Teapot

Designer: Lucie Pauwels

This puzzle measures: 193 mm x 120 mm x 15 mm

Material: depends on product variant below

Lucie Pauwels wrote about it:
“While I was making some sketches for a puzzle, I found that many different T-shapes could be created. I was looking for the shape of a tray that these pieces would fit into, it didn’t work in a square or a rectangle. So I modified the shape a bit and added four square blocks to it, the sugar cubes. After some adjustments and searching on Burrtools, I found a combination with only one solution. The tray took on a beautiful teapot shape, filled completely with 8 T-pieces and 4 sugar lumps.”

Kevin Sadler wrote about it:
“Another tray packing puzzle by the incredible Lucie Pauwels! There is no limit to Lucie’s skills! I reviewed an interlocking puzzle coming from her and Pelikan in this release which was fascinating and here she turns her hand to a rather lovely and clever tray puzzle. This is very ingenious and a good bit harder than it looks. What goes in a teapot? Tea of course! What goes in tea? Sugar lumps! Here we have a pot and 8 different varieties of tea (T) made from Pink Oak to be placed inside the pot. Two other variants will be on sale: Wenge/Maple and Purpleheart/Ash. There are 4 single voxel holes left after all the teas are inside and these can be filled by sugar made from Maple. Normally you’d put your sugar in your cup but here it gets added to the pot.
 
This is a deceptive puzzle – it really doesn’t look that tough but the lengths of the stems of the T’s make it difficult to pack the cavity efficiently leaving only small few gaps. I worked for a long time (hours) to find the solution and it was very gratifying to eventually manage it. I dare say it can be solved by brute force but the best approach is to experiment with how the T crosses and stems can interact with each other and then plan what you need to do to keep the gaps to a minimum. There is only one solution to this and it might take you quite some time to find it. Perfect for all levels of puzzler.”