Swan Cube

Designer: Lucie Pauwels

This puzzle measures: 65 mm x 65 mm x 65 mm

Material: Merbau, Maple, Wenge

Lucie Pauwels wrote about it:
“I like puzzles with a simple shape, like a cube. This puzzle is made from 6 different but similar pieces. When the puzzle is disassembled, the pieces look like swans. The goal of the puzzle is self-explanatory: build a cube with the heads of the swans fitting into the holes. The result is a cube where the pieces are connected on the inside.”

Kevin Sadler wrote about it:
“The wonderfully talented Lucie has appeared on my site many many times and I have gushed every time about her designs. She has not disappointed here either. The Swan cube is made using Wenge, Maple and wonderfully vibrant Merbau. It arrived assembled as a sort of cuboid structure with gaps in it so obviously not correctly assembled. Obviously, the aim is to dismantle it (quite an easy feat) and then assemble it as a proper cube shape with no gaps/holes. In the assembled shape above there is no indication of the reason for the odd name, but once the 6 pieces have been separated the reason immediately comes clear. 
 
The pieces all have a hole in the side and a swan shaped neck and beak that clearly needs to engage with the hole. Once all beaks are in all holes then we should have a completed cube – easy? Nope! Luckily, I did have the forethought to take a photo of the assembly orientation so that I can store it in the transport configuration.
 
I began looking to see how the walls, holes and beaks would interact and quickly made some good progress…until I had a piece where the beak wouldn’t reach the hole. Damn! I knew it had been going too well. Starting afresh with a different set of beaks and holes and I had something that really looked promising as it would make a nice half cube around one corner. The problem here was that whilst the three pieces should interact nicely, it would require a coordinate motion to achieve it and that wasn’t possible with these shapes. Sigh! After yet more failure, I realised that two of the pieces had an extra cubic on them. That was getting in the way of what I wanted to do. Time to think©.
 
After a little more time I had a rather good idea. I worked on my idea for a while and made progress gradually until my last piece fitted perfectly into place.
 
This was very gratifying and a perfect logic puzzle. I dare say that it can be solved by randomly putting pieces together until you get the right assembly but this should be solved as a pure logic problem. It is very clever and looks lovely in both assembled and false assembly positions. Probably best for the more medium experienced puzzler rather than absolute beginner.”