Stewart Coffin designed this puzzle back in 1979 and it’s an 8-piece interlocking 4x4 cube. It wasn’t until I recently made a physical copy that I realized what Stewart meant by ‘almost serially interlocking’ and frankly I think I should leave that tidbit of information for future craftsman to discover themselves.
As we know this design would eventually morph into his now legendary ‘Convolution’ Design #30 that would be revised into his ‘Involution’ design #198 and revised yet again into his ‘Involute’ design #214.
The ‘Convolution’ puzzle had the distinction of having a piece that had a very clever ‘Turning’ movement that Bill Cutler would eventually do a complete analysis on showing how it’s only mathematically possible with the edges slightly chamfered.
Oddly enough I never made any of this design back when I was puzzlemaking, but always kept it in my thoughts as years ago I was contacted to make this particular puzzle as an IPP exchange. The dreaded thought of making over a hundred puzzles of the same design was simply overwhelming. The most of any one puzzle design I ever made was 25, I always found that to be my limit otherwise it seemed to much like a job and took all the fun out of it!
I managed to get some BAZ Building Blocks and thought that I’d give them a go and make this copy. I used a variety of woods in keeping with the puzzle’s namesake.
I also revisited a Stand design I made some years ago it’s simply two pieces that interlock together to form a cross shape and displays the puzzle quite nicely.
It too was made with various length BAZ stock to give it ‘Mosaic’ look.
Here’s what Stewart wrote about it:
“Mosaic is an 8-piece dissection of a 4x4x4 cube, designed in 1979. I must have made one but have no record. The one known solution is shown here, but perhaps there are others. It is almost serially interlocking. An improved version became Convolution (#30).”
No comments:
Post a Comment