Hales' Viper

One night last week I had a function after work so I ended up getting home quite late... to my surprise, there was a parcel waiting for me from my mate Shane... he'd mentioned that he'd been working on something "interesting" that he thought we'd like when I ran into him at Peter Hajek's EPP, and then followed that up a few weeks later with an offer email inviting us to opt out if we felt we might not be up to the challenge, along with a number of rather odd health warnings for folks with pacemakers and pregnant women - all of which sounded a bit strange, but hey, why not, eh? I'd duly opted in and signed away my life and then this package arrived... 

So I get home late, but he's piqued my interest and it's a new puzzle after all, so I can't resist the urge to open the package... inside is Shane's usual introduction for his Puzzling Agents (just call me 002!) and an interesting looking wooden object: a box with a square cross section and holes at either end, easily big enough to poke your fingers in but rather ominously covered with a brush like curtain that obscures all view of the insides... A signature on the bottom and the ominous Viper moniker on the top... 

I consider putting it aside until I can spend some quality time puzzling, probably the next evening, but my baser instincts take over and soon I'm fiddling around and exploring the outsides ... Nothing. 

Try and peek inside... Not much use at all... Listen for things moving around inside and yes, indeed, there's something in there that moves around when you tilt the box... Promising! 

Poke a finger inside expecting the worst... Not quite sure what I'm really expecting... Feel something inside moving but can't get it to do anything... 

Try the other hole - feels different and all of a sardine, it nips me! 

Somehow I manage not to fling it across the room by pure reflex and put it safely down on my desk and then calmly send the following email to Shane - it's titled "You bastard!":

....got home from a team dinner to find Viper #2 waiting for me... couldn't resist the urge and it duly bit me!

You bastard! :-)

I've put it aside until I can play with it properly...

I will report back in due course - when I get the new pacemaker fitted...

You bastard!

Thanks (I think...)

allard

...by return I receive a string of "Crying-with-laughter" emojis... It seems that Viper is working as expected and has claimed 002 as its first victim... 

I give up for the night and plot my revenge... 

The next night I'm home at the usual time and after a suitable stint on puppy duty I attack the Viper once again... 

This time, wary of its bite I'm a lot more circumspect - and it helps not a jot, I still get bitten, several times, while I learn about the innards... 

It's a slow and sometimes painful process, but the box eventually opens and yields up its secrets - including a truly thoughtful gift from the maker...  

Once it's open you have to smile at the wonderful elegant simplicity of it all - the locking mechanism is really straight-forward, yet thoroughly beguiling when you're trying to feel your way without incurring the Viper's wrath... 

My second email to Shane has a lot less swearing in it... 

Great fun and well worth the pain! 

Thanks Shane!

Read all about Kevin's experiences with his Viper over here.  (Glad I'm not the only sucker out there!)

Nutty Bolt No.2

Back over here I wrote about Stephen Miller’s Nutty Bolt No.1…

Nutty Bolt No.2 arrived just in time for MPP XXXiii so several folks managed to get their puzzling paws on a copy in Shrewsbury – sadly(!) I was on a boat in the Mediterranean at the time so I had to wait a little while for the Royal Mail to deliver mine after I’d made it back to Brum…

The rather compact, extremely dense package duly arrived and I have to say that Steve’s delivered on his promises - #2 looks pretty darn similar to #1 – same size bolt, same name plate on the bolt head (‘cept this one says #2 instead of #1!) – even the nuts and washers look the same and they're in the same place – the only difference between them is the name plate and the two dimples in the shaft instead of the single dimple on #1… can you see a pattern emerging there?

Puzzle-wise – this one’s totally different to #1 – and it shouldn’t yield to random fiddling at all – there’s enough in there to make sure that you’ll be locking yourself up some of the time if you’re just randomly playing around…

For puzzlers with good memories and some wider experience, you’ll recognise the locking mechanism from a couple of other puzzles, including another bolt from quite a while back…

I like it as a puzzle and think that it’s going to make a great little set of puzzles… glad to have the beginnings of a nice little set of matching bolts courtesy of Pyro Puzzles.

Sinterklaas 2016

One of the wonderfully unexpected side-effects of having Louis and his family around for a few days after Christmas was Gill and I being showered with gifts from Sinterklaas that had thoughtfully been left at the Coolen’s in early December. All we had to offer in return was a few days board and lodging and some time with the new puppy – I suspect we’ll be let off!

One of the gifts was a large wooden lock in the style of Richard Hensel… although it had a few strangely familiar features on it. 

Richard sold quite a few of his wooden locks on Puzzle Paradise a while back with the offer of a partial refund if you could solve it within a week – all of the puzzlers I know politely refused the refund offer, but he kept offering it! His original design went through a couple of iterations and it’s pretty much settled down now… and I’ve been meaning to buy a copy for a while now! 

Opening this present from the Coolens made me grateful that I hadn’t yet, and then I realised it wasn’t quite what I thought it was at first glance – there were a few unusual features on this one (that sprung panel on the front, that thing in the slot at the bottom) that seemed familiar – as well they should because I wrote about a lock that Louis had designed a couple of years ago that shares those features – except that one was a small, white 3Dprinted version... designed to take advantage of a number of the inherent qualities of the material it was being printed in – this was made of wood!

