

Here are a couple of 'object in glass' impossibilities that I got hold of recently:

Golf Ball In A Jar - Jared Brzenski

This is a standard glass jam jar containing an ordinary (and used) 'Noodle' brand golf ball. From the picture the size of the opening looks big enough for the ball to pass through, but that wouldn't make it very interesting. In reality the ball is a fraction too large to pass back through the opening, and as such it seems that it will remained forever sealed inside. This jar was made by Jared Brzenski who sold this creation through his Etsy shop. They are well worth a look.

Spicy - Impossible Bottles

This jar looks a little more exotic with it's wooden lid. It was once an old spice jar, and you can even still smell the spice when you open it. There is a padlock inside which is firmly attached to the wooden lid with a metal hook. The key is also attached to the same hook. You can pull the lid up about an inch, but the padlock will not pass through the neck of the jar. The padlock will still function perfectly well, but only if you can manage to get the key into the keyhole.

Now I do know how this is made as I have seen a similar implementation before, so I actually disassembled it just for kicks.
This jar was made and sold by the English site Impossible Bottles, who also have a range of several other incredible (and impossible) creations for sale for some very reasonable prices. Apparently you can even supply them with your own standard glass bottles, and then they will make them more impossible for you. Very clever!