FATINO

Designer: Dr. Volker Latussek

This puzzle measures: 82 mm x 82 mm x 46 mm

Material: Mahogany/Wenge

Dr. Volker Latussek wrote about it: 
“In the past, I’ve combined some of the 12 flat pentacubes with other polycubes to design packing problems. In addition to the well-known pieces of the SOMA CUBE, I’ve also used spatial pentacubes – which are described by a 3x2x2 envelope – in a rather unobtrusive way. There are 15 different shapes of these, based on a rather casual remark by George Miller I’ll call them Fats. The Fats possess a harmony that is indescribable to me when they are combined. I will present my special discoveries to you at Pelikan.
 
I’ll start with FATINO, six Fats in the box so familiar to me with a centered slit opening. In fact, I already had this CASINO-like box and, with FATINO, the name of the puzzle for the first time before I began finding the six matching Fats that describe a unique solution. The Fats are really bulky, as if they didn’t want to fit into the box. Ultimately, however, six of them took pity on me and gave me a truly beautiful solution. I really hope you enjoy the game of the Fats so much that you look forward to the discoveries to come.”

Kevin Sadler wrote about it:
“Another masterpiece from the master of the packing puzzle! Dr Latussek has been challenging us with restricted entry packing puzzles for years now and every time a new one is released, I think that he cannot have found something new but he has. This one has been beautifully made with a Mahogany box and Wenge pieces.
 
This time it looks like the puzzle should be possible without rotations because the limited entry hole is still a whole number of voxels in each dimension. BUT don’t let that fool you. The pieces are all pentominoes and hence quite long. Any of them that have to go sideways perpendicular to the hole will need rotating into place once inside or tilting slightly through the gap. The hole to be filled is a 4x4x2 space and we have a total of 30 leaving 2 gaps to be hidden somewhere inside. This is going to be fun and VERY difficult!

I had to use Burrtools to find me some assemblies and then experiment with them to try and get one of them inside the box. Even using BT this way, isn’t a panacea as each shape that is found (there are 6 of them) will have 8 possible orientations to try and of course, then you will need to see whether the disassembly is possible through the slot in the top of the box. Once I found a possible assembly it was a lovely dexterity and sliding problem to get the solution.
 
This is a stupendously good challenge. It is definitely possible by normal human beings (many of you might need BT to systematically find the possible assemblies and try them) but after that the puzzling is wonderful.”