MPP Burr

Yip, you read that right – it says MPP Burr… what the heck is that, I hear you ask, well let me tell you a little story. 

A couple of weeks ago I received a little package from Austria – which was strange, because I couldn’t remember having bought anything from anyone in Austria recently – and I don’t buy that much that I’d forget an entire delivery like that. [I have a decent memory! ;-) ]

Turned out it was a unique burr designed and made by Stephan Baumegger for the Midlands Puzzle Party – complete with the initials MPP across the three axes – how cool is that!

Stephan has been experimenting with some unusual shapes of burr for a while now ('Droid anyone?) and more recently had begun playing around with letters – at which point he decided it might be rather fun to surprise the Midlands bunch with a burr in their honour – heaven only knows what we did to deserve that!

Having designed it and satisfied himself it would be interesting, he duly knocked up a rather gorgeous copy and dropped it in the post to me on behalf of the Midlands-bunch … which gets me to the start of my little story. 

Now not only does it look smashing as a puzzle, it’s unique and “ours”! The pieces have some rather interesting shapes – especially the bits that make up the legs of the ‘M’ - some of them wrap around the bits next to them and make for a really interesting solution path. 

When I started playing with it, it quickly became abundantly clear that this isn’t a simple little burr that happens to form the shapes of our initials – it’s a proper decent puzzle that just happens to have those letters on its faces. 

There’s a clue in the level – 6.10.3.3… while there are several false starts, it has a unique 34-move solution to fully disassemble it … and given my general rubbishness at burrs, it won't surprise you to hear that reassembly came courtesy of BurrTools. 

Having received such a lovely gift, I thought it was only fitting that it start a tour of all the MPP-regulars – so I’ve passed it on to a local puzzler and asked him to send it on to the next one until everyone’s had a bash at it and told Stephan what they think of it…

Thank you Stephan – that was a wonderful gesture – I’ve enjoyed it and I suspect that my fellow MPP-ers will as well! Thanks!