Window Lock 2

I really enjoyed Dick Hensel’s Window Lock so when I heard Peter talking about a second Window Lock, I pricked up my ears and duly dropped Dick an email asking to be placed in the queue.

A little while back I had the notification that my copy was ready, so PayPal headed one way across the pond while a small package headed the other way.

There’s a really strong family resemblance here – there’s the familiar wooden case and shackle, this time in oak, and the big acrylic window taking up almost the entire front of the puzzle. Everything is on display, right?

A quick wiggle of the shackle shows that it’s firmly held in place on the left by a large ball bearing and several oddly-shaped bits of wood seem to be holding the right hand side in place. There’s a stray brass ball floating around the middle of the lock and a vast number of carefully shaped little wooden obstacles getting in the way of that ball and indeed of one another.

There’s a tool that can be used o manipulated some of the bits and pieces inside, but form the start there’s almost nothing that can actually be done… so the first order of business sis to find out what’s stopping you from doing anything…

A bit of jiggling and prodding and poking and you can start moving things around a little and freeing up some space… only Bill’s carefully designed things so that you’re invariably going to have to double back on yourself a few times when you realise that you really should have done something else right at the beginning.

I ended up thinking I was making stunning progress several times until I got stopped dead in my tracks by something that needed doing, only it couldn’t be done in the current configuration and everything needed rewinding…

Try and think a few steps ahead, but be prepared to be outfoxed by Dick!

I really enjoyed working out how to get everything where it needs to be and then executing it and (finally) seeing the shackle swing open.

Oh, and you might want to plan the reset as well!