Martin’s Menace or Four Fit - Stewart Coffin Design #217 by John Devost

I’ve made several of this design previously, however I never did keep myself a copy so this one will stay in my personal collection.  Pieces are Zebrawood, with a Tray of Black Limba and Red Zebrawood.  Slipfeathers are Leopardwood.

Here’s Stewart’s description:

“For a while I became absorbed in the form of mathematical amusements that I call square root type puzzles. In 2001 I disseminated a 20-page report, Square Root Type Packing Problems, with limited distribution. A condensed version was included in the 2014 Appendix. I also wrote a couple articles on the subject and contributed to a third. Out of all that came a deluge of puzzle designs. Rather than clutter up this Compendium with all of them, I have selected just a few of the more unusual. I consider Martin’s Menace the best of all my numerous designs in this category, especially because of its deceptive simplicity. It was an IPP exchange puzzle under the original name Four Fit. It is all based on psychology. None of the four pieces rests comfortably in a corner or even touches two sides, so where does one start? Many puzzle experts have been baffled by it, even the great Martin Gardner, hence the change of name. To quote from one of his three furtive letters concerning it: “It’s the finest dissection puzzle of all time. It looks easy but is fiendishly difficult. I wasted a week trying vainly to solve it.” 

Five Woods - Stewart Coffin Design #177-A by John Devost

My memory is a little fuzzy on whether I’ve ever made any of this design before but I thought I should with some very nice Bloodwood, Zebrawood, Canarywood, Yellowheart and Black Palm, that I had on hand.  The Tray is Canarywood with some Slipfeathers of Leopardwood to strengthen up the mitres.

Here’s Stewart’s description:

“In case you haven’t already discovered, polyominoes is the name given to puzzle pieces made of squares joined different ways. A popular recreation is to fit them snugly into a square or rectangular tray. The long-time popularity of this pastime opens up opportunity for puzzle makers to exploit it by surreptitiously deviating from the regular grid. In this puzzle, all pieces are rotated by arctan ½, which is 26.6 degrees. With two pieces alike and two symmetrical it is not as difficult as some others, but an entertaining pastime and quite nice to contemplate and play with when made in five colorful woods.”

Oskar’s Cube - Oskar Van Deventer by John Devost

This cool cube design by Oskar features 5 ‘Z’ shaped pieces along with an ‘L’ and ‘I’ piece.  There’s three solutions of medium difficulty.

Pieces are Zebrawood with a Black Limba Box.  Sleeve is Leopardwood with Wenge Slipfeathers.

Unique Cube - Martin Gardner by John Devost

While I was making 3x3 cube puzzles I thought I’d make one of these and I’m glad that I did as it’s a pretty neat design.  It features 2 solutions.

Pieces are Zebrawood with a Canarywood Box, Sleevevis Red Zebrawood with Wenge Slipfeathers.

Kinder Cube - Kevin Holmes by John Devost

This puzzle is one of many cube designs by Kevin that he likely made and sold at his booth in England.  There’s 6 pieces with 13 solutions, which surprised me about this puzzle because the shape of a couple of the pieces tends to limit their placement within this 3x3 cube.

Pieces are Leopardwood with a Black Limba Box.  Sleeve is Leopardwood and Wenge Slipfeathers.

Amelia’s Puzzle - Stewart Coffin Design #188-A by John Devost

I’ve had this puzzle design on my to do list for quite some time, I originally wanted to make a copy of ‘Split Box’ however making a box that could convert into two different trays was futile.  I ultimately decided to make a Box that features a Sliding drawer that I think suits this design nicely!

Here’s Stewart’s description for both designs:

“The five solid polyomino puzzle pieces 

assemble into a 4x6 rectangle one way only, into a 3x8 rectangle two ways, and into its 2x3x4 box four ways. The two 

halves of the tricky box are held together with a rubber band, as it converts from a 2x3x4 box to a 4x6 tray. Inverted it forms a 3x8 tray. (In retrospect, a crazy idea - too complicated. See next.)

Same pieces as #188 above but five colorful woods in a simple 2x3x4 box with sliding cover. As usual, simpler really is better. There are four solutions. (Amelia is my granddaughter.)”

Pieces are Yellowheart/Padauk/Black Palm/Bocote/Zebrawood - Box & Drawer is Black Limba.

Cotway’s Cube - Yoshiyuki Kotani (1982) by John Devost

This design caught my eye due to its many duplicate pieces, there is six ‘S’ shaped with three lone cubes, all combined into this 3x3 cube with four solutions.

Pieces are Black Palm, Bocote, Bloodwood, Canarywood, Walnut,  Purpleheart and Ash.

Box is Black Limba with a Maple Sleeve and Wenge Slipfeathers.

Steinhaus Cube - Hugo Steinhaus/Jan G. Mikusinski by John Devost

 

I’ve often read about this puzzle design through Stewart’s ‘Ap-Art’ and finally decided to make a copy.  There are two solutions of moderate difficulty.

Pieces are a random mix of Canarywood, Jatoba, Maple and Mahogany.

Box is Canarywood with a Maple Sleeve and Wenge Slipfeathers.

Five-Piece Block - Stewart Coffin Design #78-C by John Devost

I’ve made copies of this classic Coffin design previously, but decided to make this particular copy featuring a box and lid.  Usually a tray is more than enough to keep this cube contained in the assembled state as it’s nearly interlocking.

