MPP 10.5

Yikes - I knew I hadn't blogged for a while, but I hadn't realised that it had been almost a month since my last post... I am well and truly shamed! Let me try and remedy that with a steady stream of drivel(!) and perhaps the usual service will resume again at some point...

The pedants out there will immediately recognise from the title that I've skipped a gathering or two - I'm probably going to write about my recent experiences in reverse chronological order - not just to confuse the pedants, but in order to improve my chances of remembering at least some of the stories ... although it'll probably end up meaning that by the time I write about MPP 10, I won't have remembered very much at all... but at least I'll show you some pictures from it!

OK, back to this post ... fellow blogger and good puzzle mate from across the ocean, Neil-The-Juggler-Hutchison got in touch a little while back and let me know he'd be coming to the UK on business and wondered if he could swing by my place on the way up to Scotland. I told him that would be a cracking idea and offered to round up some of the locals for some get togethers... and after I'd checked that that hadn't put him off the idea totally, I put up a note on the Midlands Puzzle Party Facebook page offering a puzzle barbecue at my place on the Sunday (the plan was to barbecue some meat, not puzzles!). Soon enough a bunch of people had said they'd be interested so we firmed up the plans for the Sunday and then I organised a slighter lower key get together for the Saturday...

So last Saturday morning Neil flew into Birmingham and picked up a rental car and duly arrived at my place just after 8am ... I was already up and about having just dispatched Gill and her family on week-long cruise in the Eastern Med. 

Neil and I caught up a bit over some coffee before heading out to Henley (in Arden, not on Thames!) to meet Chris and Nigel at the ice cream shop for more coffee and some puzzling. I gave Nigel the puzzles I'd brought over for him from Wil and he duly dished some of them out to Chris and Neil ... we spent a couple of hours playing with various things we'd each brought along and Nigel had a grand old time playing with Neil's prototype Juggling Cylinder ... that much to his own surprise he ended up solving and dropping a ball bearing on the tiled floor - where we all heard it bounce, but couldn't find it despite all of us peering around intently, much to the amusement of some of the other patrons!

At lunchtime we decamped to a nearby pub for a great lunch accompanied by a couple of Sloyd puzzles that I'd brought out... we all agreed on the solution for the classic nail puzzle (even though a couple of style variations were noted!) and to my great shame I only noticed when I was packing it away that under the base Tomas had branded a personalised message: "Allard - Happy Puzzling - Tomas" - Thanks Tomas ... I almost missed that!

We did not solve High H, however... Lunch was excellent and we broke up at the appropriate time so that Nigel could go off and watch some or other soccer game(?). 

Neil and I puzzled and chilled back at my place and then next morning we prepared for the onslaught... which started with the first arrival just after ten in the morning and finished when the last bloke left at ten that evening... but what a day!

I managed to keep up with the first few folks arriving and set them up with some coffee and we'd sit in the study (puzzle room!) until the next person arrived... at some point I began to notice the puzzle room getting a bit full, but that didn't seem to stop them cramming themselves in there! I swear I could see nine people and a dog in there at one point ... so I did the obvious thing and opened a window... well, I wasn't going to get them out of there, was I?

Soon enough there really were too many people to all fit in the study and they began spilling down stairs into the lounge and the dining room, all clutching puzzles - good sign! Nigel set himself up out on the deck where the hounds wouldn't bother him too much and he was soon joined by Ali, Joe and Kevin for a little puzzlin' al fresco ... which lasted an hour or two until the rain arrived (sorry Nigel!). 

Kevin had brought his recent Mr Puzzle limited edition acquisitions along for all to have a go at and they looked rather handsome ... and he was quite chuffed with a couple of puzzles that Neil had brought over for him from Derek ... hopefully we'll be reading about those on his blog in due course...

During the course of the day several folks had a bash at the Juggling Cylinder and without fail, everyone thought it was terrific - it was great having Neil explain the thought behind the various features and explaining just how hard it is when it's fully locked up and somebody hasn't lost one of the ball bearings... in fact he admitted to taking an hour to open it recently after he lost track of one or two important little facts along the way... now if only we can talk someone into producing them... 

