Midlands Puzzle Party – round 14(!)

Seems like absolute ages ago that we had our first Midlands Puzzle Party – mostly in our dining room. A few meetings later we filled the dining room and most of the lounge and then we outgrew chez Walker altogether – so now we only end up back here for the occasional post-MPP-BBQ. Growth is definitely good though – we’ve all made a bunch of new puzzling mates and found some great new toys together… right then, back to the here and now. 

MPP14 was a bit strange for – I didn’t have my usual Dutch mate with me for the weekend – so MPP14 was just an MPP, not the traditional weekend’s worth of puzzling – it did mean that I wasn’t totally shattered come Monday morning though…

MPP14 was a reasonably small meeting by our recent standards – most of the usual stalwarts were there and we had a couple of new faces drop in for a while as well…

I’d remembered to take my copy of Mike Toulouzas’ Illusion along for Jamie this time after I’d left my rucksack at home for MPP13. (I’d remembered to take the crate of puzzles, just not the rucksack with two extra puzzles in it – I’m not that daft!). Jamie had a bash at it and it didn’t take long for him to find the appropriate axis to start getting things to come apart… and it only took a little encouragement to get him to take it to bits. Judging from the look on his face afterwards, I think he likes it – so I’m glad I remembered to take it along this time. 

Steve had brought a number of seriously awesome puzzles along, including one of the most unusual-looking Stickman puzzleboxes in creation – the Lighthouse. I’d never seen one of these in the flesh before, so I made sure I could spend some quality time with it! The details on this beauty need to be seen to be appreciated. The Lighthouse stands on a rocky base with little rocky outcrops sticking out all over the place – all perfectly carved in wood. The lighthouse itself appears to have some sort of thread cut on the corners and the top section looks like it might form part of a screw mechanism – only problem is the whole thing is totally locked up… It took me quite a while to find how to start this puzzle as it turned out I was looking in totally the wrong place for the first move… the next few followed eventually and then I had something I could work with … finding my way into one of the two compartments before I began to lock it all up again. An absolute delight to play with and definitely on my wish list – hopefully one day I’ll have one of my own and then I’ll allow myself to go after the second compartment as well … a lovely experience – Thanks Steve!

Satomi and Scott set up shop and I know for a fact that I wasn’t the only one buying stuff from them … sometimes it’s really nice to be able to see and play with puzzles before you shell out for them. Come to think of it that’s probably why I always end up spending so much whenever I see Wil… :-)

I’d taken a bit of a mish-mash of things along for folks to try … including a couple of things whose looks mislead… it was fun having a conversation about ordinary burrs with Stephen’s mate Chris who popped in for an hour or two. I pointed out one in my pile and suggested he have a play with it. He made a comment about burrs not really being his thing, so I insisted and he picked up my copy of Jim Gooch’s Q-Burr made by John Devost. Even he had to grin when he realised it was anything but an ordinary burr. (If you don’t know it, look it up – I put it among my other standard burrs to amuse the unwary! Or more accurately to amuse me when the unwary stumble across it!) 

I’d also taken a copy of a three level nested burr by Hiroshi Kaneko along and suggested a couple of the regulars have a bash at the burr… the look on their faces when they made some space between the pieces and spotted another burr inside the first one was pretty good, but the deep respect when they got that one open to find the third one nestling inside was something else altogether … yet from the outside, it looks pretty ordinary… sometimes looks can be rather deceiving. 

 

Adin had brought along a Franco Rocco chess set cast in translucent plastic – somewhat less expensive than Nigel’s metal version, it’s every bit as good as a puzzle and I ended up getting challenged to assemble one of the sides back into a cube again. Despite having done that on Nigel’s set some time back, it still took me absolute ages having to effectively start from scratch again. When I’d just about completed it Adin picked up the other set and assembled it in what felt like about a minute. (I knows when I’s beat!) 

Ali had his collection of Rocky bolts neatly laid out on some fabric, and at one point Steve chanced upon one of Wil’s entanglement spanners (you know the one: spanner with a loop of chain around it trapping a ring) and set about what will probably become known as Steve’s alternate solution to Rocky’s bolts. Luckily I had my camera handy to capture this most elegant of solutions. 

Simon Bexfield had a huge collection of puzzles and toys as usual and took great delight in demonstrating his Bex Box of Invisibility – a cubic box with holes all over the place that you could see through and shine laser pointers through (yes, we played!), and yet when you put something through the centre of it, you could still see right through it… Simon’s patter was top notch as usual: this was his box for keeping his Black Holes in… it all makes sense, I’m sure … Thanks Simon for my DIY Bex Box of Invisibility!

What we may have lacked in numbers, we definitely made up for in banter and puzzling. 

Yet another excellent MPP – nice one Nigel!