FLOMMOX

Designer: Benjamin Heidt

This puzzle measures: 80 mm x 80 mm x 80 mm

Material: Zebrano, Purpleheart, Maple

Benjamin Heidt wrote about it:
“When I started designing my own puzzles, I never believed how much fun this could be. My first puzzle that Pelikan introduced to the community was FLUMMOX. As I review, improve, redesign and rethink my puzzles, there often turn out new ideas. Latest challenge was to put some of them into frames. My goal was to create a new puzzle with a unique challenging solution, simple parts and perfect look and handling. FLOMMOX has it all! 
 
The goal is to get the 6 pieces out of the frame and then put them back in again. Quite a challenge, as it takes 30 steps to release the first piece. The pieces themselves each have a small additional block at one end. (Remember them from FLUMMOX?) That means they can only be removed from the frame in one direction. Despite the large amount of space within the cube, the puzzle remains quite stable until the end. Many starting points and dead ends make solving it difficult. This beautiful and well-crafted puzzle will keep you busy for a long time.”

Kevin Sadler wrote about it:
“This is the second burr by Benjamin Heidt in this summer release by Pelikan. Both of them have been sent out in an unsolved position and the aim is to created the solved shape before then completely disassembling it and then reassembling it. Flummox is well named as it is VERY difficult and will really challenge even the best burrista’s. It is a caged 6-piece burr with “extra constraining pieces” and a stick length of 8 voxels made from a very striking combination of Zebrano, Purpleheart and Maple. When it arrives, one of the burr sticks is protruding up out of the box and will not simply push back into place. It took me a good ½ hour of fiddling about (there are quite a lot of possible moves of the other 5 pieces) before you can make enough space to sink the protruding stick back to flush with the cage.
 
After this, obviously, the challenge is to disassemble the burr completely into 6 sticks and a frame. This is definitely not for a beginner to burrs. It really is a very complex disassembly and there are a LOT of well disguised moves including lateral as well as forward and backward moves. The disassembly level is 30.1.2.3.2.2. Whilst that doesn’t look too bad and I would usually say that is an optimal number of moves for a satisfying burr but in this case, with a frame, and being very difficult to see inside, this is VERY difficult. It’s very rewarding when the pieces start to come out but even after the removal of one or two of them, the remainder remain very difficult to remove. This will be impossible for most puzzlers to reassemble without resorting to Burrtools but creating that file will be an extra challenge for you.”