Free the Washer

Phil’s crushed it again!

Phil Wigfield, aka MetalPuzzlesUK, let me know that he had a new puzzle available for sale at our last MPP – I’d taken cash and duly left with a puzzling chunk steel and brass.

Free the Washer gives you a pair of chunky brass disks held apart by a number of steel bars – which seem to penetrate the disks  - and the top and bottom have been nicely machined giving it a very handsome look. Inside the cage there’s a slim brass washer with a little segment removed from it… (un)helpfully the bit that’s been removed is smaller than the smallest of the steel bars – and even if it wasn’t, I’m not sure that would have helped anyway. The floor of the cage has Phil’s stamped signature and a serial number… so get the washer out, eh?

I ended up spending an hour or so during the course of Sunday fiddling around with it and I did manage to find some interesting things… unfortunately I could not get those interesting things to do what I wanted them to do, so I ended up fiddling around and around and pretty much getting nowhere.

That evening Frank goaded me into more action by announcing that he’d solved it at MPP the day before, becoming the first person to officially Free the Washer.

On Monday, I tried harder. And I tried different. (It’s almost like I’m starting to listen to my own advice…! Almost…) Having tried unsuccessfully to get the mechanism to do one thing on the Sunday, I admitted that my theory on what was going on inside there might not quite be right after all – so I tried a couple of other avenues and then realised I was able to do even more than I’d been able to the day before.

From there I developed an entirely new theory, and this one actually turned out to be helpful – freeing the washer a few minutes later.

Free the Washer has been very well made – it hides some wonderful subterfuge perfectly and it’s clear that the tolerances are spot-on – even the final act of freeing the washer is a delight to behold.

If you like your puzzles heavy and metal, I suspect you’ll like this one, a lot.

Great work Phil!

Free the Washer should be available on Phil’s Etsy shop shortly – form an orderly queue. 

 

<After solving Free the Washer I traded a couple of emails with Phil and found out just how much work had gone into making this puzzle... trust me, it's a bargain!>