Sticky Soma is a variation to the classic Soma Cube puzzle by Piet Hein from 1933, which has 240 solutions. The pieces of Sticky Soma have grooves. Eighteen sticks (hence the name!) go through these grooves and keep the puzzle together. The puzzle was commissioned by Patrick Luteijn. George Miller analysed which of the four fundamentally different designs would be the most interesting one. The four challenges have 70, 64, 56 and 50 solutions, respectively. So we chose the latter.
The set of seven Soma pieces and 18 sticks took near 12 hours to 3D print on a Dutchy 3D printer. 95 meter of 1.75-mm colourful PLA filament was used to print it: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, magenta and black.
Deisgned by Oskar van Deventer, who has created many different puzzles including his brand of Oskar Puzzles which are mechanical puzzles and objects that can only exist thanks to 3D printing technology. Since 1978, he has been creating hundreds of mechanical puzzles, making him one of the world's most prolific designers. Several of his innovative designs are commercially available.