It follows the design numbering of design #78 ‘Pillars of Hercules’ with similar looking pieces.  It’s definitely one of my personal favourite cube designs.

Pieces are Maple with a Box made from Wenge.  Sleeve and Slipfeathers are Maple.

Computer Killer - Stewart Coffin Design #193 by John Devost

As I make my way through building various cube designs I thought I’d give this one a go.  This Coffin design employs a sneaky ploy that likely stumped many puzzlers after it appeared in the IPP Exchange.  

This puzzle originally appeared as a variation of ‘Pillars of Hercules’ which became Design #78-B and subsequently renamed because of its novel box with its incorrect assembly starting position, however I have opted to forego the trick that this design uses and made it in the more traditional way, it’s still a difficult assembly!

Pieces are Jatoba with a Box made from Wenge.  Sleeve and Slipfeathers are Maple.

Barzoi - Alfons Eyckmans by Eric Fuller

This puzzle is of course is another terrific design by Alfons, it was expertly crafted by Eric Fuller using Macacauba for the outer burr pieces and Ash for the inner burr pieces.

Although it’s not a very high level, confusion sets in from the get go!  The piece movements are so random that you’re likely to just start moving pieces with abandon and continually finding yourself back to the start.

I noticed that Alfons came up with this design in 2015 along with another similar design called ‘Beagle’, leading me to believe that both are named after dog breeds.

Here’s Eric’s description:

“Another great one from Belgian burr builder Alfons Eyckmans, Barzoi is a very unique design. A twelve piece burr with interaction between the inner and outer components almost as if it behaves like a nested burr. Six outer pieces overlap six inner pieces with an offset on each axis to make this puzzle stand out when assembled.

The solution is only a moderate level 13.2.1.1.1.2. Don't let that fool you, this puzzle is difficult! With a few different multi-piece movements, disassembly alone is a great challenge. Fit was modified from the prototype copy to achieve smooth movements when multiple pieces interact, signed and dated.”

Allsides Cube - William Waite by John Devost

I remember getting one of these very cool puzzles directly from William years ago, it was an actual ‘keychain’ type puzzle and made from plastic.  I had some 1/2” cubes so spent a considerable amount of time gluing up the elaborate four pieces together.

I also went to the trouble of dowel pinning any joints that looked like they could possibly break their glue joint.  When I first seen this puzzle I was taken aback by its opening move and things got stranger from there on in!  Once it’s completely disassembled you can properly examine each piece in detail and I don’t think I’ve ever seen such odd shaped pieces in a 4x4 cube.

Box is Black Limba with Wenge Inlays and a Maple Sleeve.

The Nine Tricubes - Rik Van Grol by John Devost

I noticed this design in Rik’s Cube Compendium and thought I’d make myself a copy with Pieces from Black Palm & Jatoba.  

Box is Black Limba with Maple Sleeve & Slipfeathers.  Even though this puzzle is made up of nine identical 3 cube pieces it’s surprisingly tricky to come up with a solution and requires a little thought because it’s tempting to start by stacking pieces in similar groupings and that always ends up in failure!

Soma Cube - Piet Hein by John Devost

It now seems strange to me that I’ve never actually made a copy of this iconic 3x3 cube.

Here’s some info that I gleaned from google:

The Soma cube is a solid dissection puzzle invented by Danish polymath Piet Hein in 1933 during a lecture on quantum mechanics conducted by Werner Heisenberg.

The same puzzle, assembled into a cube.

Seven different pieces made out of unit cubes must be assembled into a 3×3×3 cube. The pieces can also be used to make a variety of other 3Dshapes.

The pieces of the Soma cube consist of all possible combinations of at most four unit cubes, joined at their faces, such that at least one inside corner is formed. There are no combinations of one or two cubes that satisfy this condition, but one combination of three cubes and six combinations of four cubes that do. Thus, 3 + (6 × 4) is 27, which is exactly the number of cells in a 3×3×3 cube. Of these seven combinations, two are mirror images of each other (see Chirality).

The Soma cube was popularized by Martin Gardner in the September 1958 Mathematical Games column in Scientific American. The book Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays also contains a detailed analysis of the Soma cube problem.

There are 240 distinct solutions of the Soma cube puzzle, excluding rotations and reflections: these are easily generated by a simple recursive backtracking search computer program similar to that used for the eight queens puzzle. John Horton Conway and Michael Guy first identified all 240 possible solutions by hand in 1961.

I made a Box from Black Limba with a Maple Sleeve and Maple Slipfeathers.

Pretty Puzzle - Stewart Coffin Design #78-D by John Devost

This is another example of Stewart tinkering with his designs and I’m grateful that he did as I had made some of this original design quite a few years ago so when I noticed that it was updated to have only one solution I decided to make a few copies.

This particular copy has Black Palm, Bloodwood and Maple for the pieces.  The Box is Red Zebrawood with a Maple Sleeve and a Canarywood Bottom.  I used Wenge inlays on two sides to reinforce the mitres, while adding some to the Bottom as a decorative element.

Here’s  Stewart’s description:

“This is not just another five piece dissection of the 3x3x3 cube. It rewards the solver 

with symmetrical patterns of the dissimilar colorful woods on all six faces.

The original design was found to have three solutions with the improved design with 

only one solution.”