Juno’s Penta Cuboid + T-groove Box at Pluredro

This is another awesome puzzle I acquired in a trade, I’ve always been a big fan of pentomino type puzzles and in fact made many myself years ago.

In usual fashion Juno bumped this one up a notch in complexity and if that wasn’t enough he added a very cool interlocking box to enclose it!

Be sure to drop by Juno’s website to see all that’s available, here’s the description from Pluredro

“Juno modified the pentomino pieces to form a cube. As puzzle lovers know, twelve pentomino pieces can form a 3 x 4 x 5 cuboid but those pieces cannot form a cube. Juno changed the ratio of the element of the pieces from a cube to a cuboid, its length of the sides has a ratio of 3 x 4 : 4 x 5 : 5 x 3, now all the twelve pieces can form a cube.

The actual length of the elements is 12 x 15 x 20 mm and it is not a cube anymore but all the twelve pieces still consist of five elements. Then, he named the puzzle Penta Cuboid. The size of the assembled cube is 60 x 60 x 60mm.

There are 3940 solutions to make a 3 x 4 x 5 cuboid using a normal set of solid pentomino. In contrast, Penta Cuboid has a unique solution since Juno carefully chose a malicious combination of the pieces. It will take at least an hour to solve the puzzle even if you are lucky and very talented.

Juno wanted to have a box for Penta Cuboid since the pieces are very slippery and the assembled cube can easily be crumbled. He thought that if he had to use a significant amount of material, it was good to make a box as another puzzle challenge.

T-groove Box is based on his old design that consists of six identical board pieces. To make puzzle more challenging, he changed the shape of the groove from the original X-shape to a T-shape, and then gave variation to the depth of the grooves and width of the board pieces. T-groove Box has a unique solution, not very difficult but still a bit tricky and confusing to solve because all the pieces look quite similar.

Material: Utile and Victorian Ash”