Houdinis Drawer

Houdinis Drawer

Storing six pieces in a drawer sounds like an ordinary problem. But it is extra-ordinary if the drawer has no bottom, extends to two sides and has opposite oriented boards on the front and backside. This might be the most diffcult of the three NPP “Drawer” puzzles.

Packing takes 22 moves (no rotations) and the solution is one among half a million assemblies, turning this puzzle into an escapist nightmare.

Printing Instructions

Print all parts as oriented in the STL files. All parts can be printed with 0.2mm layer height and 2 walls with 15% infill. No supports are required. You can add extra infill and/or walls to make the pieces more solid.

Print one of the two set of pieces, depending on the look you prefer.

The text/images on the buttons and cage can be printed with a filament colour change by layer height as shown in the pictures. The text is inset 0.8mm and I use a .6mm colour layer (3 layers @0.2mm). The text may appear upside down on the back, but that is intentional with the way you will likely manipulate the cage.

There are 3 assembly GIFs included that show the cage/drawer assembly. Glue the drawer face to the drawer ensuring you have the orientation correct. Also ensure the bottom of the face is flush with the drawer bottom. You then have a choice of knobs to install. One blank knob allows for customization (you can emboss a letter or image). Glue two knobs onto the drawer. If you use an image, align it so it is right-side up with the text on that side of the cage. Finally, insert the drawer (correctly) into the cage and then glue on the back so the drawer is captured. Because all printers are different, you should test the fit of the drawer and face with the cage while everything is unglued. You may need to lightly file some high points if there is too much scraping. (I use a metal nail file). The plastic parts will wear on each other and loosen up with use (which you can accelerate by moving the drawer in and out many times).

The poker is an optional print and provides a ‘stick’ that you can put through the cage holes and manipulate pieces in early attempts. The final solution requires using only cage manipulation to orient the pieces.

Difficulty

4.5 out of 5

The Printable Puzzle Project

The Printable Puzzle Project aims to make available high-quality open-source models of many puzzle designs. All of our models are posted with the generous permission of their designers and are licensed for non-commercial use only. Anyone may print copies for their own personal use, but selling or otherwise monetizing them is not permitted, and puzzle designers retain all rights as copyright holders of their work.

Our puzzles are modeled using the open-source puzzlecad library. The .scad file is included with this model in case you want to modify any of its design parameters; more information on how to do this can be found in the PPP Puzzle Modeling tutorial.

The "No Problem Puzzle Collection" contains many puzzles with complicated boxes that would be too hard to model using open-scad. Additionally the original design files for the boxes have been lost due to a hd-fault. That is why these puzzles only contain scad-files for the pieces.

About The Designers

From November 2020 to April 2023 Theo Geerinck and Symen Hovinga collaborated under the trading name of "No Problem Puzzles" to design and produce their puzzles. Many of their unique packing puzzles introduce fascinating features such as moving or sliding doors and elements. These features and the way they behave always add a playful new dimension to the more familiar exercise of packing shapes. Those puzzles could once be purchased through an online printing service. Alternatively, for those who owned a 3D printer the files could be obtained from Symen.

However, after the tragic loss of Symen, purchases through the ‘No Problem Shop’ was no longer possible. Therefore, Theo decided to publish the designs so that everybody can create 3d-printed copies to be enjoyed for personal use.

Modifications to the original designs for ease of printing and aesthetics provided by Dave Crabbe and Andreas Röver.