Octopus 33 - Osanori Yamamoto (2014) by Pelikan

This very nice design by Osanori and is quite similar to his other clever design called ‘Waffle’ that coincidentally was uploaded to ‘Puzzle Will Be Played’ within days of each other.  This puzzle however has a much higher level move count of 33.6.6.8 with a rotation required.

I previously blogged about Osanori’s Waffle.

Here’s a description from Kevin’s blog:

“Osanori Yamamoto and Pelikan have made yet another sequential movement puzzle in which 4 pieces are held in a maze and can slide and move in very restricted ways - the aim is to remove those pieces by carefully navigating the maze and orienting the pieces in such a way that they can be slid out through the single hole that will allow it. The last one of this type was the Waffle which I really struggled with. The Octopus 33 is made with a Bubinga and Wenge frame with 4 identical yellow Garapa L-shaped pieces providing a lovely contrast in colours. This seems to be probably the most restricted of this type of puzzle that Osanori-San has created. It’s quite obvious early on where the exit point is and obviously rotations will be required to get all the pieces out of the frame. However, the obvious moves that you want to do are apparently impossible. The 8 “tentacles” of the Octopus make the movements that you want to do really quite hard to achieve. 

It’s a nice series of discoveries to find how to manoeuvre the pieces and the Aha! moment has a very unexpected aspect to it which actually made my jaw drop when I realised what Osanori-san had managed to design.”