Nebelung

Designer: Alfons Eyckmans

This puzzle measures: 78 mm x 78 mm x 78 mm

Material: Wenge / Padauk

Kevin Sadler wrote about it:

“I have a bit of a weakness for caged burrs – there is something about how the addition of a cage around a (usually) 6 piece burr makes it so much more difficult (I wrote about one just a few weeks ago). Alfons is a master of puzzle design and he takes an idea and runs with it until he has created an ultimate version of the genre. I have bought many of the interlocking cubes from him as well as from Jakub over the years and they are just amazing. This time Alfons has taken the caged burr and made it more interesting and more difficult – he has taken a 9 piece burr and placed it in a rather complex cage and created a level 18.1.1.2.2 puzzle which requires some proper exploring and clever moves to solve. Pelikan have made it using a lovely contrasting Wenge and vibrant Padauk. It is simply gorgeous! Straight away, there are some lovely moves to explore and not too many blind endings to get lost in. I made some fast progress initially before getting stuck for a day. The cage here seems to act to hold the pieces in place but still allows you to see inside and try and plan your moves. It took me some time to find a rather delicious move that I could not have found by accident – I needed to look and plan to get my special “squish” move. This then opened up more pathways and progress seemed to be being made before I was stuck again. I got stuck here for a few more days and, yet again, had to look and plan. Suddenly after another Aha! moment I had opened up a section which allowed pieces to be removed from the puzzle. It remained remarkably stable until I had removed almost all 9 burrsticks. I did have to resort to Burrtools for the early part of the reassembly but once I had the first 4 pieces inside the frame, I was able to reassemble it from scratch. This was a framed burr made beautifully at just the right difficulty level.”