Pisa #2 + Cubin Burr

Juno originally designed Cubin Burr to contain Penta Cuboid but he noticed that the pieces of the Penta Cuboid easily crumbled and it was almost impossible to put the assembled Penta Cuboid inside the Cubin Burr. A cube puzzle that goes into Cubin Burr has to be self-standing. He gave up using Penta Cuboid and decided to design another cube puzzle.

Juno designed Pisa in 1994 and it won a prize at Hikimi Puzzle Competition held in Japan. The eight pieces of Pisa have a through hole on the cube and this construction makes the puzzle relatively easy and gives multiple solutions. He decided to use blind holes for Pisa #2 and chose an elegant selection of the eight pieces among 16 possibilities to make the puzzle have a unique solution. Some people will be able to solve the puzzle within 30 minutes with luck even if they are not used to mechanical puzzles. But it doesn't mean the puzzle is easy. You might struggle longer, and sometimes find that only the last piece doesn't fit into the place to form a 2 x 2 x 2 cube. All the eight pieces look similar and the shapes make you confused.

Cubin burr was designed to contain a cube inside and it has seven solutions if you don't put a cube in the burr. Five of those seven assemblies can be disassembled by a single step and the remaining two assemblies have three step solutions. Once you put a cube in Cubin Burr, the puzzle becomes a lot more challenging and it requires eight moves to take the first piece apart.

He made Cubin Burr to have a slightly looser fitting because otherwise the burr tends to grab the internal cube in an unexpected way. You may have to use gravity to control the position of the internal cube when you assemble and disassemble the burr puzzle.

The puzzle is sold assembled. The printed solution of the puzzle is enclosed.

Size: 116mm x 116mm x 116mm

Number of pieces: 8 + 6

Material: Victorian Ash, Oak, Blackbean and Silver Ash

Designer: Junichi Yananose (Juno)

Origin: Made in Australia

Ages: 12+