Cookie

(Click to Enlarge)

What I love about packing puzzles and makes them one of my favorite types of puzzles is the countless concepts and ideas out there. There's always something new to experience, whether you prefer 2D or 3D packing puzzles. Personally, I prefer the two dimension ones, mainly because some of my favorites are 2D puzzles as well. I believe there's more room for creativity with 2D. I could be wrong, but that's how I feel.

Cookie, designed by Jürg von Känel (thanks for this info, George), is a great example of a creative design. You might have seen similar concepts where you need to add an extra piece to the already (apparently) solved puzzle. Cookie is slightly different though. You not only have to worry about adding the extra piece, but you also need to rearrange the pieces around the frame so all the holes can accommodate all ten chocolate chips.

Each of the ten pieces features one or more half-cut circles that when combined with another piece merges into a complete circle in order to fit a chocolate chip. At first, there's two half cuts scattered around the tray. All you have to do is just to find a way to combine them without messing the other nine complete circles. It looks complex at first, but trust me, this is a very easy puzzle, at least if you're a good observant. You should be able to solve it just by looking at the picture...

The puzzle is beautifully made in three different colored pieces, plus the round chocolate chips, which look real enough to be thinking about eating chocolate afterwards. With a diameter of 14cm (5.5"), the puzzle is large enough to provide a satisfying experience, and the cover serves as a box to store the puzzle and prevents the pieces from getting lost.

As for the challenge itself, I reckon seasoned puzzlers won't be too happy with this one, because the puzzle is very easy. As soon as I looked at it with the intent to solve it I immediately found the solution, which baffled me. The concept looks so interesting, and yet the solution is so simple it deeply disappoints. I only had to flip three pieces and it was solved in seconds.

Now, my first thought was that the arrangement of the pieces was wrong and the solution should be more concealed. However, after messing with the pieces for a while I couldn't rearrange them good enough to make the solution less obvious. Each piece is different and belongs in a specific place in the tray. Excluding mirror images, there's just no way to make this puzzle more challenging.

Closing Comments:

Cookie is indeed an interesting puzzle and features an elegant design. But that's not good enough. The challenge factor simply isn't there. Unless you're not used to this type of puzzles or you're a collector, like me, there's not much in it for me to recommend it, unfortunately. You be the judge.

Availability: You can get a copy of the Cookie puzzle at Brilliant Puzzles for about $13 USD.

Update: Apparently, there's indeed a less obvious configuration for the pieces that makes the puzzle a little more challenging than I originally thought. See this link, where it shows how the pieces should be presented initially. Thanks George!