Shelly

Doog and Radek have been at it again…

Radek began teasing the imminent arrival of a new Demonticon on social media about two months ago and initially we’d hoped to be able to take an early copy to IPP to amuse that bunch of puzzlers… Shelly ended up taking a little longer to arrive on the scene and I secured a copy at the first sign of her availability – she arrived a couple of days later thanks to a wonderfully efficient courier company.

Shelly looks brilliant with a definite oil-barrel chic about her. There’s a bright eye, a slightly wonky vacant eye and a pursed grin defying you to find what the future holds. The lads rate her as “mischievous - many components, slightly obscured mechanism” so we know we’re in for an interesting ride!

I spent a while exploring and found a couple of things to amuse myself with fairly quickly… I even thought I might be making some pretty rapid progress as Shelly began to open up to me, but any thoughts that Shelly might be a bit of a pushover were quickly dispelled when my progress was halted and I ended up spending several days making absolutely zero progress.

Eager to hear what I thought of Shelly, the lads reached out and I found myself embarrassed by having to report virtually no progress… if I was embarrassed the first time, the next time they asked was pretty mortifying as I’d made literally no further progress at all.

While I was describing what I had tried and failed, there was a little encouragement that led me back to something I’d tried very early on and discounted on the grounds that it seemed to need more force than I thought the boys would ask of their solvers. Revisiting it, and optimising my approach a little, yielded some movement and, more importantly, the encouragement I needed to believe in myself – the game was back on…

From there I really enjoyed the absolute romp through the remaining puzzling bits – there’s some really clever use of interesting tools, and one of the most exquisite little tools I’ve ever come across in a puzzle – it’s delightful and perfect for the job at hand…

The final reveal, in addition to the theming along the way is excellent as we’ve come to expect from getting inside the minds of these Demonticons… Shelly is definitely a barrel of laughs (and a nice little puzzle challenge as well!).