Doable 12 – Junichi Yananose

Wooooo boy. This week, I have Doable 12 created by Juno over at Pluredro. This is my Third puzzle from Pluredro and I anticipate that I will be ordering many more over the coming months and years.

Doable 12 is a 12-piece burr that is labeled as “very difficult” – but as the name implies – “Doable” The 12 pieces are constructed of Juno-created plywood comprised of Black Walnut and European Beech. The plywood is then shaped with a CNC router. This results is a beautiful looking puzzle that is incredibly sturdy and pleasing to hold.

My first impression is that the puzzle is quite large. It easily fills two hands. It’s also easy to manipulate. The fitting of the puzzle is intentionally a little loose to prevent grabbing when you manipulate the pieces and I have to say, I think this was a wise choice. There is zero binding or other issues when playing with this puzzle where I think if the tolerances were tighter, it would be very difficult to manipulate.

12 separate pieces of Black Walnut and European Beech make up this wonderful puzzle.

Onward, we go past the descriptions and into the solving process.

This is a puzzle that wants to move! While some puzzles have a tricky opener, this one has multiple moves available straight out of the gate. In fact, I found myself quickly getting lost in the early stages of exploration. There were a few different paths I could go down and each path had further branches and all of them felt like they could keep going. So, for the first half hour, I would cautiously venture down a path and a branch until I was a few moves in and then would back out. I was trying to explore all the options to get my head wrapped around the possibilities.

Eventually, I found a move that seemed to significantly progress things. Once I had the puzzle in this new state, I had a few new options available and the puzzle began to significantly loosen up. I knew I was on the right track, but as things began to loosen up, I began to get nervous. What if I lost my place and couldn’t figure out how to get back to the start? Maybe I’m too conservative when solving puzzles, but I’ve been burned in the past by moving too quickly and then getting lost.

So, back and forth I went. I’d move 9-10 moves in and play around a little bit and then back out again. I’d set the puzzle down, then pick it up and once again progress 9-10 moves in, this time, I’d find an 11th move and then back out. This was my process, but the problem was, I had no idea how many moves it would take to release the first piece. Maybe I was only one move away? But maybe, I was 10 moves away. It felt close, but you never know, so I continued with this solving method.

And then, it happened. The first piece came out! Wow, I was so close for so long, but those nervous thoughts had me backing out over and over. Well, this time, I got it done. One piece removed. I wonder whether this is the beginning or the end…

Ok, well with one piece out, the puzzle is now very loose. I’m trying to delicately move the pieces around to see if anything else is ready to be removed and sure enough, another piece comes out with ease. It seems that the first piece was indeed the lynchpin – once removed, the rest come out with few or no additional moves.

The 12 pieces laid out in a dramatic light

Whew! So now I sit with a pile of pieces and a decision to make. I’m fairly certain that I could put the puzzle back together by retracing my steps (and utilizing a couple of photos I took with my cellphone) However, this puzzle is called doable for a reason. It’s supposed to be doable. That means, I should be able to get it back together without computer or camera aid. So, that’s what I’m going to attempt.

See, the 12 pieces are actually comprised of 6 pairs. The 6 pairs are joined by unique “puzzle-piece” type cuts that make them unique and thus finding the 6 pairs is easy enough. Had these pairs been joined with straight edge cuts, then there would be no possible way to tell what goes together (outside of tedious trial and error) So, at least I have that going for me. The next step is going to be to try to determine how these 6 joined pairs fit together. If I can figure that out, then all that remains is the sequence of events.

The 12 pieces arranged into 6 pairs. Without these unique joining-cuts this puzzle would be infinitely more difficult.

After another couple of hours of work, I’ve had some success and some failure. Through lots of trial and error, I eventually figured out the position of the 6 pairs. The hardest part for me was keeping track of what I had tried and what I hadn’t tried. And attempting to fit together these pieces without the puzzle exploding in my hands or knocking over was challenging. Many times, I’d feel like I was getting close to the solution only to have some pieces slip in my hands which would cause a catastrophic failure. I’d then have to spend a lot of time reconstructing the pieces back to where they were.

Eventually, though, I was sure that I had things correct. I could get 9-10 of the pieces together and could see that the remaining 2-3 pieces would surely fit. However, getting them in place was another story. I tried many times but ultimately failed to put this puzzle together from scratch and gave up.

Defeated in that endeavor, I pulled up some of the photos on my phone and used those as a reference. I eventually got the puzzle back together though the steps were a bit challenging. There are just so many interlocking pieces that it was a difficult to get everything sewn up just right. It almost felt like a coordinated motion puzzle for me in that I wish I had another hand or two to hold things steady. I would guess that if I knew the correct method that things would have done together better.

The completed puzzle. Back together, but not mastered… not yet.

In the end, this is a really fun puzzle. I feel slightly defeated because I didn’t get it together from scratch, but I feel like if I put in enough effort, I could have done it. This one will have to go in the “must revisit” pile for a rainy day.