Designer: Osanori Yamamoto
This puzzle measures: 55 mm x 55 mm x 55 mm
Material: Pink Oak / Wenge
Kevin Sadler wrote about it:
“I know… it's yet another packing puzzle! Yet another of those 3x3x3 cubes that need to be inserted in a box so that they fill all the entry holes! Over the last few years I have bought dozens and dozens of these puzzles and I never ever get fed up with them! These puzzles are designed by the Master, Osanori Yamamoto, to be a fun challenge and he never gets it wrong. They are all very similar in idea yet all very different in challenge. I absolutely adore them because they require several different trains of thought and then some fun manipulation of pieces and even some dexterity too. Osanori (and Alexander) are the absolute masters of this subtype of the packing puzzle group (I consider it a mixture of packing and interlocking along with some dexterity). Palace looks pretty simple because there are only 3 relatively small pieces and they don't look terribly complex but there is the challenge – such compact pieces still need to fill some very big gaps in the box. It is quite easy to make a few shapes outside the box which will fill the gaps so maybe the challenge will be small? Unfortunately the entry is really not very restricted at all and therefore it requires a lot of trial of different orientations and assemblies before the appropriate thoughts begin to percolate my dense brain. Like most of Osanori-san's designs, the pieces need to dance around each other quite a bit – in this case there is one particular move that I really struggled to find at first. The Aha! is tremendous when it hits you and everything finally slots into place.”
