Thanks Oli!

A couple of months ago my mate Oli (yip, the one we blame for almost everything) began experimenting with impossible folded playing cards … he posted pics of his experiments on FaceBook and they were generally rather well-received, attracting praise and encouragement from none other than the god-father of such things (yip, the one I blamed for the earbud cube … and I guess I should blame him for the next one as well!). Soon enough Angus was taunting Oli with pics of his new designs and Oli was eagerly stepping up to the plate and coming up with his own versions of them… 

Not content with merely making impossible playing cards, Oli then set about putting those impossible playing cards into bottles, and indeed displaying them inside said-bottles in various impossible manners… like with bolts through them, hanging from chains, secured by tightened nuts… 

Soon the awful people of internet-land began goading him into further impossibleness so he placed several twisty puzzles inside bottles with throats too narrow to allow them out (sensible use of a twisty puzzle in my books!).  

Then someone challenged him to put a miniature artist’s posable mannequin inside a bottle and that looked pretty impressive, but when you find out how the limbs are connected (springs stretch through each limb) you feel like bowing down in awe… 

...then there was a large 6-piece burr in the bottle, but he didn’t like how the key piece flopped around so he bolted it to the next piece with a tightened nut on the end of the bolt… 

OK, so he’s graduated First Class from the University of That’s Not Blimming Possible and he’s doing things that he really shouldn’t be dreaming of…

Now back when he started playing around with impossibility, he offered to make me an impossible bottle as a gift … and when I ran into him at Peter’s place just after New Year he had brought along an entire crate of impossibleness, some to give away and some for sale – several to chat about. 

He’d also made up a slew of impossibly linked cards that he proceeded to give to all comers, and soon enough he’d presented me with an impossibly braided strap and a mini 3*3*3 in a tiny mason jar, told me to take my pick of the bottles and only allowed me to give him a nominal payment when I took his bolted-burr-and-impossible-coaster-card-in-a-bottle from him as well… 

…and that’s how I ended up with a haul of Oli’s impossibility – including a Royal Flush, most of it bolted and suspended from a chain inside a bottle, secured by a Monkey’s Fist knot or two – Just Brilliant! 

Thanks Oli!