T+3

T+3

Just recently I reviewed the 2010 Honorable Mention puzzle „Ex 3“ from Hiroshi Yamamoto. A year later at IPP 2011 he accomplished the feat to get another Honorable Mention with a similar type of puzzle called “T+3”. My copy came with the same consignment from Hiroshi himself for another 8 USD.

Again we are talking about a 2D assembly puzzle with 3 odd-shaped and laser cut acrylic pieces which have to be placed flat on the table to reach the respective goals. There are 2 challenges to succeed on. The first is to create a T-pentomino and the second one is to create 3 more pentominos without knowing how the shape shall be. Luckily Hiroshi sent an instruction along with the puzzle containing pictures of possible pentomino shapes. Again, I did not have a hard time to lay the 4 different pentominos. We are talking here about 15 minutes of puzzling which consequently leads to “T+3” being much easier (for me at least) than “Ex 3”. My difficulty rating is a 4 out of 10 taking my experience with both puzzles into consideration.

This very puzzle is nice to bring to a party or a family celebration because it is hard enough that friends will spend a good few minutes on it but easy enough to not losing the fun because they will sooner or later solve one or the other task. Also it is on the low cost side and can still be ordered from Hiroshi (shipping cost from Japan to Europe was not more than 6 USD for 5 puzzles I ordered). Go and get it!