Sunday 12 February 2012

The Collective


Last year some time the Mr Puzzle website announced that Brian would be making a short run of one of his horribly complicated burrs called The Collective, and invited anyone interested to sign up for an alert … well it couldn’t hurt, could it?
A while later they began taking pre-orders for them, and it would have been rude not to, wouldn’t it?
…and then just before Christmas Sue got in touch to say my copy was ready, so I sent some Paypal in a southerly direction and a few days later my puzzle is headed in a northerly direction, just missing the tail-end of the Christmas mail madness.
The Collective is one of Brian’s own designs and was entered in the 2002 IPP22 Puzzle Design competition.
Now the web site is pretty explicit about this puzzle – it is clearly a very mean burr … not just because it has a lot of pieces, or because most of them aren’t necessarily shaped the way you’re expecting, or because there’s a twist in the tail, but mainly because assembling this monster requires more hands than most of us possess – or a jig which I’d like to think that Brian has hidden somewhere in his workshop if only for his own sanity when he has to assemble a run of these things! 
Although it’s not a particularly high level burr, the required dexterity will test anyone – take my word for it!
Right – having a look at it, made in two distinct woods, it’s pretty easy to recognise it as a five piece (!) burr inside a cage. There’s a fair amount of not-particularly-useful movement in the beginning, but after a while you discover what you can do with the internal burr … of course that just gives you a messy looking puzzle with bits of burr projecting out of the cage … it doesn’t seem to actually be very useful at all – and indeed it took me quite a while to work out where to go next – and as usual it was during my random bits of experimenting that I stumbled across something that might just turn out to be useful. Problem was, if I was right, this wasn’t going to be pretty. 
Turns out I was right, on both counts, so I stopped just short of the rapid disassembly phase of the puzzle and put it all back together again, satisfied that I could, if I wanted to…
...a few moves in ... now what?
Of course, being the inquisitive puzzler I probably am, that phase didn’t last very long and soon enough I had it all in bits on the desk – and boy are there a lot of bits in there! (29 pieces all told…) Quite a few of the bits are the same (there are a couple of sets of 6 identical pieces) but the structure isn’t especially symmetrical – it can’t be – for one thing there’s that 5-piece burr in the centre and for another there’s the rather unusual way that it all locks together. 
Conceptually it’s a pretty decent challenge to work out how it needs to be assembled, but then gravity and not being blessed with 5 hands raises its ugly head and you realise quite how big an assembly challenge this really is…
Let’s be kind and just say that it took me quite a while to reassemble it the first time, and only slightly less the second (and then only because I found a sneaky way of holding something properly!) – it’s an absolute sod to put back together and I seriously hope that Brian has a jig to make the process a bit easier on himself.

7 comments:

  1. I think I must have gotten mine at about the same time as you - absolutely beautiful! I have still not managed to take it apart yet but then I am a rank amateur compared to you!! Plus, of course, I have spent a happy few weeks playing with new twisty puzzles!!

    I suspect that it is a puzzle that cannot be solved using Burrtools and so I am going to have to line something up to allow rotations - Lord only knows what piece will rotate though!

    Kevin
    PuzzleMad

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  2. ...speaking of twisty puzzles, I heard a distant scream last night - are you OK Kevin? :-)

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    1. Finally managed to prise her fingers from around my throat!! She's got a real good grip from holding on to all those handbags!

      I wonder whether the collective might be in the "Geometric Puzzle Design" book that I just received from Amazon?

      Kevin
      PuzzleMad

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    2. :-) ... Nah, but there's plenty of other good stuff in there! I love the way Coffin even turns making puzzles into a puzzle itself...

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  3. Hey Allard, great write up and I certainly like the clues that turned up every now and then. I love this puzzle but at first I thought it was a git!! Oli has borrowed mine and reassembly is testing him.
    It's a great piece of work by Brian and glad you have shared a glimpse into it's beauty with us all.

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    1. Cheers for that Ali - hopefully the clues disguised enough not to trip up someone not looking for them! :-)

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    2. I only saw them because I have taken it apart.
      No spoilers here mate ;)

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