Parallel Burr Cube #2

Designer: Osanori Yamamoto

This puzzle measures: 72 mm x 72 mm x 72 mm

Material: Bubinga/Limba

Kevin Sadler wrote about it:

“Another challenge by Osanori-san, this consists of a Frame made from Bubinga and a set of 6 board burr pieces made from Limba. It is strikingly beautiful. Initially I thought that this was just a framed 6 board burr but it’s not quite this. The boards are held apart from each other by the frame making sure they interact loosely with each other being trapped by just the end-plates of each board. At the beginning there are several possible moves but the paths are mostly dead-ended after just 1 or 2 moves. This means no huge long fruitless pathways to explore. It requires a search for something that goes somewhere and for me, took quite a while to find the required move that opened up the puzzle for further exploration. The first piece can be removed quite quickly after just 6 moves which then allows you to peek inside and gain some more understanding of the interaction of the pieces. Having removed the first piece, it does not seem to get any simpler and the puzzle transforms into almost a disentanglement puzzle – it is like unravelling a knot inside a box whilst you can only see a small section of the knot at a time. It is at times frustrating, sometimes fiddly as the boards can catch on the edges as there is a little wiggle room, but is always an enjoyable exploration. The move count is not particularly high but it is still fun to explore and work out at each stage how to make room for the next piece to slide. Having dismantled the puzzle over about an hour or more, I had kept the pieces in order of their removal and remembered which position they had come from. All with the aim of facilitating reassembly without resorting to Burrtools. I was feeling quite proud of myself as I inserted the first three and then for some reason the fourth one just couldn’t be inserted. What was I doing wrong? A careful look at the shapes of the pieces revealed that the second piece had been inserted upside down followed by the third correctly and this couldn’t leave room to insert the next. OK, having realised this, take it apart again…except I couldn’t dismantle it! Aargh! Minor panic ensues and I have to work out all over again how to undo the interior disentanglement puzzle I had created for myself. After a frantic 10 minutes, I had all the pieces and admonished myself for being an eeejit and not keeping track of piece orientation as well as order. After this it went back together nice and smoothly. This puzzle is wonderful – it looks great, is sort of a burr and disentanglement puzzle at the same time and, if you are good enough, it can be a really tough assembly puzzle as well.”