Normal Service Interrupted

I’ve been dreading this day for years…

I knew that I couldn’t keep ignoring it and that one of these days it would need sorting…

It needs sorting now, apparently…

So, at the moment I have this, instead of this…

…and this downstairs… 

and then hopefully in a couple of weeks’ time I’ll have new carpets in the puzzle-cave a couple more puzzle cabinets in there, and all the boxes of puzzles will migrate back upstairs again in time for the next puzzlers’ visitation… but it’s soaking up most of my spare time at the moment, and the puzzles are in boxes which makes them a little harder to write about, so normal service is going to be a bit interrupted for a while, sorry…

…one or two haven’t quite been packed away yet,  and to be honest, the new ones keep arriving at a reasonable (although Gill might say alarming) rate anyway. So I’ll try and keep up the pretence of puzzle blogging for a little while longer.

Kagen’s Loop Box

Kagen Sound updated his website a while back announcing the imminent arrival of a new puzzle box. The Loop Box was to be a slightly scaled-down version of an earlier puzzle with a sliding tile locking mechanism – yes I know that doesn’t narrow it down an awful lot! The original Block Box had serious pedigree, winning both the Puzzlers’ award and the Jury’s First prize at the IPP22 Puzzle Design Competition… with the improved version (the Walnut Block box) having a more refined implementation of the mechanism that crammed twice the complexity into a similar sized puzzle. Loop Box simplifies those ideas down to their core and presents a lovely little puzzle with an added twist…

The similarities are pretty clear from a cursory glance: the top of the boxes all have a field of small sliding pieces arranged in a non-symmetric pattern, with the earlier versions all having a piece of two extending into (and beyond?) their respective frames… Loop Box on the other hand has all of the sliders trapped inside a frame around the edges… with no apparent gaps between the pieces to allow any form of sliding… :-)  Spot the first little challenge of the puzzle yet?

I loved that little complication – and it confused me for a while – I knew what I needed to be able to do, just couldn’t see how to get there… and there’s a lovely little “A-Ha!” when you do…

Find the first couple of moves and you’re into exercising the Loop mechanism that Kagen’s used in this and the predecessors: a set of sliding tiles where the start and end positions look the same, but they aren’t and the crucial difference between them has unlocked the mechanism… so pay careful attention or you might not realise that you’ve unlocked this box… although the final few moves required to actually open it ensure that you can’t stop part way through the solution – I liked that bit of the design a lot!

Once you’ve conquered the sliders, there’s a little more to do before you can finally open the box – I spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to suss the final move… elegant simplicity doesn’t quite describe it well enough… I had tried quite successfully to over complicate things!

It’s a lovely little puzzle box, beautifully made as you’d expect from Kagen… and according to his website, some might still be available for sale! … if you don’t get one of your own, have a bash at a friend’s copy, you’ll like it.

Stand By Cubes 1,2 & 3

Gregory Benedetti is a lovely French chap that I’ve had the jolly good fortune of bumping into a couple of times – he is also a somewhat prolific puzzle designer who manages to catch puzzlers out quite regularly – think Blind Burr and the whole NOS series of burrs… 

Around a month ago I spotted that he’d put a couple of puzzles up for sale on Puzzle Paradise – part of the description said that the puzzles had been produced in his new 9 square metre workshop and he hoped it would be the first set of many to be produced there… as I’m keen to support the arts, as it were, I piled in and ordered one of each… not because I’m addicted to collecting puzzles, to support the arts, you know… 

And yes, there are three different puzzles – there’s a clue in the digit in the name! (You know who you are…) 

They duly arrived in short order and in fact happened to arrive on a day when I’d be puppy-sitting while Gill was out… now at the time the pup was a lot littler than she is now and needed a watchful eye most of the time, although in fairness she spent most of that evening asleep on the chaise with her big sister – leaving me to puzzle! :-)

Right, a little background about these puzzles: they started out life as “Greg’s Cube 765432” and they came in three flavours – each flavour had pieces increasing in size from 2 up to 7 cubies (handily summing to 27) to make up a 3*3*3 cube… and each of the three sets has 2 solutions. Now let me start by suggesting that those made a pretty decent puzzle on their own, but Greg had even better things in mind… so he glued the biggest piece to a tray with a partial lip around it and produced a whole new set of challenges: Stand By Cubes 1, 2 & 3. 

...So now you have to introduce the 5 loose pieces into the tray / frame to build a cube…

Cubes 1 & 2 share a common set of pieces, bar the longest piece that’s glued to the tray, while number 3 uses different pieces (albeit the three smallest pieces are the same across all sets). 

Those three puzzles provided a wonderful hour or so’s diversion while idly keeping an eye on the hounds – the rims around the bases are just high enough to discourage you from trying anything you shouldn’t and Greg’s tolerances are good enough that you aren’t going to be tempted into any adventurous rotations… and those rims remove one of the solutions ensuring that each puzzle now has a unique solution… isn’t that nice of him!

Greg’s descriptions refer to the bases as being “a little bit rustic” but I think he’s being a bit unkind to his work – they’re nicely finished in pine and do their job perfectly! 

…Oh, and since I bought my set, Greg’s relisted them at a lower price on Puzzle Paradise, and there are still plenty of copies left… go on and spoil yourself – for the arts!