Cabrio - Dr. Volker Latussek by Pelikan

I first had a copy of Hajime Katsumoto’s ‘Slide Packing’ that was wonderfully crafted by Tom Lensch, the smooth sliding lid on the box was what really struck me.

This newer design by Dr. Latussek is beautifully crafted by Pelikan and it also has a mesmerizing sliding motion to the box with sliding lid!

Dr. Volker Latussek wrote about it:

“SLIDE PACKING by Hajime Katsumoto is a style icon. The purist form of his puzzle is fantastic.

I set myself the task of developing a sophisticated packing puzzle using his sliding box. The puzzle should consist of five pieces that fill the sliding box as completely as possible.
The task sounds simple. Pelikan presents the result of my work in CABRIO. Many thanks for that. This puzzle required many development steps to learn precisely how the sliding box interacts with the pieces. I had a great time doing this, and maybe you will play with CABRIO and discover a new and exciting mechanism for this interaction? That’s what I wish for you and I, and especially Hajime Katsumoto, who gave us his beautiful SLIDE PACKING.”

Kevin Sadler wrote about it: 

“No Pelikan release is complete without a design from Dr Latussek! When opening the package, it looks very understated. All you can see is a very nicely crafted box made from American Walnut which Pelikan have failed to close properly. Pulling off the lid reveals some rather lovely Zebrano pieces inside forming an apparent 3x3x3 cube. No wonder the lid couldn’t close properly – it needs to be slid on from the side and the pieces are in the way.

The upshot of the sliding mechanism of the lid is that this is effectively a 7 piece puzzle with the pieces needing to interact with the base and the lid to get the cube inserted inside and the puzzle closed. It is very reminiscent of the fantastic Slide Packing puzzle by Hajime Katsumoto that won the Puzzlers award in 2016. This time instead of just 4 pieces to insert, there are 5 with 3 of them being non-planar shapes making the solution really quite counterintuitive.

I found quite a few 3x3x3 cube shapes that were possible but of course they all blocked the assembly of the lid and needed to start with a completely fresh way of thinking about this. Like many of Volker’s puzzles, you need to think about the last piece to be inserted and how you might get access to that and then try and work with the remaining pieces and the lid to make that final assembly possible. There are 2 obvious possibilities for the final piece but then you will realise that you also need a proper plan for the penultimate piece and it is not as straightforward as you might anticipate. I worked on this for several days before I had a glorious Aha! moment and managed to put the lid on properly. This is a work of genius, just like the predecessor by Hajime-san.”

Burrglar - Peter Hajek & William Strijbos by Pelikan

This is a very clever puzzle that I really enjoyed, I’m often struck by puzzles with only three pieces but can still be so much fun, it reminds me of Stewart Coffin’s ‘Three Piece Block’ puzzle that had stumped many puzzlers! 

I originally missed Pelikan’s drop of this cool puzzle but thankfully they released a few more and quickly snatched up my copy, special thanks go out to Pelikan.

Here’s Pelikan’s description:

“Peter Hajek’s exchange puzzle at IPP40. This is a 3-piece burr with simple notches. You are even shown its solved state shape. So far so simple. The problem is that this thing was designed by Peter Hajek and Wil Strijbos.”

Jeremy’s Boxcar by Henry Strout

I was fortunate to have acquired another of Henry’s ‘train car themed’ puzzles and this was Henry’s Exchange puzzle at IPP 40 in Jerusalem in 2023.

As I was researching all of Henry’s puzzles I finally was able to document pretty much the full list of his work and hope to feature them if/when I’m able to acquire others.