Dovetail Soma Cube - How can this design be further optimized?
Channel: OskarPuzzle
Date: 2020-11-28

More OskarPuzzle at https://www.youtube.com/OskarPuzzle?sub_confirmation=1. Print it yourself at https://oskarvandeventer.nl/Print-It-Yourself/. Buy at https://www.puzzlemaster.ca/browse/inventors/oskar/14650-dovetail-soma-cube, https://i.materialise.com/en/shop/item/dovetail-soma-cube-v2 or https://www.shapeways.com/product/X7SV93279/dovetail-soma-cube. Dovetail Soma Cube was suggested by George Miller. The idea was to take a classic Piet-Hein Soma Cube and add dovetail connections to it. Ideally, the addition of dovetails would reduce the number of assembleable solutions to exactly one, whereas there are solved states that could theoretically exist, but that could not be assembled. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to find such a puzzle-design sweet spot. So instead, I optimized the puzzle for disassembly fun. One could give the puzzle to a friend and challenge them to take it apart. Even though the puzzle slides apart without any effort, it only works when one places their fingers correctly. In this sense, the puzzle is more similar to the classic Steward-Coffin Pennyhedron puzzle.

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