Lattice II

Lattice II and was designed by Frank Worrell and made by Eric Fuller. It is another one of the puzzles I purchased from Cubic Dissection during the last update. Eric describes it as building on Tom Jolly's original Lattice puzzle, but Lattice II only has two pieces rather than three. It looked pretty simple, but for only $5 I figured it was worth trying out since I was ordering some other puzzles as well.

It came disassembled, so I set myself to the task of putting it together. Based on the way the pieces looked, it was pretty easy to narrow down how they would start assembling. From there, with a slight amount of fiddling I navigated to the solution. As promised, not too tricky!

While Eric's site says it takes 27 moves, I counted 20 and confirmed it in Burr Tools. Perhaps it is a typo or I'm missing something. [Update: It turns out I was missing something, or rather the puzzle was missing something! Frank, the designer, contacted me and informed me that there is an error in one of the pieces in Eric's version, a cube missing, that results in 7 fewer moves. The intended 27-move version is definitely better: less straightforward and a few more interesting moves. The missing cube is in the far upper right hand corner of the leftmost piece in the photo. The correct piece is show below.]

It is fairly simple because there aren't many dead ends, but also because there are many moves in a row are on the same plane. This makes it easier to find the correct sequence, because you're not switching the plane in which you are thinking very often. [Update: The corrected version of this puzzle has more plane of movement switches.]

Overall, a nice, simple puzzle for a reasonable price. Unfortunately, they're all sold out currently, but since they're laser cut I would bet that Eric will consider making more if they sold well. If you'd like to get the original Lattice puzzle, there is one still for sale for only $12.