Andrew Crowell: The Master of the TIC

Quick answer: Andrew Crowell invented the turning interlocking cube, a puzzle that cannot come apart without a rotation. He did not design them one at a time. He wrote a computer program to generate them, and has been curating its output ever since. We carry more than forty.

Best for: solvers who want a series rather than a single puzzle, and anyone curious about what happens when a designer stops designing by hand.

Kevin Sadler at PuzzleMad calls him the master of the TIC, and uses the phrase the way you would use a job title rather than a compliment. It has stuck because nobody else is close.

He Wrote a Program to Design Them

This is the fact that explains everything else about the series.

Crowell did not sit down and work out forty variations. Early on he wrote his own software to search the space of turning interlocking cubes, and it generated designs faster than any person could evaluate them. Hundreds of them.

Our own MysTIC is labelled honestly on this point: it was designed by a computer program Andrew Crowell built. Not assisted by one. Designed by one.

If that sounds like it should make the puzzles worse, it is worth knowing it is not unusual at the top of this field. Frans de Vreugd did the same thing with board burrs, feeding pieces into Burrgrower to push levels past what hand design could reach. Both men arrived at the same conclusion at roughly the same time: the interesting puzzles are too rare to find by intuition. You have to search for them.

What the Program Does Not Do

A search program will hand you thousands of valid results. Almost all of them are boring.

It cannot tell you that fourteen moves of shuffling before the real idea arrives is tedious, or that a puzzle with two equally good solutions is less satisfying than one with a single forced path, or that the moment of discovery should land near the end rather than at move three. Those are judgements, and they are the actual work.

You can see the judgement in the numbers. MysTIC takes fifteen moves, and nine of them are for the last piece alone. That distribution is not an accident of the search. It is a choice about where the difficulty should sit, made by someone reading output and rejecting most of it.

The same is visible across the range. Two-piece TICs like EcstaTIC keep nothing hidden and still resist you. TwisTIC, his flagship, packs the same idea into a three by three cube and is one of the hardest things here.

Working With Christoph Lohe

Two of the TICs were not solo work. Crowell designed Cyburr and Chamburr with the German designer Christoph Lohe, and both were published by Pelikan.

Lohe died at the end of January 2024, aged 65. Kevin Sadler, who had reviewed twenty of his designs, wrote that he considered him a friend despite the two of them never having met. When those first collaborations appeared, Kevin says he wondered whether the pair had invented an entirely new category of puzzle between them.

Other Workshops Make Them Too

A designer who prints his own puzzles does not usually end up in other people's catalogues. Crowell does.

Brian Menold at Wood Wonders cuts his TICs in hardwood, in larger runs, specifically because demand outruns what one person can print. Cubic Dissection has produced them as well, and Pelikan handled the Lohe collaborations. That is three separate premium workshops choosing to make one man's designs, which is about as clear a signal of standing as this field offers.

Allard Walker, reviewing Crowell's TIC Vault, put the other half of it well: the puzzle is the work of a man who has seriously mastered his 3D printers. He designs them and he makes them, and the TIC Vault went on to take jury recognition at the Puzzle Design Competition.

Which Crowell Puzzle to Start With

Begin with EcstaTIC. Two pieces, one rotation, and it outsells every other TIC we carry. Then FantasTIC for the longer sequence, and MysTIC if you want to feel the nine-moves-for-the-last-piece structure deliberately.

How turning interlocking cubes work walks the whole range by piece count, from two up to seven. The full shelf is in TIC puzzles, everything of his we stock is in the Andrew Crowell collection, and the wider category is mechanical puzzles.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Andrew Crowell?

An American puzzle designer who invented the turning interlocking cube and has designed hundreds of them, most with the help of software he wrote himself. Kevin Sadler at PuzzleMad refers to him as the master of the TIC.

What is a turning interlocking cube?

An interlocking puzzle that cannot be taken apart by sliding alone. At least one piece has to rotate to clear another. There is a full explanation in how turning interlocking cubes work.

Did Andrew Crowell really use a computer to design his puzzles?

Yes, and he wrote the program himself. It searches for valid turning interlocking cubes and produces far more than anyone could use. The design work is in choosing which of its results are worth making.

How many TIC puzzles has he designed?

Hundreds have been generated; dozens have been released. We carry more than forty, ranging from two pieces up to seven.

Which Andrew Crowell puzzle should I start with?

EcstaTIC. Two pieces, nothing concealed, and the rotation is unmistakable once you find it. It is the best-selling TIC we carry and a reasonable first mechanical puzzle.

Are Andrew Crowell puzzles only 3D printed?

No. He prints his own, and ours are printed, but Brian Menold at Wood Wonders cuts them in hardwood and other workshops have produced them too. The design is the same; the material is not.