Donjon

Designer: Lucie Pauwels

This puzzle measures: 60 mm x 60 mm x 83 mm

Material: Ash/Wenge

Lucie Pauwels wrote about it: 
“The Donjon puzzle consists of a box with a restricted opening, a 5-unit key piece, and 7 pieces that form a cube inside the box. Solving the puzzle requires 31 moves; the key piece closes the box. The solved puzzle is a symmetric tower shape.”

Kevin Sadler wrote about it:
“Donjon (or dungeon) is yet another very very difficult puzzle from the warped mind (we have one prison and one dungeon in this release!) of Lucie Pauwels.  Made from beautifully contrasting Ash and Wenge, the first challenge is to remove all the pieces from the transport positioning. This in itself was a major feat due to the very limited access! The aim is to place all the “prisoners” through the entry down below the surface into the dungeon and lock them in. The dungeon itself is just a 3x3x3 cube but the entry is ferociously blocked by a complex crowning door leaving only a 1×3 entry gap on each side. It is made even tougher by the fact that the entry gap is very narrow (smaller than a finger) – controlling the orientation of the pieces is going to require considerable dexterity. Having eventually taken all the pieces out, I was seriously worried about my ability to get enough back in even for storage, let alone solving it. I started assembling my 3x3x3 cube and quickly realised that could not be the sole aim – the presence of a 1x1x5 piece made me realise that the aim was to create a 3x3x3 shape filling the box and then lock them in with a crosspiece. The use of gravity to move pieces around inside adds to the fun – The Pelikan team have made the pieces with such precision that everything slides beautifully by tilting the box in whatever direction that you need.
 
There are 213 ways to use the pieces to make a cube so the use of the limited entry to narrow it down is crucial. There are 3 pieces with 90º corners in their shapes which very much constrain the orientation and movement once placed through the very limited entry hole. Finding the orientation of these and an order that they can be inserted without blocking each other is key to the solution here. This puzzle took me many hours and a little help from Burrtools as well. The end result is very satisfying – once the locking piece has been placed, the pieces are all locked inside. Inverting the puzzle will not let anything drop out. This is a huge challenge for any puzzler!”