Frederic Boucher: The Box Is the Puzzle
Frederic Boucher: The Box Is the Puzzle
Put four of his puzzles next to each other and the first thing you notice is that none of the boxes are closed. There are windows cut into the sides. Circles, squares, whole open faces.
It looks like a design flourish. It is the mechanism.
Who Is Frederic Boucher?
A packing puzzle designer whose work is produced in wood by Pelikan Puzzles and NothingYet Designs. He is prolific to a degree that works against him - as one reviewer put it, he puts out great and genuinely hard designs so fast that they sometimes fly under the radar.
Which is a fair description of his standing. He is not (yet) a household name in the way Stewart Coffin is. But the people who design puzzles for a living know exactly who he is, and the reason is the MINIMA series.
The Windows
Start with the problem every packing puzzle designer faces. You have a box and some pieces. If the box is wide open, the puzzle is a fitting exercise and usually not very hard. So you make the opening smaller, and the puzzle gets harder because pieces now have to enter in a particular order and orientation.
Dr. Volker Latussek took that idea as far as it goes by closing the box almost completely. Boucher went the other way.
He cuts windows. Not one opening, but several, placed deliberately around the box. Each one lets something specific happen: a piece can be rotated at that point, or pushed from the side, or a finger can reach in and hold something while another piece moves past it.
So the difficulty is not that you cannot get pieces in. It is that the box is telling you, quite precisely, where the solution passes through - and you have to work out what each opening is for. A window that looks like access is often there to let a piece turn, and using it as a doorway wastes it.
MINIMA: A Format Other Designers Now Build In
This is the part that explains his reputation among designers.
MINIMA is his series: small restricted packing puzzles built in a fixed envelope of twelve voxels, typically a 2x2x3 solid inside a slightly larger cage, with windows positioned to permit exactly the rotations the solution needs. He designed the original twelve.
The format then escaped. Other designers began producing their own MINIMA puzzles inside his envelope - including Volker Latussek, whose contribution is titled Minima for Frederic. Designing a good puzzle is one thing. Designing a format that your peers then want to work in is a different order of compliment, and very few people manage it.
MINIMA Tower is the clearest example we stock, and it is one of his own favourites: four identical L-shaped pieces into a 2x2x4 cage, forming a 2x2x3 solid inside, with a single 1x1x2 opening at the top.
Note the word identical. Coffin's first rule is that every piece should be different, precisely so the solver gets no free information. Boucher hands you four of the same piece and still makes it Expert - the entire difficulty has been moved out of the pieces and into the box.
Five Pieces, Over and Over
Look across his work and the piece count barely moves. Four, five, occasionally nine. BonBon is five. Cubiz is five. MINIMA Slider is five.
That is a deliberate constraint, and it is the same instinct as Coffin's: if the difficulty cannot come from volume, it has to come from structure. With Boucher the structure is always the container.
Tenchi is where he pushes it furthest. Nine pieces, and the box is open at the top and the bottom - so the solve is not only packing them in, but arranging them so that nothing falls out of either end. It is the only puzzle in the shop where gravity is part of the problem.
Where to Start
None of these are beginner puzzles. If you have packed a few boxes before, MINIMA Slider is the right entry: Hard rather than Expert, five pieces, exactly one solution, and it had its world debut here. It was also Greg's exchange puzzle at the 2026 IPP in Assisi.
From there Cubiz, then the Expert pair - BonBon and MINIMA Tower - and Tenchi last. The full run is in the Frederic Boucher collection.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Frederic Boucher?
A prolific packing puzzle designer, produced in wood by Pelikan Puzzles and NothingYet Designs. He is best known among designers for creating the MINIMA series, a format other puzzle designers now build their own puzzles in.
What is a MINIMA puzzle?
A small restricted packing puzzle in a fixed envelope - twelve voxels of space, usually a 2x2x3 solid inside a cage, with windows cut into the box to permit particular rotations. Boucher designed the original twelve and other designers have since added their own.
Why do his boxes have holes in them?
Because the holes are the puzzle. Each window allows a specific move - rotating a piece at that point, pushing one from the side, or holding a piece while another passes. Working out what each opening is for is most of the solve.
Which Boucher puzzle should I start with?
MINIMA Slider. It is Hard rather than Expert, has a single clean solution, and is the most approachable way into how his boxes work. Do not start with Tenchi.
What makes Tenchi different?
It is open at both the top and the bottom. Nine pieces have to be arranged so that none falls out of either opening, which makes it the rare packing puzzle where gravity is part of the constraint rather than a convenience.
Are his puzzles good for beginners?
It depends what you are after. Everything we carry from him is Hard or Expert, which suits two quite different people: someone who has solved packing puzzles before and wants the next step up, or a complete beginner who specifically wants a serious challenge rather than a quick win. If you want something you will finish this evening, start with a standard 3D packing puzzle instead.
Where to Go Next
If the restricted-box idea appeals, Dr. Volker Latussek is the designer working the opposite side of it, and Osanori Yamamoto reaches similar difficulty with two pieces and a frame.
Otherwise browse 3D packing puzzles or the full mechanical puzzles catalogue.