Neil had also brought over a Revo-sleeve he'd made up in olive wood so I did a Louis on him (there's a story from MPP 10 that I should remember to tell you!) and duly locked a Coolen-special core into it ... and I locked another into an Obsession sleeve for him to take back to Derek... fair's fair!

It was really great to see Sophie and Louise (Adin and Russ' better halves) having a bash at (and solving!) so many Karakuri boxes ... maybe Karakuri's are a girl's best friend? 

Somewhere around midday it started raining, just about as I had to start braaiing - typical! So I ended up braaiing English-style: under an umbrella in the rain... despite that, the grub wasn't too bad - I ended up burning it a bit more than I'd meant to, but it was still hoovered up quite well. In fact in the end we nearly finished all of the meat (almost unheard of at a South African's braai!) although there was plenty of coleslaw and salad left (pretty typical for a South African braai!) - and the ice cream and chocolate sauce seemed to go down well afterwards...

Somewhere around lunchtime Simon Nightingale appeared bearing several of his graded Corian block ball mazes - quite a treat for most of us who've never seen them before ... and I was rather stunned when he gave me one just for having had him over - Thank you Simon! (and by the way the four balls are still firmly implanted inside the block at the moment... I will get them out though! One day...) 

Steve Nicholls had brought a huge selection of his 3D printed puzzles along and insisted on giving just about everyone some puzzles ... thanks Steve!

Neil had brought several puzzles over fresh from Juggler-central's main workshop and I think he ended up finding good homes for them all ... and I can personally vouch for several of them although I still haven't had a chance to play around with most of them... having too many puzzles to play with at one point in time can be a curse! (Nah, not really...) 

Folks began drifting homewards somewhere around sunset, or rather drifting somewhere more or less homewards if their phone-cum-sat-nav happened to die on them, eh Jamie? and by the end of the night Chris, Neil and I were sat at my dining room table trying in vain to assemble my copy of Six of Diamonds ... Chris had assembled his months ago and I had failed miserably at it (even with Louis' help!!) ... so having Neil and Chris here, I jumped at my chance to see if they could do it between them ... and despite using Chris' assembled copy as a model, my copy remains in its now standard 5-piece-assembly-with-one-piece-on-the-table ... one day I'll get that thing together...

When everyone had left I was pretty wiped out and Neil was still keen for some more puzzling so I left him in the study with the Stickman Checkmate Box and my Triple Locked Box ... and when I got up in the morning they were both open in their solved positions on my desk... and Neil was a happy solver...

That was quite an incredible weekend - I felt exhausted afterwards - but had a really great time catching up with Neil and then getting to introduce him to a bunch of my local puzzling mates - thanks for dropping in Neil, it was great having you around... let's do it again next year ;-)

The last Dvořák goodies for now...

...and so onto the third instalment covering my little order of puzzling-goodness from Jakub.  This post includes three designs from Japanese wiz Osanori Yamamoto - each of which is rather 'different'.

Cockpit  is a cubic cage with three C-shaped pieces that interfere through the centre ... one of them has an extra cubie that really manages to get in the way disproportionately for such a small piece. Four of the cube's faces have crosses cut out of them and the remaining two have a full 3*3 square opening. 

As you can imagine, solving Cockpit is going to rely on manoeuvring the pieces apart in order to free up enough space to allow the pieces to pass one another (similar to Estergon and co.) The trick here is that the crosses on most of the sides mean that you're constantly having to move pieces around in particular order to enable the next move as you go first one way, then the next ... which gets you up to 16 moves to remove the first piece - and once again, an awful lot of scope for blind allies to lose yourself in!

Ice Pillar is a great name for the next puzzle as the finished puzzle looks like a classical pillar with four burr pieces passing through a hollow column. Right from the get-go there's a lot of movement - in fact every single piece will move in at least one direction - and some of them will move in several - so you're totally spoilt for choice trying to find the 30 moves required to release the first piece. 

