Petit Albert

Designer: Dr. Volker Latussek

This puzzles measures: 70 mm x 70 mm x 50 mm

Material: Oak/Wenge

Dr. Volker Latussek wrote about it:
“A while ago I was reminded of a deformed Tetracube when I was looking at a sculpture by the Spanish artist, Carlos Albert. Perhaps that’s not that surprising, given that Carlos Albert forges his sculptures from solid square steel. While for PETIT SUCRIER I had set myself the task of incorporating as many openings as possible into the 3x3x2 box as a tribute to Frederic Boucher, when playing with the deformed Tetracubes it quickly becomes clear that the lack of edges allows for rotations that enable new movements; so the task was to find an opening that would allow for an exciting solution.

With the opening of my SIXPACK design, this task was solved. I am delighted every time something new emerges from the interplay of the familiar and observations, but I am especially delighted when you discover and enjoy the dance of the pieces while playing with PETIT ALBERT.”

Kevin Sadler wrote about it:
“Volker Latussek has an incredible eye for interesting ideas that puzzlers love and I had to go straight for this one. My first challenge was to take the pieces out of the box from their packing position. The first 3 came out quite easily but after this removing the final 2 is a challenge just by itself. I needed a light source to see inside and about 45 minutes of increasingly desperate fiddling with my finger poked into the hole before I had all the contents on display. This is another fabulous bonus puzzle from Volker.

The Petit Albert consists of a 3x3x2 voxel box made from a nicely grained Oak with an L shaped hole in one side. There are 4 tetrominoes and a 1×2 stick made from Wenge. There are a total of 18 vowels to be fitted in the box so there will be no gaps. On each of the tetrominoes one of the edges in rounded off – this is obviously intended to facilitate rotational moves of those pieces. Fascinating!

It is clear that all the pieces can fit through that hole in one particular orientation but if they are all placed like that the cavity gets filled and blocked up very quickly. Creating a 3x3x2 shape from the pieces is exceedingly easy and there are 4 different ways to create that shape with the tetromino but with the curve on one edge there are 2 ways each piece can be oriented which increases the number of possible arrangements significantly. Starting outside the box I found a solution that would fit and then tried all the orientations of the solution that might allow one or two pieces to just fall out without rotation (it is impossible for the final 2 pieces to rotate due to the interior being blocked up). Having found a set of placements that would allow 2 pieces to drop out then it was time to work on the others to see whether I could form a shape that was correct. This was a huge challenge – Volker had mentioned a “dance of pieces” so I knew there would not be a nice easy rotation and placement. There was going to be a sequence of moves of which one or more might be rotational.

This is another essential purchase from Pelikan and Dr Latussek. You will not be disappointed!”