Ken’s Migraine

[Let’s see what the ‘bots make of that title!]

Back in my blog post about MPPXXXviii I mentioned that Ken Irvine had been staying at our place and he’d rather generously given me a copy of his latest design which he’d called Migraine – now this must mean that he’s either been let down this year and there isn’t a new grandchild to name this year’s favoured design after… or some poor kid’s going to be growing up called Migraine – you decide…

Anyhow – enough waffling, back to the puzzle. Migraine breaks the mould a little being a 4*4*4 cube rather than Ken’s traditional 4*4*3 cuboid… when he gave it to me, he apologised for the fact that one piece was sticking out a bit and suggested I put it back in properly… wry smile… yeah, right! You’re being set up here!

That sticky-outy piece duly pulls out and a quick examination of the hole it leaves behind confirms that if the piece were “simply” inserted the other way around, it would be fine…

Of course, with all the other pieces in situ, that’s a lot easier said than done, so it’s probably worth trying to take things apart gently and seeing whether that piece can indeed be inserted correctly along the way…

I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions of course, and I probably missed a trick somewhere along the way, but I needed to disassemble the whole shooting match… and at that point recognised a few more of Ken’s trademarks: a couple of the pieces have half cubies on them – that’s helpful! It certainly was very helpful on Little Kenny and Little Bruce…

OK, so set about trying to reassemble this little guy and you’ll find it isn’t too tough, as long as you don’t mind leaving out one or two pieces. Insist on using every single piece and you have a much harder challenge on your hands… one that has all the hallmarks of a great Ken Irvine design: low piece-count, obvious final shape, not a lot of alternative positions for the pieces and a fantastic “A-Ha!” moment… 

It makes an excellent number three in the set… and it’s not just me that likes it… Eric Fuller decided to make a run of 50 copies earlier this month and they were all sold by the time I was writing this post just over a week later… if you didn’t get a copy, it’s worth borrowing a copy from a friend and having a fiddle with it – it is fun!