I’ve been a big fan of Scott Peterson’s work for a long
time, and whenever I spot one of his puzzles that I don’t already have available
for sale somewhere, I generally try and acquire it…
Thus ‘twas that I recently managed to stumble across someone
prepared to part with a copy of Stella’s Good Cents – one of Scott’s own
designs.
Scott described it as a modification of a puzzle designed by
Stewart Coffin and went on to comment that it remained unrealised for quite a
while because he’d considered it too simple – and yet when he produced it,
puzzlers seemed to like it…
A casual glance at it will have you convinced you’ve seen it
before – albeit, this is a rather beautifully produced version where the pieces
of what is rather obviously a simple diagonal burr have been made of laminated
sections of wood – oddly some of the laminations don’t seem to line up with
where you might be expecting them to go… and that’s a big clue.
The edges are still wonderfully sharp as though they’ve just
come straight off Scott’s saw and the obvious gentle tugging to release the
diagonal burr bits does absolutely nothing… this ain’t no diagonal burr… not
even a purdy one!
Puzzle a little more and there’s a wonderful secret to be
discovered – guaranteed to put a smile on a puzzlist’s face and leave
non-puzzlers wondering what the fuss is all about…
It’s a wonderful little example of one-puzzle-pretending-to-be-another,
while-in-fact-being-something-else-you-know-quite-well-too!
Great little bit of subterfuge, superbly implemented – and definitely
not too simple to be interesting!!
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