Tag: very difficult

Grooved 6 Board Burr #3 – Junichi Yananose

Oh boy, this one is going to be tough. I’ve been manipulating it for a casual 15 minutes and can already tell that I’m going to struggle. There are multiple paths to start with and they all seem to get complicated real quick. I’m attempting to map this thing out, but it’s going to be exceedingly difficult to keep track of the moves. It’s not simple board moves, it’s block changing multi-piece moves straight out of the gate and unless I take a photo of each move, or draw it out on paper, I’m not sure my brain can handle it. It takes something like 33 moves to get the first piece out, so I’m going to need all the luck I can get.

Ok. I think I’m making some progress. Out of the 3 beginning options, I think I’ve narrowed it down to only one path. The other 2 has multiple forks, but all came to an end within a handful of moves. That only leaves one option. Time to explore further.

Hmm. Thought I was on the right track, made it about 10 moves in, but then found another dead end, so I must have missed something. Time for bed. I’ll live to fight another day.

Day two. Stuck again after about 14 moves. This thing is tricky!

Day three, Day Four, Day Five. I’m losing a little hope here. I find myself in the familiar position of trying the same thing over and over hoping for a different result. But, as you can imagine, nothing different happens. No progress. What did I miss where is the move?

Day Six and I’ve found a new move that shifts things slightly. It seems to dead end though. The promising new move isn’t so promising after all. But it is something different, so there’s that.

One of the many complicated configurations found in this puzzle

After more tinkering, I found yet another move which allowed piece to be moved to their furtherst extend. But, maddeningly, they would not release! More tinkering and I found a way to remove the first piece! But, it requires a rotation. Juno mentions a shortcut using a rotation to remove the second piece, but I haven’t read anything about the rotation I found. Should I use this rotation or should I continue my search for the correct move. Well, I’d like to do it correctly, so no rotation for me.

OK. Officially frustrated. My careful, controlled approach is failing me. I’ve now resorted to uncontrolled fidgeting and manipulation. I’m now attempting to change the orientation of the puzzle in order to get my brain to think about different moves. I’ve traced the same moves over and over so many times that I’m now conditioned to solving the puzzle wrongly. Hopefully flipping the puzzle over, will allow me to see moves I hadn’t seen before because clearly I’m missing something.

Breakthrough!!!

This is one epic puzzle. My god. This thing is complex. I’ve finally taken the first piece out and it was completely unintentional. I had a breakthrough moment where I found a completely new path that I had never explored. I was certain that I was finally getting close, but again I found a dead end. I decided to retrace the steps to take it back to the beginning and search for a missing path. But somehow, on the path back to the beginning, I apparently found the correct path and though I thought I was going back to the start, pieces just kept moving and moves just kept appearing where they hadn’t before and I just decided to forge ahead, getting completely lost in the process. I was in awe as the puzzle moved further and further apart but still held together. My god, how can a single puzzle have so many paths?

So here I sit, with one piece out and once again, I’m stuck and can’t get any more pieces out. This puzzle is relentless!

Omg. I’m ready to break out the saw or hammer on this puzzle. I’m going to have to come back another day to try to remove the next piece. I’m just frantically moving pieces around hoping and praying that something will release. But NOOOOO. This puzzle has other ideas. Dammit Juno. How the hell did you design this diabolical thing?

I have finally done it. This has to be one of the most difficult puzzles I’ve ever disassembled. This thing is unreal. Taking out the second and even the third piece took me over an hour. It seems you have to backtrack a crazy amount of moves – pretty much back to the beginning to take yet another path to release that 2nd piece. It’s the puzzle that never ends.

It’s done.

In the end, I didn’t feel joy at solving this, I just felt relief.

The pieces don’t look so intimidating, but trust me, this thing is very challenging.

There is absolutely no way I would ever be able to reassemble this thing. I’ll have to resort to the burr file – which will be a first for me. But I just can’t imagine even attempting to put this back together.

In the end, I did contact Pluredro and they quickly sent out the Burr Tools file. I loaded it up and managed to put this thing back together. Even that was not easy. I’m not well versed in Burr Tools and had to spend a good amount of time going through step by step, rotating the puzzle around on the screen to make sure I had everything correct. The process confirmed, once again, that this is a very difficult puzzle.

The thoughts of solving 4,5 and 6 doesn’t sound very appealing at the moment. But, I’ve set out with a goal, so I’m going to give it the best I’ve got. Hopefully the next ones aren’t as ruthless.

TEETOTUM – Alfons Eyckmans

Ok, here we go. We have Teetotum designed Alfons Eyckmans and wonderfully crafted by Pelikan Puzzles. This one has been taunting me from the shelf for several months now and I’ve had enough. This puzzle shall taunt me no longer for I shall step into the ring and conquer it.

