Eric Fuller (Rest in Peace) listed a run of these puzzles at CubicDissection that I made back in 2006!
I made these using 3/4” cubes with everything lacquered and triple buffed.
I’ve recently been revisiting some of Stewart’s tray designs, and this particular design has since been revised 2018 so I decided to make a few copies, here’s Stewart’s description:
It didn’t take long for puzzle fans to catch on to the 45-degree rotation, which has also been exploited by others, or even the less common 26.6 degrees of #177-A. So the next step was to change the angle again to arctan 1/3 or 18.4 degrees. I present this puzzle with apology because I prefer not to issue puzzles of this type that are extra difficult (believe it or not), and non-symmetrical as well. Friends usually expect the solutions of my puzzles of this type to be symmetrical, but this one isn’t.
But it’s most vexing feature is that not a single one of the pieces rests
comfortably by itself in a corner, or even along a side, so how do you begin?
I made just a few of these during one holiday season (hence the name) as
gifts to puzzle experts, who I hope will forgive this departure from what I
consider the rules of the game.
The original Christmas has two design flaws- a piece duplicated and a
symmetrical piece. Both flaws have been corrected in this revised 2018
version. Both versions have only one solution.”
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