Boaz' BLock

Boaz Feldman has plenty of form when it comes to puzzle locks – being the son of the maker of one of the very best puzzle locks in existence, the Danlock, he comes with a built-in pedigree… so when we saw him exchanging a puzzle lock at IPP37, a lot of us were delighted.

The BLock – Boaz’ Lock – looks like another common-or-garden Nabob padlock – with some lettering bashed into them to brand it as a BLock exchanged at IPP37… there’s a key helpfully attached by a short piece of string… so we do the obvious and untie the key and insert it into the lock – except it won’t go in… someone’s obviously jammed something in there or otherwise damaged the lock…

…or something…

Straight after the exchange, up in my hotel room I spent all of about 5 minutes convincing myself that it wouldn’t just unlock the way it should… that wasn’t difficult, after all you can’t get the key into the darn thing, let alone turn the key!

The next evening at the dinner Shane came wandering over with his copy of the BLock, cursing just a little (highly unusual for this sober English lad!) and announcing that he and Rainer had been trying to open the darn thing for hours, with no success… it was duly handed around the table for others to try – with similar levels of success…

Watching this from the other end of the table I had a little brainwave, which turned out to be rather useful… I asked if I could have a look at it, grinned, and then there was a lot of colourful seafaring language and plenty of guffawing at how we’d all been caught out…

The apple has not fallen far from the tree.

I am sure that Dan is proud of his son’s first exchange puzzle – he ought to be, it is an instant classic: a fun puzzle to solve with some sublime machining and excellent camouflage…

Hopefully there’ll be a BLock 2 or a CLock along in due course…