Results are in...

Thanks to everyone who took the time to send in an entry... and for all the abuse that came along with it - you know who you are - and I know I'm doing the right thing by getting some of my puzzling friends around the world to wrack their little grey cells to identify some really obscure low resolution pictures of (alleged!) puzzles. 

First off the mark with a really early entry was Will Hu from Australia - he improved his entry a couple of times over the course of the week, but sadly, didn't stay at the top of my leaderboard for very long... he did end on a very creditable 40.5 - Well done Will!

Georg and Astrid put in a joint entry and scored a jolly fine 42 - good number that! Coincidentally, Brett scored exactly the same... and then a day later spotted a Loki in there, sadly a day too late. Oli managed to tear himself away from child-minding for a few minutes to put in an impressive 46 correct answers.

For quite a while I had a tie on 46.5 between Nick, Chris and Steve and only a late burst of inspiration when he woke up on New Year's Day gave Nick Robert Rose's Double Semi-Maze to put him in the lead at 47.5 ... good thing puzzlers aren't at all competitive. 

So this year's winner (again!) is Nick Baxter - I shall be posting you some Strijbos heavy metal, that I'm assured you don't have, in due course... Well done Nick!

I need to add a footnote in here and give a shout-out to Mike from Hawaii who put in an entry that made me revisit all the scores (and remove half a point from everyone else!) ... he'd listed a designer for The Brain and I'd always thought the designer wasn't known... a "fact" that seemed to be borne out when none of the other entrants had a name in there - just Mag-Nif who were the manufacturers, a scan through Rob Stegmann's online compendium didn't list a designer and neither did the manufacturer's website... so I quizzed my mates at the EPP yesterday and they didn't know, and it was only this morning that Google pointed me at Goetz's website (and a Martin Gardner archive) that confirmed that Marvin Allison Jr designed The Brain - thanks Mike.


OK - here are all the answers to my holiday challenge... the numbers came courtesy of Brett (thanks!) - and the answers were mainly culled from Nick's entry, with a little editing... :-) 

I gave credit for either Fisher or Rubik on 3... pretty much everyone got 14 right - tribute to the instantly recognisable colour scheme on Derek's puzzle. Yes Rotary Box II did look quite a bit like Pentagon... 24 was probably a step too far... it was virtually impossible to tell that the black bit toward the back was an arrow on the sticker and not a division between cubies - no-one got that one... but it was the only one that nobody managed to get right - so I don't feel too bad! The Kaldeway at 33 is the simpler one in the series. At 43 I deliberately went for the variant and not the original, 'cos I'm horrible! Someone suggested that I should have been really strict and insisted on the full name for the designer at 48 - but I didn't, because it's Christmas! :-) 

Hope you enjoyed that... same again next year?

Puzzle	Designer
1 Slideways Burr	Ray Stanton
2 Cable Car (IPP17 Host Gift)	Gary Foshee
3 (replica of original) Rubik's Cube	Erno Rubik / Tony Fisher
4 Stickman No. 7 Puzzle Box     (Beast Box)	Robert Yarger
5 Extreme Torture	Frans de Vreugd
6 Sandfield's Secret Folding Hankie	Sandfield, McDaniel, Liange
7 O Canada	Nick Baxter
8 Butterfly Lock Box     (or Pleasure and Pain)	Wil Strijbos
9 Half (J)	Hideaki Kawashima
10 Irmo Puzzle Box	Eric Fuller
11 City Maze	Raf Peeters
12 Octo Burr	Stewart Coffin
13 Cross Links	Mike Toulouzas
14 Helical Burr	Derek Bosch
15 Pipes in Pipe	Kunio Saeki
16 Rotary Box II	Akio Kamei
17 TrickLock 2015	Louis Coolen
18 The Brain	Marvin Allison Jr. [manuf. by Mag-Nif]
19 Uri Three Bars	Dario Uri
20 Power Tower	Goh Pit Khiam, Jack Krijnen
21 Wanderer	Oskar van Deventer
22 Three-Piece Blockhead	Bill Cutler
23 Ring Box	Gary Foshee
24 Latch Cube	Katsuhiko Okamoto
25 Loki	Anthony Evans and Lee Raspin
26 Texas Coin Puzzle	Mineyuki Uyematsu
27 Stickman No. 12 Puzzle Box      (Cross Box)	Robert Yarger
28 Stickman No. 28 Puzzlebox  (Edelweiss)	Robert Yarger / William Waite
29 Katie Koala	Brian Young
30 Cooksey Cylinder	Richard Cooksey
31 Egg	Wil Strijbos
32 Double Semi-Maze	RD Rose
33 Orion	Peter Kaldeway
34 Ze Orange	Stephen Chin
35 Stickman No. 18 Puzzle Box     (Sphere Box)	Robert Yarger
36 Hard-Boiled Coin	Mineyuki Uyematsu
37 Fire Plug	Marcel Gillen
38 Stickman No. 1 Puzzle Box     (Oak Wood Slide Box)	Robert Yarger
39 Ze Eggs!	Stephen Chin
40 Oskar (a.k.a. Cast Oskar     or Oskar's Key)	Oskar van Deventer
41 Golden Ratio Box	Peter Wiltshire
42 Rhombic Maze Burr	Derek Bosch
43 Matchbox Play Six	Olexandre Kapkan
44 Twin-Lens Reflex Camera	Hideaki Kawashima
45 Square Dissection     (a.k.a. Square Deception)	Nick Baxter
46 Naked Secret Box "PURPLE"	Akio Yamamoto
47 Jugo Flower Puzzle	Wil Strijbos (original designer unknown)
48 Stecker	Roger D
49 Visible Burr	Bill Cutler
50 Stickman Magic Tile Lockbox	Robert Yarger
51 Minimal Twist	Oskar van Deventer