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4-Burr Stick
A terrific concept here, take 4 six- piece burrs, fix them together end to end and you have a 4-burr stick. We have two ‘core’ pieces, each about ten inches long, and 16 cross pieces. Of the 16, 3 pieces are duplicated, there is a mirror pair, and then there are 3 sets of another mirror pair, plus two odd pieces. Try and guess why there is no assembled picture of this puzzle?
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Taking one of the core pieces (they are the two long pieces in the picture) in the left hand, and the other in the right hand, the right piece can be put next to each long face of the left piece in 4 ways. This makes 16 orientations. This number must then be doubled to allow for inverting one of the core pieces. So we have 32 different orientations of the two core pieces, although many of them are obviously unsuitable starting points. If one unit cube was moved from one core piece to the other, the two would form a mirror pair. This may lead to a clue for its assembly. I think I will work on this over a few pints in the immediate future.
To protect the designer’s (Steve Smith) copyright I have not pictured all the pieces, just enough to give the general idea.
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