Shutout

Designer: Osanori Yamamoto

This puzzle measures: 57 mm x 57 mm x 57 mm

Material: depends on product variant below

Kevin Sadler wrote about it:

“This fabulous puzzle by Osanori Yamamoto has already been reviewed by me after I bought it direct from the master himself. In fact Allard has just reviewed it as well (summary – he loved it!) It won a “Top 10 vote getter” prize in the 2022 IPP Design competition and I am so glad that it is being produced in greater numbers than Osanori-san can manage – EVERYONE should get a chance to try this puzzle. It will be available in Wenge and Padauk as well as Wenge and Maple. The aim is to assemble 6 identical T-shaped tetrominoes inside the cubic box in such a way that all the gaps are filled. It has a nice “almost there” solution (with a visible gap) but the true solution requires several lovely Aha! moments. It is actually quite difficult – one of the great puzzlers out there, Naoaki Takashima, had shown it off as one of his puzzles of 2022 (alongside 3 other very serious puzzlers). When Naoaki-san had showed it off he had announced that he had placed a few of the pieces inside and couldn’t even work out how he had done it and couldn’t remove them. If a puzzler as good as this struggled then it has to be a significant challenge. Even having solved the original version, I struggled to solve it again after a gap of a few months – I remembered the tricks but still couldn’t put all of them together into one solution without a struggle. I have to say that this is one of those “essential purchases” from this Pelikan release.”