 

In taking it apart I invoked Walker's Patented Solution of randomly fumbling around trying to make as much space in one area as I could, and whenever I ran out of opportunities, switch attention to a nearby area and try and move the space over there, until you eventually stumble across the right spot with more or less the right amount of space and you can see a route toward removing the first piece ... then it's not too hard... although along the way you can get the pieces dangling out in the breeze where you'd think they would just about fall out of their own accord, except they're still steadfastly stuck!

Putting it back together again is another story entirely! There is a single solution possible from a potential 1500-odd assemblies ... there is no way my brain will stretch to that, so I invoked Master Rover's gift to puzzledom to find my way back... and to some extent sort of surprised myself that I'd managed to take it apart unaided... this one's a toughie!

The last puzzle in the group isn't the hardest, and possibly not even the best looking, but it's my favourite.  Two Pairs One is a confusing looking little puzzle - at first it appears to be a cubic frame with two burr running through it, until you start moving the bits around and realise that the frame splits along the diagonal in a step-wise manner... and then the fun begins!

 

Successively moving the burrs in and out and the frame apart along the diagonal opens up the frame - until you find you can't go any further ... this puzzle has a habit of mocking you along the way - it certainly mocked my (in)abilities along the way - it might only be a level 9 puzzle, but there are a lot of entertaining little byways along the way to lose yourself in ... and you'll hear it gently laughing at you when you do that... I found that mine laughs quite a lot!

More Dvořák Goodness

Next up in my latest order from Jakub Dvořák is a set of three cubes that share a common theme again - two of them from the fertile mind of Yavuz Demirhan and the third from Japanese puzzle designing legend Osanori Yamamoto. All three target a cube shape and each has three burr pieces to be inserted into a holey cube frame ... which almost makes it sound like they should be pretty similar - except they ain't!

The first is called Estergon and was added to Ishino's website back in 2011. It's a 5*5*5 unit cube with three identical (save for colouring) "almost skeleton" burr pieces. Each of the burr pieces is offset into a corner of the cube faces, so you'll realise that the order / combination of the movements is going to be critical since the pieces are going to interact inside the cube. 

When you start playing with this puzzle, and indeed the other two in this post, there's a lot of movement available - it just all seems to be pretty useless! In fact if you push the burr bits out to their extremities, they can almost dangle precariously, mocking you but steadfastly not coming out!

A more methodical approach will identify a couple of possibly less expected moves that then allow you to develop some space, and ultimately allow pieces to pass one another inside the cube and then let the first piece out in a mere seven moves ... albeit seven moves that eluded me for absolute ages!

Estergon 2 ramps things up a bit by moving up to a 6*6*6 cube and giving the ends of the three skeleton burr pieces a 3*3 head. That little "improvement " brings some interesting positions for the internal sticks and makes it a whole lot harder. Given the increased size of the burr bits' heads, this one's even more floppy when you start pulling the three burr pieces out, and yet you won't be able to get past the other pieces inside there ... it will certainly tease you, but it won't give its secrets away without a fight...

This one also took me an inordinate amount of time to work out - there are some unusual little moves and you're pretty spoilt for choice in terms of what to do along the way, so there is plenty of opportunity to wander down a blind alley along the way - or that's my excuse at least!

[A little word on the craftsmanship here: Jakub made these two at the same time and I guess he knew folks would be getting them together, seeing as how they're one and two of a set... so he resized the sticks on Estergon so that the cube was the same size even though it's a 5*5*5 cube next to Estergon 2 which is a 6*6*6 ... nice touch!] 

Castle Hole by Osanori Yamamoto shares some similarities with Estergon in that it's a 5*5*5 cube with three simple burr pieces running through it, but whereas Estergon has solid sides in its target state, Castle Hole has three faces with three missing cubies on each... and those little holes make all the difference. 