Over a cup of coffee Louis then told the story of sending a copy of his lock to Richard and Richard then asking if he could make a copy in wood – uncharacteristically, Louis said “No” and then went on to explain about his use of the material’s inherent qualities – it’s not called white strong and flexible for nothing, after all! Richard persisted and said he had some ideas… and then a while later Richard’s wooden version duly appeared – and there was a certain degree of gob-smackedness! 

 

Louis subsequently asked Richard to run off a copy for me and my Dutch Christmas present appeared… 

Richard has done a great job of maintaining the original solving process and has only had to resort to a non-wooden artefact for one piece … and he’s working on a wooden version of that piece too! 

A treasured addition to the collection – thank Sinterklaas!

EPP 2016

Peter Hajek hosts a cracking puzzle party at the end of each year where he invites puzzlers from around the world to submit their best puzzle (-related) finds of the year… those that can attend in person present their choices to the assembled puzzlists and then Peter combines those and his written submissions from around the globe to pull together a fantastic little booklet, which is then available to (only) those who have submitted something. I’ve been lucky enough to go along to a few of these now and they’re a wonderful opportunity to catch up with friends from far and wide (there’s usually a few Netherlanders there!), puzzle a little, see some impressive magic and eat a lot!

This year was no different… a couple of days after Christmas, I headed down to London and enjoyed the wonders of English traffic that added an hour and a half to my journey… good thing I set off a little early! When I arrived (late) I received the usual warm welcome from our host, which was even warmer after I’d pulled out a couple of Gill’s walnut cinnamon swirl cakes (they went down quite well during the course of the afternoon/evening). 

I grabbed a drink and set about wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and catching up with puzzlists I hadn’t seen in a while. Oli, Shane, Big Steve, Wee Steve, Tim, Joop, Wil, Laurie and Ethel, Gerard, Clive, David and Louis had all beaten me there so I had a lot of catching up to do… having dispensed with the greetings, Peter herded us all into his living room for the show and tell session for each of us to present our finds of 2016. 

This year Peter had introduced a possible fourth choice – if none of your three main choices were a commercially available puzzle… which was handy if you were struggling to whittle down your puzzle finds of the year! 

 

My three picks for 2016 (plus a bonus commercially available puzzle) were: 

Quintetra+

Another of Jane Kostick’s wooden wonders from me this year: Quintetra is a ball-shaped object made up of 30 identical pieces held together with magnets. Inside is a triacontahedron box made up of six identical panels held together by magnets. Inside that box is a great little packing puzzle consisting of twelve identical, if oddly shaped pieces of wood, and a wooden cube, all of which need to be placed inside the box. Fiendish!

The Fairy’s Door

MikeToulouzas’ Fairy’s Door is really special – it is a thoroughly beautiful object and a delightful puzzle that won the Puzzler’s Choice award at IPP34! Broadly speaking, it’s a puzzle box with an exquisitely detailed Fairy’s Door on the front of it. (Stunning details in the distressed panels and wooden hinges.) Finding your way through a series of puzzling locks is a whimsical experience until you’re finally able to open the box and reveal the surprise inside.

Little Bruce

From the slightly twisted puzzling mind of Ken Irvine comes Little Bruce – the successor to Little Kenny. Four simple pieces, a couple of spare voxels inside somewhere – lots of ways to assemble some of the pieces – and no way in heck of getting the final piece into the right place… it definitely requires some Think©ing and it rewards experimentation and rigour… and everyone I’ve given it to so far has not only solved it, but enjoyed solving it… you can’t really ask for more than that! 

Axis Hedgehog

A thoroughly unconventional hedgehog puzzle from Radek Micopulos – definitely a puzzler’s puzzle that will amuse even the most jaded of puzzlists. Each end of the cage has an embedded (swivelling!) ball bearing race in it… giving it a brilliantly industrial look. The spiked ball is clearly(!) too wide to get between the bars on the cage, and the spikes are too long to permit any sort of passage through or around the bearing races…

Little Bruce appeared a few times, and Shane’s Haleslock 2 appeared several times, as did Radek’s Axis Hedgehog, Kagen’s Lotus Box and our host's How Box.

After the puzzle presentations, we all tucked into Peter and Katja’s wonderful dinner spread (it’s always terrific!). Some of us had several goes at it and it was brilliant… and after supper Clive treated us to a highly entertaining if somewhat self-deprecating magic show – in spite of his own protestations he was both highly entertaining and mildly baffling. (Thanks Clive!)

Post magic there was coffee and (more!) cake (have I mentioned Gill’s delicious walnut and cinnamon swirl cake?) alongside gentle banter and sociable puzzling.

Some highlights that won’t easily be forgotten: I now know exactly where Wally is, the look on Gerard’s face when Louis decided his Goblin’s Door wouldn’t be fully solved until the solid silver coin jigsaw had been scrambled and reassembled, Steve’s spontaneous disassembly of his Parsellus (sp?) puzzle during his presentation and Wil’s presentation taking the Michael out of Clive after they’d both nominated the same wonderful little Karakuri box.

Another superb EPP thanks to Peter and Katja’s excellent host-age.

The drive home was a lot more pleasant than the drive out on two accounts – the traffic was significantly lighter and I had Louis for company as Mieke and the kids had dropped him off outside London en route to my place where they’d be spending the next few days visiting us…