OMPIC

James Dalgety is the sort of gentleman that you instinctively want to trust, so when he gives you an exchange puzzle and describes it as rather trivial and says you really ought to be able to put the pieces making up a cube into the frame in under a minute – “One Minute Puzzle In Cube” anyone – you want to take him at his word…

That was my first mistake…

…my second mistake was actually trying to do it in under a minute…

…heck I’d settle for under ten minutes! And be proud of that!

…so I failed – awfully…

… because the frame is squished and the entry holes are off centre – not because I’m a rubbish solver, dear reader, but for all of the reasons above… or that’s my story!

Had I not tried to beat the clock, I might have approached it sensibly, studied the pieces and come up with a sensible strategy, observed the holes more carefully and decided which were likely to be most limiting and require particular pieces, and then only, begin to place the pieces in their final spots, adjusting for any estimation errors along the way – then I might have stood a chance of doing it quickly…

…and if you did solve this one quickly, then I doff my cap to you, gentle puzzler…

…but in the mean time I’m going to carry on muttering to myself under my breath about that man Dalgety! He caught me hook, line and sinkers…