 

Being "just" a 5*5*5 cube, the pieces don't tend to dangle around quite as much as they do with Estergon 2, and working out where you can move the pieces using those extra little holes will yet again provide plenty of blind alleys to wander aimlessly around - ask me about them, I suspect I explored them all along the way! 

In the end, there's a single, rather elegant solution to freeing up just enough space to remove the first piece in 11 moves...  a great little puzzle - really like the wood on this one.

Four from Yavuz Demirhan

It feels like ages since I sat down to write about puzzles... not just because there have been a bunch of posts about strange geometric constructions, but because I've been swapping out my old PC for a new one and that invariably ends up swallowing several hours / days / weeks until I've got things back the way I want them ... anyhoo - as of yesterday, I think that little piece of joy is now behind me... so back to the puzzles!!

Ali, one of my puzzling partners in crime recently dropped me an email passing on an offer of some new puzzles from Jakub Dvořák at the New Pelikan Workshop. The email listed a bunch of puzzles from Yavuz Demirhan and Osanori Yamamoto and the accompanying pictures looked pretty good, but to be honest, the prices listed made them just simply too hard to pass up ... so I felt a little guilty when I went back to Ali and asked if he could add one of each onto his order - until I discovered that that was exactly what he and Nigel had done as well... and so the three of us ended up ordering a set of Jakub's latest puzzles each. 

They duly arrived a little over a week later and I was well and truly gob-smacked at the quality of these puzzles that had effectively cost me an average of fifteen quid each - absolutely fantastic. 

The first four puzzles are all designs from Yavuz Demirhan and you'll see that they share a common family theme - they all consist of fixed frames with a set of burr pieces to be inserted / removed from the frames. Each has a unique solution and as you might expect, as the number of pieces rises, the level of the solution rises with it...

 

Pylon 2P2C is the simplest of the group having two burr pieces (2P) trapped between two columns (2C) ... it looks like there's a fair amount of open space between the columns, but the protrusion in the frames severely cuts down what you can do with the pieces... that said, there are a few things you can do with the pieces, and a little experimentation will take you down the pathway to the level nine solution and removal of the first piece ... and then another nine moves will release the other piece. It's a nice little puzzle that shouldn't hold up a seasoned puzzler for more than a couple of minutes. 

Columnata 2P3C ups the ante a little by throwing three columns into the mix along with two skeleton burr pieces. Adding the third column, even though it only has a single internal protrusion, takes this up to level 12. 

 

Although it's not as straight-forward as Pylon 2P2C, a little experimentation will show you what can be done, and how the pieces might be able to get past one another and then ultimately out of the frame - again, this one should be accessible for most...

Columnata 3P2C makes things a lot more "interesting" with several protrusions inside the two columns and a lot more wood in the three burr pieces - so instead of dealing with simple skeleton pieces, they now carry a lot of their own restrictions with them... and that brings a lot less freedom to the equation. Experimentation will show you where the main problems are going to come from but not going to show you a way out very quickly ... this puzzle takes 19 moves to release the first piece, after all. 

After a little playing around and trying to find an exit, I switched tack and rather than trying to find an exit that worked, experimented with swapping pieces around, and then trying to find an exit ... and that strategy ended up paying dividends ... this is a really neat little puzzle...

The last in this set is called Guillotine - it looks a bit like Columnata 3P2C, except there's an extra board inserted between the two columns ... and that board is free to ride up and down in the tracks - much like a Guillotine , only slightly less terminal. 

The burr pieces on Guillotine are once again skeleton pieces, but the combination of the frames with a few interesting protrusions and the moving board with not a lot of extra holes in it makes for a really interesting puzzle. 

Even though this one "only" has a level 18 solution, it's easily my favourite in the set. The combination of the board moving in two axes while the burr pieces are "free" to move in three axes, albeit trapped by the fixed frame, makes this a great puzzle to get to grips with.

Four fantastic little puzzles from Jakub and the guys at the New Pelikan Workshop - tremendous quality puzzles and fantastic value for money... can you tell I'm a big fan?