So far I have encountered this puzzle and completed it dozens of times it is ALWAYS… and I mean literally ALWAYS solved by moving one piece down and ding done. Like 2 seconds.
Is there something extra I should be doing for more rewards, or an achievement or something?
Nope, it looks like Blizz just didn’t implement it properly because it’s been my experience too.
I think that’s unintentional, there were pipe puzzles out in the open world that required you to move more pieces. Imo, I wish they kept the older puzzle since I found that one more fun. I never been good at these types of puzzles. 
Maybe they did it just to scare you into thinking you’ll have to do this giant puzzle to get a buff.
I know I was spooked upon seeing it the first time. I remember doing the puzzle in Ringing Deeps that made me feel a bit silly for a while.
Nope.
This puzzle is, Blizzard, THE HARDEST puzzle in GAME and I applaud your hard work and ask that you never change this puzzle in any way shape or form. I promise you all that I get so much engagement from this puzzle that nothing needs to be changed at all.
Puzzle is great
please don’t fix it 
Seems like a bug. It’s always the same one in the bottom right. But you know how this community reacts when a bug is undone to increase difficulty.
Fun detected!!!
I ,sadly, just looked at it for a few seconds and just closed it figuring I’d not figure it out.
“I was having so much fun 1 click solving puzzles, and nerfing this is a huge slap in the face!”
I miss the way they were in Season 1, and doesn’t help the perception that players who like delves want things braindead easy. (See direction thread is already going.)
My guess is they don’t want players slowing down to do them, to keep it moving, but it’s too much effort to remove them completely. So there they are, with their one pipe mechanic. Yes it’s dumb and an easy target.
Okay glad I am not alone on this, on one hand I would like to do something a little more thinking heavy but then again I don’t want to spend 3 minutes during a 10 minute delve to do a puzzle so if they leave it like this for a super quick buff I won’t complain.
I basically just wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing some weird achievement like “doing it the hard way,” or “work smart not hard.”
Here I thought all that money spent on mage college had finally paid off and I was just really smart.
LOL right!!! I think I was world first and also world fastest .001 seconds solving time should I apply for Liquid and Echo?
Its probably intentional, all the delve puzzles are solvable in very few clicks for the most part, theyre not meant to be a challenge.
I couldn’t find any other way to solve it left to right. The top two quadrants are blocked from each other along the y axis and from the lower half of the puzzle along the x axis.
So maybe at some late point they got some bad feedback or metrics on the pipe puzzles and just locked it down to make it easy while they look for a replacement.
Eh, could be worse. We could be doing turtle puzzles like the ones from BfA instead. 
“A turtle made it to the water!”
Considering the fact that Undermine’s wire puzzle chests all use the exact same puzzle, and none of them require much thought at at all, I’d say it’s sadly intentional.
Blizzard is afraid of actually challenging us with puzzles.
I skipped a pipe puzzle because I was there to complete a delve, not spend more time on the puzzle itself than the delve. It wasn’t the kind of puzzle I’m used to encounter in delves but more like an open world one where you would spend more than a minute to solve
I mean, if they made it an actual puzzle I’d just move right on by.
None of the buffs are nearly good enough to spend 5 minutes spinning pipes around since those chests are always Hero Container/Silence Pot/50% HP shield.