Puzzles

Below a list of some of the (physical) puzzles, I own.

Beat the Computer no.24

Dimensions: 11.6⌀×1 cm.

In the summer of 1978, probably on Saturday, July 29, I bought this puzzle at Harrods in London. It is produced by Tenyo Co.,Ltd. from Japan. It is no longer complete as one of the pieces is missing.

On the back it says that there are at least 1,000,000 solutions. On May 20, 2009, I made mention of this puzzle when I tried finding solutions to it by using a Exact Cover program. When I ran a version of the program that can estimate the number of solutions, it returned a value of about 53,326,050,000 solutions after having investigated 3,271,402 partial solutions and having found 93,535 solutions.

Rubik's Cube

Dimensions: 5.7×5.7×5.7 cm

I bought my first Rubik's Cube on April 1, 1981.

Van der Poel puzzle

This puzzle is design by Willem van der Poel. I created this puzzle myself from some wood in the summer of 1981. The first mentioning in my (Dutch) diary is from July 16 and the last (from that year) is on Augustus 18. I made it from the design drawing given in the book Spelen met Puzzles (Dutch for Playing with puzzles) written by Pieter van Delft and Jack Botermans. This design can also be found on the page Van Der Poel 3D Wooden Brain Teaser Puzzle Solution. An STL-file to print the puzzle with a 3D printer, can be found on the page: 3D-Puzzle Van der Poel.

Chinese puzzle

Dimensions: 25.7×18.3×1.3 cm

This puzzle was given to Annabel in the summer of 2006. Solutions for this puzzle can be found on the page Chinese puzzle and a list of mentionings of the puzzle can be found here.

2×2×2 Rubik Cube

I bought this on July 20, 2010.

Megaminx

This is a regulardodecahedron 'Rubik' cube made by China Qun Jia. I bought this on July 27, 2010 at 19:52:29 for 38¥.

The Void

Dimensions: 5.7×5.7×5.7 cm

A variant of the Rubik's cube. I bought this on October 11, 2014 at 17:28 from the toy shop Bart Smit in Enschede (Hofpassage 19) for € 17.99.

Large wooden fractal puzzle

Dimensions: 39×36×0.6 cm

Made by Annabel on December 23, 2016 with a laser cutter. It appears that due to the fine cutting line, the pieces easily get stuck when the are not moved exactly parallel to each other. Getting the pieces out of the puzzle is almost harder than to put them in. The puzzle is hanging on the wall.

Fractal puzzles

I have a number of fractal puzzles left over from the project Annabel did as part of a 'how to start your own business' course for her major at college. I cooperated with her to develop some software, which she used to generate the puzzles. She created several puzzles before arriving at the final design, which has a wooden frame and pieces made from acrylic in various colours and can be bought from her website (in Dutch). From the experiments, I have left over the following puzzles:

Medium size fractal puzzle, all wood with 'double' cuts.
Small all wooden fractal puzzle.
Small fractal puzzle with black acrylic frame and pieces. (A bit hard to solve because all is the same colour.)
Set of red pieces of a small fractal puzzle.

From the final design, I have the following puzzles:

Full set of ten small fractal puzzle with black pieces (and one green one).
Small fractal puzzle with dark blue pieces.
Medium sized fractal puzzle with blue pieces.
Large size fractal puzzle with red pieces

HEMA puzzle

Dimensions: 9.8×9.8 cm

Number of solutions: 89

I bought this around November 2017. For discussions about the number of solutions to this puzzle can be found here. I named the puzzle after the HEMA chain store that sold it.

Tangram puzzle

Dimensions: 9.8×9.8 cm

I bought this around November 2017 from HEMA as well. It has the same colour as the HEMA puzzle. It is still shrink wrapped.

BiZZdesign Rubik Cubes

This is a Rubik cubes with the logo of BiZZdesign on it. The orientation of the center pieces is significant unlike the original Rubik Cube, making this cube a little more difficult to solve.

Two 2×3 Rubik Cubes

Dimensions: 7.5×5.1×2.5 cm

These came from some Happy Meals™ from 2018 made by Rubik.

Round Goki puzzle

Dimensions: 23.9⌀×0.8 cm

Number of solutions: 1,789,051.

I bought this on July 29, 2020 from Drenth Museum. Mentionings of the puzzle can be found here. For discussions about the number of solutions to this puzzle, look here.

Hexagon puzzel

Dimensions: 14.6×12.8×0.95 cm

Number of solutions: 4,702.

I bought this puzzle as a present for Conny. It has a hexagon shaped frame and has eight pieces that consist of three to five smaller hexagons. For more information see the diary entry of April 19, 2021.

Tangram puzzle

Dimensions: 13.7×12.4×1.4 cm

On December 10, 2024, I got a tangram puzzle in the Christmas package I got from KITT Engineering, my empolyer. It was made by Wowlab and laser engrave with the text 'KITT Engineering 2024' and came with Tangram booklet 208 examples + solutions.

Wooden The China Labyrithn puzzle

I created this on September 1, 2026 with a laser cutter at TkkrLab.

On October 13, 2026, I brought it to the Bring Your Own Beamer event at Tetem.

Perspex The China Labyrinth puzzle

I created this on September 22, 2026 with a laser cutter at TkkrLab.

On October 13, 2026, I brought it to the Bring Your Own Beamer event at Tetem.

On October 18, 2026, I published a solution found by two people in about half an hour.

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