6-piece Burr puzzle

(design: July 2007)

I always wanted to build a Burr-puzzle, too. But I didn't want a puzzle with one solid piece (without a single cutout), because these are rather easy to solve. I found an interesting webpage with lots of precalculated six-piece Burr puzzles. I decided to try to build the level 2.3 puzzle designed by Stewart Coffin. There are more difficult puzzles too, but I had to bear in mind that I had to be able to solve the puzzle by heart (in front of an audience).

	Left: as usual I always design the puzzles first with MLCad. Right: the the finished puzzle.
	Left: MLCad version of the required pieces. Right: the pieces. The piece on the right was a very difficult one to create: because of the many cutouts it was really hard to have this piece smooth on all sides (with no visible top or bottom of LEGO elements).

The first time this puzzle was shown to the public was on August 10, during the 75th anniversary of LEGO. Apparently, Michael Brandl is a puzzle freak too: all day long he begged me to give him the building instructions for this puzzle. So don't be too surprised if you see this puzzle appearing in his collection soon.