MPPXXIV was a little different…
Gill had fled to warmer climes and she’d left Ben in charge at home. Louis
arrived on his customary flight on the Friday evening and by the time I crashed
for the night, we’d nattered and puzzled for quite a while… and the next morning
there was a row of solved puzzles on the desk showing what Louis have been up
to while I’d been asleep… one of the solved puzzles included Eric’s latest
Button Box – now opened with its little diamond prominently displayed… I’d been
trying to open it for weeks!
After breakfasting on baked
goods, Louis and I headed down to the hall to get everything set up ahead of
the gang arriving… we’d pretty much got all the tables set up before the first
random puzzler arrived – a Spanish refugee called Nigel! Having had enough of
it pi$$ing down sunshine, he’d come back to his puzzling roots for an MPP
top-up – and he had some unkind things to say about our English weather (Oh how
quickly he’s forgotten!) which – to be fair - was being particularly English
that day! Quick greetings in the carpark were followed by purchases of soft
drinks and milk and we were all set for the rest of the gang to arrive… and arrive
they did.  |
| Caption competition anyone? |
Wee Steve brought a Danish
refugee called Taus along and Big Steve brought the Michael and Ali. Kevin and
Shane rolled in on their own and Tim brought hundreds of antique and vintage
puzzles along for sale…
Warm cup of coffee in hand, I
set about catching up with folks I hadn’t seen in a while (Hey, it’s been
almost a month since I saw most of them at DCD!) – sometimes with a puzzle in
hand and sometimes with a biscuit – well, there was after all a handy supply of
the best biscuits known to man!
Soon enough we settled into a
pattern of puzzling, banter and the occasional warm beverage…
Wee Steve brought along his
impossible half-brick-in-bottle and a number of puzzles for sale or swap –
including a box-full of Nutty Bolt #2’s. I think he managed to maintain the
distinction between those that were there for playing with and those that were
there for sale / swap…
Shane had brought along a whole
bunch of interesting locks and had a great time taunting several of us into
trying our hands at them… one that remained stubbornly locked was a combination
lock with the combination written onto the back of it (!) … I found the little
gas meter locks fascinating – or more accurately, I found the keys for the
little gas meter locks fascinating… :-) 
Tim had his usual selection of
Timeless Treasures for us to rake through – and we spent a while chatting about
a stained glass puzzle window in a nearby church and a bunch of mythology
around the Knights Templar and their holy loot – some of it apparently
re-buried with some puzzling sign-posting somewhere around the turn of the
previous century… I had no idea some of this stuff was literally right on our
doorstep!
I’d taken along a copy of the
new Stickman Burl Tile Puzzlebox and I had the pleasure of seeing a few people
solve it before me … I’d had it since earlier that week and while I’d made a few
helpful discoveries, I hadn’t actually come close to opening it yet. Shane had
brought along a copy as well, so several folks got the chance to play with a
copy of the latest Stickman beauty…
 | |
| NOT a spoiler! |
At one point several of us were
in stitches with Shane challenging Louis to a speed-solving contest on the new
Stickman(s) – Shane’s technique (I use the word lightly!) was possibly best
described as hubristic disassembly – paying scant attention to where any of the
pieces came from until he had opened the secret compartment and had a fistful
of pieces in one hand and a large pile of bits on the table in front of him… having
said that, (a) I’ve never seen anyone solve a Puzzlebox faster than Louis
before, and (b) it was a highly entertaining spectacle! (History does record
that Shane’s copy was fully reassembled in the proper configuration shortly
afterwards – partly by reference to Louis’ copy which had its bits laid out in
a slightly more analytical manner.)
Lunch was the traditional
combination of piggy buns and fish suppers (you chose your poison – nobody had
both, although someone did manage more than one piggy bun!) washed down with
those soft drinks I’d acquired earlier.
The afternoon saw some highly
successful puzzling, as several folks successfully disassembled and reassembled
the two old Mike Toulouzas creations I’d recently acquired, with everyone being
super-complimentary about Mike’s wood crafting skills.  |
| Hmm, not quite! |
Chris was uncharacteristically
slightly less than successful on Steve’s disassembled hex-sticks and dowels
puzzle – he’s generally been bringing one or two along in bits to MPPs for a
while now, and to date Chris has managed to defeat every single one of them –
much to Steve’s delight as he thought they’d never see their fully assembled
states ever again… this time either we didn’t give Chris enough peace and
quiet, or it was too hard for him – I’m going to go with the former on the
grounds that I may need his puzzle-solving skills again in the future… and he’d
printed out a couple of copies of a puzzle especially designed for Gill by
Stephan Baumegger.
Kevin had a couple of us thoroughly
gob-smacked when Chris decided to get his own back on Steve for a piece of
particularly amusing banter by scrambling a rather vicious looking twisty
puzzle (Curvy Copter Plus?) he’d brought along… Kevin then calmly set about
solving the thing, and talking about how it yielded well to a simple intuitive
solving approach – you know: move something from here to there – if that moves
something out of the way, then move it out of the way first and then replace it once you've done what you wanted…
Yeah right! Steve and Kevin then blew our minds even further by demonstrating
why this Plus version was even more horrible than even we’d realised by doing a
series of 30 degree twists and shifting shapes something horrid – and then yes,
solving it from there too… the boy’s a machine!
Louis had brought along a couple
of new locks, including a remake of an earlier design and a new wooden lock with a vaguely familiar ring to
it… (we seriously hope that Dick Hensel will get around to making some of
those!). The other one was a re-print of a previous design that we all liked,
but now that Shapeways allows a little extra specifying of print orientation,
they can be made to brilliant tolerances every time, and not require fettling
after printing – they’re that good that it was catching me out the night before
and I could actually remember the solution! That wooden one greatly entertained
me the night before and several people at MPP had a play with it – with everyone
saying good things about it… now if only we could get some manufactured… :-)
Nick’s Triangular Prism amused
several people during the course of the day, and everyone had something nice to
say about the Dream of Zebra.
Around 6pm we tidied up the hall
and I invited anyone who was interested back to mine for a fish supper (quite
generous of me, given that Big Steve and Ali ended up paying for it!). Several
more hours of puzzling followed, and the next morning it took quite a while to
re-solve and replace the puzzles that had been played with… another jolly great
day’s puzzling with friends.
