MPP LCIIV

(Insert own favourite Roman Numeral here)

Traditionally the first MPP after an IPP has at least one full set of all of the exchange puzzles (and assorted other treasures from the Puzzle Party) so that anyone who wasn’t able to make it along to IPP can still have a bash at the puzzles, so I schlepped four crates of puzzles along in honour of that tradition.

When I arrived at the hall I got a bit of a fright when I found someone already set up and about to host eight expecting couples to talk them through the impending changes their bundles of joy would be bringing… after a short chat, and a bit of checking on bookings we realised she should have been in the lounge, not the hall, so with impeccable timing, Ali and the London gang arrived to help move all her carefully prepared information stations into the room down the corridor… (thank guys!) while the rest of us set about getting some tables and chairs (and several hundred puzzles) out for some puzzling.

I’d come across a 3D printed variant of Frabjous called Stellated-Dodecathing (fab name!) on Printables and spent a few days printing out vast quantities of the requisite bits for some assembly fun… several folks had a bash at assembling them and helped me out by taking a copy home – I ended up with a single copy – so one of my crates was a lot lighter than when I’d arrived. I’d also 3D printed a large pile of Ken’s Fool’s Cube that I’d really enjoyed playing with at IPP. The premise is simple: you race with a friend to assemble a cube from the pieces on the keychain and then return them to the start position on the keychain… along the way there’s a wonderful moment when you realise that you might have just done something silly… and right about then you realise why everyone’s looking at you and grinning. It’s a really fun puzzle that I hope everyone else enjoyed as much as I did the first time Ken caught me out with it in Houston. (Thanks Ken!!)

I managed to get rid of several piles of puzzles various folks had asked me to bring back from Houston for some local(-ish) puzzlers, as well as a small pile of my spare exchange puzzles.

There was a bit of fun with the Stellated Dodecathings when Steve discovered that the void inside it would fit not only a copy of his Lone Star Burr, but also all of the cash we’d collected so far to cover the hire of the hall, as long as it was rolled up very tightly… which meant that at the end of the day I had a small collection of sterling notes all neatly rolled in straw-like structures - that didn’t look dodgy at all!

Michel managed to join us from a not-so-near camp-site where his family were currently holidaying and enjoying the best of the British summer (his expectations had clearly already been lowered and they were having a great time!). He’d been visiting all of the charity and puzzle shops he could find along the way and ended up giving me a copy of the Hi Q Eureka domino tray-packing puzzle and a Rubik’s fidget cube that he’d picked up in spite of already having copies of his own – thank you sir!

Lewis joined us for his first MPP experience (hopefully we didn’t put him off!) bringing along a prototype of his next Stickman collaboration – a Gordian Knot variation. He sportingly let me have a play with it and I managed to show just how much I’ve forgotten of the solve for that wonderful little puzzle… I managed to string together a few moves and confirm that he really has managed to recreate the look and play of the original puzzle rather expertly – he’s added a bit of twist on the original right at the end of the solve - so I have no idea what that is… but I suspect that Rich might have got very close to solving it later on back at my place.

Dale was dishing out his own variations on a set of coin and matchstick challenges that had several of us scratching our heads for quite a while, in fact I’m still stumped by several of them more than a week on!

During the course of observing Oli assembling a copy of the Stellated Dodecathing I made a startling scientific discovery: my first observation of Anti-Think(c) – Oli was connecting up sets of arms to the corner connectors and he had managed to connect them all perfectly wrong – there are two possible ways of adding an arm to a connector and he had managed to literally offer up every single arm he’d connected in the wrong orientation… if he’d just randomly bashed them together you’d have expected about half of them to be wrong and the others to be right, even by accident; but Oli had contrived to connect every single one of them wrong without even realising there was a right and a wrong way… something we could only put down to a hidden super power – Oli’s Anti-Think(c). Remember you read about it here first!

Oli had brought Jack along for a day’s puzzling and have to say that Soos-the-younger appeared to be a pretty gifted solver of sliding tile puzzles – who knows what that says about nature versus nurture!

Adin joined us for several hours puzzling and then gamely took home a copy of George’s Hex Screws that I had left over from the previous MPP – and barely a week later he’d assembled the first of the two challenges! (For the record, my copy was assembled by Rich – there is no way in heck I could get that thing together!)

I disappeared off home at lunchtime to let the hounds out and grab a sandwich while the others headed down to the High Street for the pig rolls that weren’t there… there were kebabs though…

Sometime after lunch Frank texted to say that he wouldn’t be coming as he was going to have a nap rather… too much excitement perhaps, or perhaps there was more to that story – I’m sure he’ll tell you if you ask him- I just remember that he chose to take a nap over coming to MPP.

I had a great time exploring Dan’s copy of Chained Key puzzle – I felt sure I was making great progress until I got thoroughly stopped in my tracks – I spent a while trying to get around the virtual roadblock without success before Dan admitted that he’d been stuck at precisely the same spot… something that seemed to catch everyone else out over the course of the rest of the day… a couple of days later he told me he’d conquered it and I found myself buying a copy from Luke’s website. It’s a great little puzzle!!

Later in the afternoon I spent a while totally embarrassing myself when I tried Dan’s own design for a second time… I spent ages chasing the things in the wrong dimension and made an absolute hash of the solve, possibly helping him to convince himself that he didn’t need to make it any harder than it already was!

We packed up some time after 5 and then headed back to my plaice for the traditional cod and chips. Hugo the Hippo and a bunch of the older Stickmans came out to play while Steve updated his social media profile. Several Minima’s and some recent Pelikan’s stoutly resisting solving… it was a good evening after another fun day’s puzzling with my mates – thank you folks!