Lunchbox

Designer: George Miller

This puzzle measures: 88 mm x 88 mm x 88 mm

Material: Oak, Padauk, Ash

George Miller wrote about it:

“Lunchbox is a variation of a puzzle I found in a pile of puzzles I had purchased in Prague. One of the puzzles was simply 10 pieces of wood with no clue as to the goal. I guessed it had to be a symmetric solid shape and began to explore all of the possibilities. This was, in essence, a meta puzzle – that is – and the goal, then solve the puzzle by stacking the pieces into the shape of the goal. The ten pieces were all the ways four 2 unit squares of one unit thickness could be glued together at with two unit cubes cubes glued to the squares to form a checkered patterns on each piece.

I made a copy of the ten pieces on a 3D printer. I used BurrTools to test using these ten pieces to pack a 4x5x3 shape I called a “sandwich”. I forced the squares to the top and bottom and the red cubes to the middle making it look ever so much like a jelly sandwich.

A simple packing puzzle is fun, but making a good puzzle involves a presentation mode plus a theme or story. A presentation mode too often is simply the solved puzzle. This takes away the pleasure of a discovered solution. Again, using BurrTools I found a solid packing of a set of steps with a unique solution. This led to the development of a box in the shape of a lunch pail with the inside conforming to the shape of the set of stairs. The story then becomes that of a young lad taking to school a lunchbox prepared by his mother. When he opens the box he finds his lunch in many pieces he has to pack together into a delicious sandwich before eating his lunch. Putting the pieces back into the lunchbox presents a puzzle unto itself.”