Truth be told, I’m a little intimidated by this puzzle. I’ve played with it for a few minutes here and there, but it seemed like there were an enormous amount of moves and possibilities right out of the gate, so I wanted to be sure that I had the time to work on it properly. Now is that time!

What a beauty! There are many, many paths forward, but only one will solve this beast.

But before we begin, I need to comment on the construction of the puzzle. It’s beautiful. The dark splines not only reinforce the corners, but also make a wonderful contrast. And they match the dark wood of the burr sticks. Overall, a very balanced and inviting puzzle that I can’t wait to begin.

Well, It’s now several days later, I haven’t solved the puzzle and I’m way overdue on a blog post. You see, it turns out that this puzzle is rather difficult and in my ignorance, I decided that it would be fun to map out every single possible move available in this puzzle. I thought that I could systematically attack this puzzle, crawl down every path, keep careful notes and alas I would emerge victorious. However, I may have underestimated this undertaking because I’ve now spent many hours on this puzzle and filled many pages of cryptic notes and thus far, I’ve not solved it. But as any man possessed would say “I can’t stop now!”

Oh man. Despite my best efforts, I’ve gotten lost in the puzzle and am currently stuck. I’m not sure whether I’m trying to get back to the beginning or solve the puzzle at this point – I’m just trying to make progress in some direction. But nothing is happening. The pieces are all jumbled up and I can’t seem to find the key move.

And then, an “oh sh!t” moment occurs. I guess I was trying to get back to the start, since when I accidentally released a piece, my reaction wasn’t “yay I did it”, it was “oh sh!t”.

Whew. That was a tense few minutes there, but I did manage to get the puzzle back to the start. I believe that I was getting close to removing the first piece, but I majorly chickened out when I realized that I had no idea how to reverse the position. I have the first 15 or so moves written down and tracked out, but the puzzle gets a little weird at that point. It doesn’t fall apart, but it gets looser so its really easy to make unintentional moves and thus loose track of what’s happening.

Deep into the process, trying to map out all the moves. This method was eventually abandoned because there were just too many paths/options.

I’m anticipating that this one will come apart in a similar manner as “Wourie” did – and that is, a single piece is not release, rather the puzzle gets to a point where it can be separated into two parts. We shall see.

Well, I’ve fiddled and I’ve floundered. I’m no closer to the solution than I was before – and that makes me happy. I need a good challenge and this appears to be it. I had one of those great puzzling moments where I was deep into the sequence, I was focused, I was nearing the finish line – and suddenly a move opened up and as I was preparing for my A-Ha moment – and then – my bubble was burst and I realized that I was right back at the start. Dammit!

Ok, After the last paragraph, I spent another 30-40 minutes and have gotten back to what I think is “close to the end”. It’s quite amazing how many different configurations these 6 pieces can move through. I’ve got the puzzle to a point where one of the burr sticks is almost completely removed, it is only entangled in one remaining plate. I believe that I am close to the end and I’m excited to finally get this puzzle done!

Bah!!! Once again, in an effort to solve this beast, I unintentionally circled back around to the start! This is one tough puzzle!

It looks like a piece is close to being removed – Don’t be fooled! I spent days trying to figure out where to go from here.

Ok. It’s now a couple of days later and I’ve FINALLY solved this puzzle. It is definitely not easy and took a determined effort, but I’ve done it. For the longest time, I was stuck in one particular spot where one of the burr pieces had cleared 2 of the plates. This configuration felt like it was close to the end, but no matter how I manipulated the pieces, I just couldn’t find a path forward. I was pretty certain that I was on the right path, but was filled with self-doubt since nothing was working. I contemplated starting over as I wondered if this was just an elaborate dead-end, but sure enough, there was a way forward. I’m not sure if this is the intended solution, but my solution required rotating the plates to a different orientation. I was trying to solve this without rotating the plates, but in the end this was the only way I could solve it.

Finally Solved! Oh my that was difficult!

Now, let’s see if I can get it back together – hopefully some of the 8,000 pictures I took will reveal enough clues for me to put it back together. Here goes….

And done. It took about 15 minutes to get this back together WITH the aid of pictures – I can’t even imagine putting this thing together blind – It’s certainly beyond my ability to do so. I’m just happy that I got it apart and back together!

Whelp. That concludes this puzzle write-up. Teetotum was quite difficult, but what an amazing journey! I’m fairly certain that those plate rotation are required, but would be interested to know if others had the same experience as me. I didn’t have quite the desired A-ha moment, it was more like a “Finally!” moment after all those hours of searching, but in the end, this one feels good. I can now proudly place this back on the shelf and check off yet another one of my unsolved puzzles. Until next time – Puzzle On!