I’ve had a slowly growing pile of dovetail puzzles on my
shelf-of-things-to-be-blogged-about for a little while now and the time has
come to rectify that! So here you go – a bonus-length blog post featuring 4
fantastic puzzles!
The Sandfield Joint
was, I suspect, the first of the genre – crafted by Perry McDaniel, it was
Norman Sandfield’s exchange puzzle at IPP14 in Seattle. It consisted of a pair
of wooden blocks (Mahogany and Padauk) apparently joined by a pair of
intersecting dovetail joints – the first classic impossible dovetail?
It’s not a super-tricky puzzle, particularly if you’ve
already seen the impossible dovetail idea before, but the locking mechanism
might take you a little while to figure out. Probably the simplest and most
honest of the various dovetail puzzles out there… another reason why I’m
inclined to believe it was the beginning of the genre... a good introduction to
the series, one to give you a false sense of accomplishment!
At the next year’s IPP in Tokyo, Robert Sandfield exchanged
his Dovetail and a Half – a triangle
where each side of the triangle has a dovetail joint on it… so clearly one half
of a dovetail must be missing somewhere, inside? Perry McDaniel was on puzzle-crafting-duty
once again and the same woods (Mahogany and Padauk) make up the opposing halves
of this puzzle.
Whereas the Sandfield Joint may be a reasonably straightforward
puzzle, Dovetail and a Half is not!
My copy came from a friend and I struggled for quite a while
to separate the two halves… failing miserably. When a puzzling mate came around
to collect some puzzles, I gave it to him to demonstrate for me quickly, and he
failed to open it as well… at the next MPP I gave it to the solver-of-all-puzzles
not expecting it to remain locked together for more than a few seconds in his
dextrous hands… but it would not yield to him either… had I bought a copy that
had somehow become locked up? I began to have some doubts, so I did the only
sensible thing and bought a second copy – one that came with a copy of the
solution… which was a bit different to what we’d all assumed the solution was –
and that extra step or two had totally baffled every single one of us – of course
if you do the right thing on my supposedly impossibly-locked-up copy, it opens
up perfectly… Perry’s tolerances remain perfect fifteen years on – it’s just
the stupid puzzler who thinks he knows what he’s doing that can’t open the
thing!
Next up is Sandfield’s Cutaway
Dovetail Puzzle – Robert’s 1999 exchange puzzle. From the pictures you
should be able to tell that it’s form Perry McDaniel and once again uses the
same woods – nice little bit of continuity in there?
At first glance, this one resembles a slightly enlarged Sandfield
Joint, except that someone has taken a bandsaw to it and cut out one of the
corners – leaving the inside edges significantly rougher than the rest of the
puzzle. (Nice touch, that!)
Interestingly on this puzzle, a casual shake of the puzzle
reveals something rattling around inside… treasure perhaps, or just part of the
locking mechanism – who knows, eh? ;-)
The locking mechanism on this one is a wee bit different and
hopes to catch the unwary who think they’ve understood the ones that have come
before and know where this one’s probably heading…
Finally in this bunch of dovetails, one that looks totally
out of place – Dovetail Cherry Surprise Cake was Norman Sandfield’s IPP23 exchange in Chicago… it doesn’t take much
imagination to see Perry McDaniel’s lovely creation as a mouth-watering slice
of (wooden) cake. This one really stands out from the others, both in terms of
its size and its complexity…
If you look
carefully at the sides, you can make out a couple of dovetails which should
give you a clue as to how things might come apart, but this chap has a few
nasty surprises for puzzlers – there are a few distinct phases to getting into
the final secret compartment to discover the hidden cherry surprise (cute
touch!) – but not only that, there are some rather unusual discoveries long the
way – and there’s definitely a sequential discovery aspect to it all as well… a
lot of the old tricks, and some news ones are used in there – it’s not just
beautiful, it is a seriously testing puzzle!
