Moving Castles Puzzle

“Yes, I am sure that this is one of the puzzles that you would expect from the amazing design brain of Tamás Vanyó! This is the third of his castle collaborations with Pelikan. I have to admit that I have not had much time to try this one yet. It consists of 9 pieces to fit on a frame. Each piece has the same basic structure with a waist that is 2×2 voxels in size which will fit into the frame and then on either side of that waist are the wonderful characteristic castle shapes based on a 3×3 grid. This puzzle is not quite as straightforward as that because they have added an extra twist. There are 8 ways to place the pieces on the frame but the extra challenge is to organise them in such a way that can walk through the entire castle from START to STOP (i.e. create one continuous path using both sides of pieces). There is a start mark on the frame and a small arrow which serves as a sort of “checkpoint” and the direction of your path, as it’s on the opposite corner of the start and end. So far I have managed to assemble all the pieces on the frame which alone was a nice fun challenge but I have certainly not gotten anywhere near creating a path all the way around the puzzle from beginning to end. I think this might well take me several weeks to complete. The assembled puzzle on the frame looks like one of MC Escher’s impossible 3D creations and even unsolved looks beautiful on display.”